5 Most Common Mistakes to Avoid Derailing a Digital Transformation

Companies across the world now are leveraging emerging digital technologies to transform their operations, retort more quickly to customer demands, and enable new business models. As organizations are challenged to enhance and advance business processes and develop new capabilities and business models, they are in need of an effective digital transformation strategy. This process of transformation can also point the way to revenue streams and alter the sense of purpose.

However, in recent times, digital transformation in the corporate world has not been a great addition to the overall strategy but a business imperative. So, by adapting to the changes, businesses must take vital steps to go with their digital transformation.

Here are the top 5 mistakes and their remedies we need to know while implementing digital transformation.

Short-Term Goals

Digital transformation is a continuous, ongoing process of change as customers' expectations and business needs are never stable. Most companies are treating digital transformation as short-term yardsticks of success and miss the point of transformation. Thus, instead of focusing on quick wins, enterprises should adopt a more long-term vision. In this way, non-traditional metrics like new registrations on digital platforms or online engagements are better ways of scaling an organization's digital transformation strategy and success.

Confliction in Thinking

Since digital transformation is a collaborative effort, variances in the way tech pros and business leaders define terms can lead to foiling, delays, and poor execution. Thus, if a tech team is developing a product that performs on a specific machine configuration with a minimal number of features, on the other side, the business team is expecting an app that supports all potential users. This kind of difference can lead to a lot of uncomfortable post-release meetings. Therefore, there is a need to define terms like slightly feasible and concurrent as a group, through which the transformation team can arrive at the same set of expectations simultaneously.

Inadequate Funding

Similar to other IT projects, most digital transformation initiatives fail often due to proper funds. In this case, several projects under transformation derail but the costs continue to swell. So, there is only one way to keep a company's digital initiatives within budget is not to set a limit on transformation funding in the first place. Businesses also have to comprehend that their digital transformation is not a type of project they can put a fixed price tag on.

Lack of the Necessary Skills

Before the transformation begins, it is imperative companies should invest the time and effort needed to up-skill their employees. Considering a survey by Capgemini Digital Transformation Institute, over half of the global organizations consider digital talent shortage as an obstacle hampering their ability to complete transformational initiatives. And that gap is particularly severe in artificial intelligence and machine learning field, which are crucial to many transformation efforts. So, companies need to house individuals with requisite skills, even they can bring outside help for their digital transformation initiative.

Moving Too Slowly

Companies need to remember one of the reasons they started their digital transformation to keep their market share in the face of growing competition. As a digitally-driven organization is agile and moving fast, a company needed to drive transformation simply can't afford any delays. So, for that, streamline business processes and automate the time-consuming tasks, where possible. Also, they must consider there is no finish line as IT modernization is an endless journey.