The pandemic has significantly hurt organizations worldwide, whether startups or multinational companies. Adopting remote working setups to survive tough industry competition has made companies realize the importance of digital transformation. Today, it has become the driving force behind the success and growth of countless enterprises. Unfortunately, studies have shown that almost 80% of these strategies either stagger in the dark or become complete failures. But why?
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The reasons behind strategic failures
It is not that enterprises aren’t researching markets or adopting innovative approaches for digital transformation. The problem is deep-seated and intertwined with the core of strategic development. Perhaps, that’s why identification of the root cause is so difficult. Most of these failures result from minor errors that can create disastrous impacts. Bearing this in mind, here are some significant digital transformation blunders to avoid at any cost. Also included are the possible resolutions to these blunders to stay relevant in your respective industry.
1. Setting unrealistic visions and expectations
One of the most common digital transformation blunders that most people make is setting unrealistic expectations. These assumptions either do not align with the company’s core objectives and principles or sound too ambitious. Working on them without considering the organizational capabilities will create an adverse impact, and the entire transformation process will collapse.
Solution
Instead of setting long-term and irrelevant expectations, opting for short-term digital changes within the organization is better. Taking one step at a time will help you complete the transformational phase with minimal impact on existing business processes and workplace culture. Also, one needs to analyze the market and organizational capabilities to align them properly before setting expectations.
2. Not defining the transformational goals properly
Every organizational strategy must have reasonable goals defining its purpose and objectives. Similarly, a digital transformation strategy needs appropriate goals with a well-explained definition. Failure to do so will lead to digital transformation blunders. You won’t understand the objectives, so the future steps to implement might not be feasible.
Solution
To succeed in the digital transformation strategy, you must study your business correctly. This will help you define the purpose and objective of your strategy appropriately. You can orchestrate a workflow to explain how you want to achieve the transformational goals with your resources. Another way to define the goals is via the problems you want to overcome with digital transformation.
3. Ignoring the role of customers
Among the many avoidable digital transformation blunders, having an ignorant mindset toward customers is probably one of the worst. Customers play a significant role in your digital transformation endeavors. When the changes don’t meet the expectations of your targeted audience, you won’t get the required revenue and leads.
Solution
When your organization goes through changes, the new and modified services must align with what the customers want. This will help you meet the customer demands ideally without reducing engagement and satisfaction. To prepare a digital transformation strategy based on customer demands, you need to study the shift in their behaviors. Analysis of human choices and behaviors will help you understand what they are looking for, and you can develop the strategies accordingly
4. Less focus on resistance within the organization
Whenever you want to introduce a change, it will create a shift from the traditional paradigm. Sometimes, your employees will embrace the shifts, but you will likely face internal resistance to digital transformation. While your employees hesitate to adapt to the change, your stakeholders may also become apprehensive. If you do not address the internal resistance, there is little chance of becoming successful in digital transformation.
Solution
To avoid digital transformation blunders affecting your organization’s work, you must discuss the idea with the stakeholders and create awareness programs. The response will make you realize the extent of resistance you might face.
An essential solution would be to rely on digital adoption platforms. DAPs can be instrumental in making your employees aware of the changes introduced in the company’s software through interactive workflows.
5. Ignoring the importance of data
Despite the popularity of big data, many organizations cannot leverage it correctly. It is bound to fail without proper evidence and statistics to support the plan. Data helps in evaluating customer experience and generating revenues. There are several benefits of big data.
Solution
Data must be collected from all kinds of sources that can be measured. Analyzing these data sets will show you how your current business operations impact outputs, customers, and other aspects of your organization. You can generate forecasts based on revenue planning, employee hiring forecast, and more.
6. Underestimating impacts on office culture
Last but not least, not considering the impacts on office culture is one of the significant digital transformation blunders you must avoid at all costs. This transformation is bound to introduce a massive shift in how people work, communicate, and get their jobs done. Therefore, if your employees are not ready for the change, you won’t be able to manage it later.
Solution
Forming a change management plan to handle the transformation’s discrepancies within your business operations would be good. The key is understanding the impact of any digital transformation effort.
The verdict
It is hard to avoid making digital transformation blunders, but we can work on goals and expectations to ensure they are relevant and realistic. Organizations must also segregate transformational plans logically to ensure that consequent phases are implemented only when successfully executing the most recent change.