Studies suggest that digital transformations are failing at a staggering rate. A recent study from Everest Group found that 78% of digital transformation projects failed to meet business objectives, and 73% of projects failed to provide any business value at all.
This illustrates that digital transformation comes with significant risk even at the best of times. Added to this is the challenge of maintaining successful operations throughout the digital transformation project.
Organisations looking to digitally transform run the risk of disrupting their operations unless they get the approach right. Fortunately, short-term business resilience doesn't have to be compromised to achieve successful, long-term transformation.
Digital transformation is a necessary and valuable journey for businesses to go on. But too often, organisations end up working with vendors who are focused on greenfields innovation instead of finding the right solution for that business. Or, they focus so heavily on the transformation that business-as-usual suffers, putting the company at risk.
Organisations should consider implementing innovative technology to be able to run and transform at the same time.
Disruption isn't necessarily always negative and positive disruption can help organisations achieve exponential growth and competitive advantage. However, if an organisation is disrupted without a corresponding benefit, it can derail growth and weaken the organisation's resilience.
Minimising the drama that often goes hand-in-hand with positive disruption should be a key focus for any transformation project. The ideal transformation partner should combine pragmatism, discipline, and customer-centric innovation to deliver solutions that businesses need to succeed in today's marketplace.
There are five core requirements to reduce risk when implementing innovative technology:
1. Balance short-term business resilience with long-term transformation — This requires organisations to run and transform, adapt to evolving market conditions, and leverage new business opportunities.
2. Achieve IT flexibility across compatibility, pricing, and deployment — This requires organisations to work with a partner that offers an open and backwards-compatible portfolio with various deployment and pricing models.
3. Futureproof IT investments — Protecting investments over the long term is essential for organisations looking to do more with less.
4. Work with a transformation-focused ecosystem — The ideal partner can connect the business to a proven ecosystem of products and vendors to optimise solutions and deliver key digital transformation outcomes.
5. Demand long-term support from technology partners — Too often, organisations adopt innovative technology only to find that the vendor doesn't or cannot provide support over the long term. This requires subsequent expenditure that could have potentially been avoided with a proven partner. Organisations should do due diligence to select a partner with a track record of innovation and successful delivery over time.
Finally, customer-centric innovation is the key. If a provider is too focused on researching and developing technologies that don't precisely solve the organisation's goals, then the path to transformation could be interrupted, expensive, and rocky.
It's essential to lower the risk involved in adopting innovative technology, maintain business momentum and resilience, and ensure the investments being made in technology today will continue to deliver benefits well into the future.