While business and IT leaders are under pressure to boost their digital transformation plans, they should stop, rethink, and assess before fully diving into a roadmap.
The question all companies face today isn’t whether to embrace digital transformation, but how to best take advantage of digitalization advancements, especially considering change driven by COVID-19.
This mean that businesses must rethink their roadmap and long-term planning. Taking advantage of lessons learned from previous digital efforts, prioritizing the right technology before investing, developing holistic plans for data, and considering new organizational roles is needed to support these changes.
Prioritizing the right tech when digitizing IDC reported that businesses will spend $2.3 trillion a year on digital transformation within the next four years, with worldwide digital transformation technology investments set to hit at least $7.4 trillion in the same time period. But before discussing the technology, it's important to note that many digitalization projects fail due to lack of competencies or a misunderstanding of complexity.
With many technology options available, it can be difficult to gauge what will benefit your organization. Prior to investing in any solution, businesses should conduct thorough quantitative and qualitative research. A qualitative investigation, featuring employee focus groups or interviews, can identify areas where workers need assistance. Quantitative research, leveraging analytics tools, collects data tracking performance, experience or engagement, which can then support the qualitative observations.
The average digital transformation project has a 45% chance of delivering less profit than expected. Poor planning is to blame for many transformation efforts falling short. A thorough roadmap is needed to keep up with the pace of innovation. One way to do this is to devise both long- and short-term digital plans to meet immediate and future needs.
Start by creating a cohesive timeline with monthly goals (ROI sales, website visits, etc). A short-term plan should last roughly three to six months, while a long-term plan should last about six to 12 months. To get an accurate picture of performance, organizations should regularly run performance tests on their systems. They can also survey employees to gauge how they are reacting to the technology.
In order to meet the demand for disruption, companies need to focus on data-driven innovation. This means businesses must consider the aspects of scope complexity and adoption. One element of this is assessing the learning curve for employees. When introducing new technology solutions, whether it be IoT or machine learning programs, you will need to train employees to use it.
