8 Common Challenges of Digital Transformation

Whether your company is a non-profit, small scale, or corporate, funding plays a massive role in your business operations. A deficiency in finances will significantly affect or hinder your company’s much-needed digital transformation. In conjunction with the finance crew, your strategy team will play a crucial role in devising and allocating funds for this transformation. If the current budget is insufficient, work out a plan that’s achievable within your targeted timeline or focus on increasing revenue by impacting the primary drivers. Your plan can improve your marketing strategy, sales strategy, or even focus on employee productivity and cost cutting to improve your ability to afford the digital transformation. 

Digital transformation will bring numerous changes, some of which will significantly affect the company’s structure. This change does not necessarily mean that people will lose their jobs, but that roles may need to be redefined. The quality of leadership in a team directly affects the team’s performance. Changing your department heads, redefining your employees’ roles, and amending some of your company rules can tremendously reignite your company’s performance and operations management. Similarly, if you want your company to survive and succeed, you will need to introduce necessary changes to your digital culture proactively. You will need to collaborate with other stakeholders to modify existing technologies and structures to break all success barriers. For instance, if you change your IT heads, your projects should continue seamlessly. Having a united vision with your whole team will result in satisfied customers, and consequently, positive reviews. 

Have you ever noticed how some people tend to follow a particular routine, regardless of whether they are at work or on holiday? “Why?” you wonder. It’s pretty simple: comfort. Such people end up very disoriented, and others even upset when their routines are disrupted. Whether in your personal life or business affairs, following such rigid tactics can, at times, lead to failure. You can quickly be left behind as the rest of the world takes enormous strides.

Nothing new ever came out of comfort. Necessity, however, is the mother of invention. Companies should foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation. In most cases, is much easier to retain employees than it is to find the right fit in new headcount. You'd be surprised how enthusiastic they will be to learning new skills when they know leadership is aligned and working with them to find the right fit for a future role during a restructuring. Reassure them of the need for change, the vital role they will play in the new organization, and train them on the new systems before implementation. Within no time, everyone (including your customers) will see and appreciate the difference.

Every organization, whether intentionally or not, has its practiced culture. Culture can be anything really, from simple things such as stipulated working hours and contract durations to communication channels and professional hierarchy. Digital transformations can succeed or fail almost entirely based on culture. The failed transformations are nearly always because of a lack of alignment and support from leadership. When the teams see a breakdown in culture between the leadership, it's very difficult, even for co-workers who normally work well together, to behave in a supportive manner. 

Although you will likely face resistance from some of your staff, the vast majority will be grateful for a change especially if you are addressing the root causes of their challenges and incorporating them every step of the way. Remind them to see the change as an opportunity to learn and diversify their knowledge.

Digital transformation is a continuous journey that does not belong to any particular individual. To bear fruits, all company departments will need to work together toward achieving the common goal. Your business strategies will also need to align with your IT plans - one will not do without the other. If your current systems aren’t working for you, then it might be time for a change. Invest in departmental partnerships that focus on both short-term and long-term goals especially those that fix challenges between teams that were occurring due to the previous structure.

Once the plans are established, providing training sessions to your employees is paramount in creating a reliable workforce. The ideal structure is that change is constant but manageable ensuring that no employee becomes complacent. Where your company lacks expertise, it is essential to retrain employees and potentially hire fresh minds or liaise with innovative business partners.

Data management is one of the biggest operational challenges companies are facing today. To successfully catapult your company to greater heights, you may need to properly structure and better manage your data to make use of it's insights and deploy it through various business channels. The data often needs to be cleaned or corrected, additional training and governance of new data inputs should be put in place, and dedicated team members should be assigned to ensure the outputs can be properly reported on and analyzed. With modern technology vast amounts of information about customers is available such as who visited your site, when they visited, how often they visited, what are they interacting with, among other activities. With the right integrations, data structure, and trained experts, you can transform these user signals into actionable insights to optimize your company’s marketing, sales, customer service, and operations.