What Are The Obstacles To Digital Transformation?

Companies which are undergoing a digital transformation have possibly enjoyed increased market share, boosted customer engagement, higher employee morale as well as increased customer revenue.

In today’s digital landscape, every single person needs to adapt in order to succeed. Companies who are not able to keep up with the ever-advancing digital capabilities are at risk getting left behind by their competitors. This is as innovations in mobile, social platforms, data science as well as cloud computing continually change how customers expect to engage with an organisation. At the moment, ‘digital transformation’ is now more than a buzz term – it is a business imperative which is being felt in every industry, at every level.

The Be-All-And-End-All That Is IT

Information Technology (IT) is responsible for driving digital transformation. However, it’s not easy. When faced with a combination of known issues, legacy challenges as well as quickly changing technology landscape, agile thinking and alliances with business owners are the key to a greatly successful transition.

During a time of digital transformation, as we’re facing now, managing and securing your data is a crucial part of the business’ foundation. However, re-engineering processes to execute on the digital transformation vision comes with obstacles.

The Inability To Experiment Quickly

One of the most significant barriers for digital transformation, as per a survey which was conducted by the Harvard Business Review, is a company’s inability to experiment quickly. 53% of senior executives who were surveyed maintain that this was a fundamental barrier to the success of their projects. This result hardly seems surprising seeing that digital innovation is now advancing at an extraordinary speed.

As a result, companies now must be able to react – as well as adapt – to this ever-changing landscape. For many organisations, the security of ‘sticking to what they know’ may seem to be favourable as opposed to trialling a new technology. However, by the time they have come around to the idea of change, the probability is that that new innovation is already old news. In order for digital transformation to be a success, organisations have to be willing to try something new as well as to try it quickly.

Resistance To Change

Digital transformation is only feasible if it arises from the foundation that all members who undertake the process adopt its practices consciously as well as voluntarily. To this effect, the organisation needs to ensure that resistance to change is overcome.

How?

By giving a voice to the individuals in the new digital territory. For instance: through a culture which reduces hierarchies, destroys silos, encourages collaboration and uses communication in order to find new ideas that drive innovation.

The Talent Gap

The talent gaps is the result of the need for a new organisational model. In this new model, there are no roles or areas as defined as they are now. In addition, they all share an important technological background.

The difficulty with finding pre-disposed talent, or with the skills required by the digital environment, is a common problem for many businesses. However, it is also a matter of filling new, well-defined roles, that are connected to emergent or very disruptive technologies.

Re-defining each position and adding technology-related competencies can be useful in medium-sized organisations. In larger ones, this process could start in groups with similar characteristics and different needs.

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