Taking The Fear Out Of Digital Transformation

Did you know that a staggering 70% of digital transformation attempts fail? This is a scary statistic, and it adds to the idea that adopting a new digital approach is risky. While many business leaders may be afraid of digital transformation, it’s critical to realise the value in it.

Many key stakeholders fail to buy into the idea of adopting new technology. With so many layers of new technologies, navigating this transformation can seem daunting.

In this guide, we will uncover some of the reasons why digital transformation is so important and how to overcome digital fears.

The Key Driving Forces Behind Digital Transformation

There are four main driving forces behind implementing digital transformation. These are:

• Redesigning existing business processes and finding ways to innovate them
• Improving customer relationships and developing closer relationships with them
• Improving existing products and services
• A willingness to take on more risk

Digital transformation allows organisations to redesign the customer experience, adapt to changing markets, and use tools and methods from data science.

Migrating business processes to the cloud also improves information access and the way businesses operate.

While these driving forces are beneficial, they’re also intimidating to any organisation that is comfortable in its existing system.

Why is Digital Transformation Important?

Here are four of the main reasons why going digital is so important in today’s world.

Improves Efficiency

With automation and cloud-based technologies, all types of businesses and industries can maximise their efficiency. You can now use technology and automation to speed up time-consuming manual tasks, such as data entry. This helps to free up more time for more important tasks.

Not only does this streamline the way businesses operate, but it can also improve accuracy. When you use technology to take care of manual tasks, you will avoid any potential human mistakes.

Reduces Costs

By enhancing productivity and cutting down the need for manual labour, digitisation can help businesses save money. With the right digital tools, data becomes easier to manage, projects can be completed faster, and certain costly processes can be automated.

Businesses can also scale far more easily with technology, cutting down the significant costs that come with growth.

Generates More Revenue

In order for businesses to access new markets and beat the competition in today’s world, they will need to have a digital advantage. So, digital transformation opens up new doors for business and revenue growth.

Improves Business Processes

Taking a technology-driven approach allows businesses to excel in new areas and improve their offering. With access to advanced data and deeper customer insights, any business can improve its operations and offering.

With technologies such as IoT, businesses can collect more relevant data to help them innovate and offer more to their clients.

Why Do We Resist Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation may form an essential part of our future, but many businesses are still holding back. Here are three major reasons why many are so resistant to embracing new technology.

New Technology is Disruptive

Implementing digital transformation always leads to disruption. While it may offer many long-term benefits, changing a business’s current processes can be scary and time-consuming. Many organisations put off digital transformation to avoid the initial disruption.

If your current system is working, digital transformation may seem unnecessary. However, it’s important to understand that your current systems may become obsolete within the next few years.

To overcome the fear of disruption, you could also choose to partner with the right provider, a company with vast industry specific knowledge and a successful history of helping companies like yours to manage changes within their organisation, throughout the implementation stage and beyond.

It May Seem Unnecessary

How do we know that digital transformation is really worth it? If a business’s systems work right now, why won’t they continue to work in the future? Many might question whether going digital is truly worth it.

While there’s no definitive answer, just look at the rapid pace of digital development over the last 10 years. Do you want to risk your business falling behind in the future?

Previous Failures

If you’ve tried digital transformation before and failed, then it may be off-putting. Understand that there are many ways to digitise your operation and that taking a different approach, could result in a vastly different outcome. Learn from your failure and take the risk again with a more informed approach and you will reap the benefits.

Conclusion

Organisations need to remove the fear factor from digital transformation if they want to keep up with the direction the world is moving. We shouldn’t see technology as a source of fear, but rather embrace its many obvious benefits.

By implementing technology in a steady, agile manner, businesses can reap the benefits of digital transformation without facing too much disruption.