5 mistakes to avoid on your Digital Transformation journey

While many businesses begin to plan their digital transformation journeys, several common mistakes are made along the way. We discuss the key errors and miscalculations that can often happen and how they can affect the success of your journey.

1. Thinking the process will be quick

Transformation projects are successful when they’re carefully planned out and the strategy aligns with your business goals. Once a plan is set, it should be a fairly quick process, right?

Not quite so, according to our Head of Professional Services, Erika Wilkins. “Many IT leaders fail to understand the full scope, impact and timescales of what’s needed to deliver a successful project”. To be successful and see positive results, it shouldn’t be rushed, and patience is needed.

Don’t forget that security should be one of your main concerns, after all you don’t want speed to come at the expense of your cloud security. This type of project requires strategic planning, so rushing this will only cause issues, and you might even end up wasting your cloud spend to. Gartner estimates that 70% of cloud spend is wasted. That’s why working with a strategic cloud partner is recommended to help achieve a suitable pricing model for your business and help optimise costs along the way.

To avoid rushing your project, work with your partner to set interim goals rather than a specific deadline which might not be met to steer clear of risks during the process.

It’s also important that you assign the required internal resources to the partner you’re working with for a smooth process. This will ensure both parties are correctly aligned, and your business has visibility into what will be going on in your environment.

2. Burdening your IT team

Digital transformations aren’t a walk in the park. They take time, skills, expertise and a strategic roadmap for a successful implementation. Many businesses attempt to do this in-house and assume that their internal IT team can oversee the project.

Not only will this add to their workload, but it’s also going to be challenging when they don’t have the skills to execute the project. If you’re thinking about hiring someone with skills, more than a 1/3 of CIO’s find it difficult to find talent with skills in all the areas needed to carry out a successful digital transformation journey.

That’s why many businesses are turning to technology partners which provide instant access to experts in cloud, infrastructure and security. They have a wealth of experience and skillsets you won’t find internally. Your best option is finding a partner that can work with you to plan out your project according to your needs and requirements. This way you’re in trusted hands, and you’ll receive expert advice.

3. Lack of leadership involvement

Large projects take much more than your IT team, it’s a strategy that should involve the wider business, and that means getting leadership from various departments onboard to help lead the vision.

Each department's requirements are different, so they should be given a chance to voice their concerns and needs. Gartner found that digital transformation projects and processes move twice as fast when senior leaders and the business as a whole share common ground.

Once the appropriate leaders are involved, they’ll be able to tell you exactly what your employees need to improve their productivity. Communication is key, so it’s crucial for project leaders to be completely transparent and provide regular updates. This ensures that the wider business is up to speed and know exactly what’s going in the business and how far the project has come along. This way, employees feel positive about the incoming changes.

4. Neglecting clients

Don’t forget to take into account that your project can affect your customer service to your clients. Work with your partner to discover what potential issues you’re going to run into and if that’s going to result in downtime. What happens in your environment can have a direct impact to your clients.

But that’s not all, think of the bigger picture. It’s not always about technology and customer demands are constantly changing, so when planning your project it’s important to take client opinions into consideration. Think about the issues of the past, how did these issues affect your processes? What do your customers need and what new processes will improve your customer service?

5. Overlooking employee training

Keep in mind that your workforce is part of this initiative. Implementing new technologies is great, but it’s not going to be useful if the appropriate employees don’t know to operate it. Take time to plan out scheduled training to familiarise your employees with any new technologies and systems.

If you’re looking for a trusted partner for your digital transformation project, or looking for advice and more information, get in touch with our cloud experts today.