Top 5 Challenges on the Road to Digital Transformation
Over the years, the technology ecosystem has gone through many changes and has come a long way. With technologies evolving at such a rapid pace, the need to embrace digital transformation is no longer optional.
Digital Transformation, however, is not a simple concept. It involves numerous layers of technology adoption and change management. Owing to the need to adapt and move fast, companies leverage latest technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Augmentation, Machine Learning, IoT, Mobility and Cloud to build disruptive products and reinvent business models.
To be able to achieve Digital Transformation goals, enterprises have to look at an effective digital strategy and transform various business functions. Through this blog post, let’s address the top challenges that enterprises face in their Digital Transformation journey:
- Legacy Infrastructure: For the longest time, IT has only played a support role, which is why many companies still shy away from upgrading their infrastructure. Adding to this, the maintenance of IT infra needs goes up to as much as 55% of the entire IT budget. As most of the IT infrastructure is set up right at the beginning, most companies remain under-equipped to handle the emergence of latest technologies.
Moreover, with the introduction of social, mobile, analytics and Cloud, it becomes all the more difficult for businesses to cope with the legacy systems established years ago. The first and foremost step to overcome this challenge should be to invest in upgrading the infrastructure so that the system is able to effectively manage the changes required to bring in complete Digital Transformation.
- Outdated Processes: Since businesses across the world are now well connected in the digital realm, it becomes all the more challenging to follow traditional processes and operate in silos. We live in an era where there is no place for manual processes and stringent work policies any longer. Owing to the effort that goes into embracing Digital Transformation, organizations around the world have started adopting Agile working principles and building modern new-age workplace models for their employees as an important step towards adopting modern working methods.
- Traditional Company Culture: A big part of truly adopting Digital Transformation is for the company culture to also adopt the same. Digital Transformation should be deep-rooted and it should become a part of the company core values. Since traditional cultures can be slow to embrace change, the flag bearers of Digital Transformation would have to lead the change in the organization by taking steps to progress and earn a spot in the digitally transformed industry.
- Lack of Automation: A prominent characteristic of digital businesses is the elimination of redundant tasks. On embracing Digital Transformation, an enterprise adopts automation and gets rid of manual tasks which mean faster go-to-market, rapid product updates and improvements, seamless customer experience and a faster response time.
- Limited Scalability: Digital Transformation would require re-allocation of resources for tasks that were non-existent before. However, with the coming in of so many changes, your enterprise should be well equipped to scale quickly at a short notice. The inability to accommodate these changes in a short period of time can become quite a roadblock in your path to Digital Transformation.
Keeping the complexity of Digital Transformation in mind, it is essential to build a solid foundation- a technology ecosystem to effectively drive change. You may also need to assign a few flag bearers of Digital Transformation to ensure that the changes are implemented effectively across the organization and various processes. Remember, Digital Transformation is not something you do once. It is a process of constant upgrades, continuous development and improvement at regular intervals.
