In this age of accelerating technological progress, most organisations are focusing on digital transformation to outstrip their competitors and prepare for a volatile future. But according to research by Strategy & PwC, 43% of respondents admitted that the maximum return on investment in technology was not achieved. So what are companies getting wrong when it comes to digital transformation?
Transformation is about more than technology
Perhaps the greatest mistake that we see is approaching digital transformation as a purely technological endeavour. Technology is an essential tool in transformation, but it’s not the whole story – depending on the project, it may actually have a surprisingly low level of importance in whether or not the initiative is a success. That’s because what’s being transformed is not just the organisation’s technology. It’s a fundamental rethinking of the way a business operates.
Because most business processes are underpinned by technology, transformation has traditionally been IT’s domain. But this often puts the focus narrowly on technological change, rather than wider organisational transformation – and that means the full range of potential benefits can’t be realised. Treating digital transformation as a cultural change, rather than just a technological change, allows organisations to look beyond the IT team’s viewpoint to fully align transformation with the needs of the business and to achieve real impact.
Start with the outcome, not the process
The starting point for many organisations is how they can improve their technology systems to improve internal processes. But this is looking at things from the wrong perspective in a world where organisations and their customers are increasingly part of a wider ecosystem. Instead, we need to start by looking at how to transform user experiences, whether the users are customers, employees, partners, or someone else.
These experiences could be a customer’s journey through the purchasing process, or an internal user moving through a workflow to onboard a new customer, or partner organisations sharing information to enable supply chain processes. The reason for transforming these user experiences should be to achieve a tangible outcome. Once this outcome has been identified, it’s time to look at the tools available to accomplish it. The technology follows on from the identification of these business outcomes, but it’s only part of the answer. True transformation goes beyond the technology element to encompass users, leadership, customers, partners, processes and organisational ethos – in other words, to encompass the whole of organisational culture.
Aligning culture with business goals and technology is what leads to success – IDC recommend ‘cultivating a culture of innovation and growth’ as one of their key strategies to give business leaders the edge in 2025.
Make sure the business is represented
Digital transformation initiatives that have been developed in isolation from the rest of the business are unlikely to capture all the potential business challenges, use cases and business value. Sometimes, we even see organisations embarking on their digital transformation journey without identifying the place the business wants to get to or the issues that need to be solved. These problems are often down to the fact that the right stakeholders weren’t in the room when the ideas were being developed.
A meaningful vision of digital transformation can only be achieved if the organisation is fully represented – not just a subset of the business – during the entire process from inception to completion. A good blend of people allows for a holistic mix of perspectives and ideas. It puts stakeholders in place outside the IT department who are fully bought in to making sure the transformation is a success. It also means that initiatives are driven by a business-wide consensus that this is the right course of action.
Change is hard, so make it realistic
This approach also helps to overcome the natural resistance to change; that’s part of human nature. Making sure that transformation initiatives have widespread input and buy-in helps to set achievable targets for change and mitigates the impact on users. It’s important to be realistic about how quickly significant change can be achieved, particularly in large organisations where the status quo is the norm. However well-planned and implemented transformation is, it’s rare to see major change being accepted at pace and without resistance, except within start-ups which have an agile mindset.
Get feedback from the coalface
One of the most interesting and important questions that we ask customers is how they have prioritised their business objectives. Finding out from a representative sample of users or clients what’s working or what’s not is a vital step that’s often overlooked. Some of the most impressive results come from the simplest of tools, like user surveys. These can be enormously valuable because they provide information about how well the users themselves are enabled (or not) by technology.
Make cultural alignment the first step
Cultural alignment is one of the most important things that organisations need to do before starting on a transformation project. This approach makes sure that the project is aligned to business objectives, that it will achieve tangible benefits, that there is buy-in across the business, and that all the potential opportunities have been identified to build a stronger, healthier organisation that’s ready for the future.
By aligning culture with technology, organisations can ease the pressure on their people and unlock transformation that truly lasts. See how Colt is helping enterprises achieve it at colt.net/solutions