How to fail at digital transformation: 3 pitfalls to avoid at all costs

While digital transformation initiatives are commonplace now in organizations, many aren’t successful. Here’s how to avoid failure.

Digital transformation efforts are not only a regular occurrence in most organizations, but critical to a business’s survival. With 90% of companies undergoing digital transformation, technology is being used more to achieve business goals now than ever before.

A common misconception, however, is that digital transformation is mainly reserved for IT teams, according to Altimeter’s 2018-2019 State of Digital Transformation report. The majority of organizations (85%) reported its digital transformation efforts expanding well beyond IT, becoming company-wide initiatives, the report found.

“The more advanced or progressive organizations are using [digital transformation] as an opportunity to completely modernize the business itself,” said Brian Soils, principal analyst at Altimeter and author of the report. Digital transformation is moving well beyond IT, extending even into human resources and employee engagement, he added.

One of the biggest trends in current digital transformation projects is in employee engagement, said Dave Hennessy, senior vice president of Keystone Partners.

“[Companies are] using a lot of tools to help managers engage their employees,” Hennessy said. “There’s a big shift away from the annual, once a year performance discussions and coaching. The really progressive companies are finding ways to use technology to engage employees, to do check-ins, to find out what their state of mind is, what they’re loving about what they’re doing now, what they’re not loving.”

Digital transformation is not only helping connect people to technology, but also to one another, removing barriers internally and externally, Hennessy added.

Despite the popularity of digital transformation, most organizations run into challenges along the way. In 80% of digital initiatives, only 25% of companies will succeed in creating better ways of working, according to Gartner analysts at the Digital Workplace Summit in May.

Companies can avoid failing at digital transformation projects by avoiding the following three pitfalls.