Overcoming the Challenges of Digital Transformation3 min read

Your company can benefit from a successful Digital Transformation in time. Perks can include global market share, increased revenue, improved customer engagement and better use of your staff’s time. But success doesn’t always come easily, and digital transformation begins with its own set of challenges which we are going to this look at navigating here.

Our experts have put together the list of common challenges businesses face in their digital transformation process. Creating successful strategies for digital transformation is not a straight forward task since industry trends, technology, and business requirements are changing at an ever-increasing pace. That means you need to adapt and review strategies to hit your targets consistently.

Top Digital Transformation Challenges for Enterprises

Digital Transformation is about progressing a business to the next level through the digitisation of business elements – or the ‘pillars of digital’ (strategy, systems, people, marketing, brand, and data)

One of the main challenge businesses face in digital evolution is having a clear plan, with leadership buy-in and the right people to carry it out. But it doesn’t stop there.

A successful digital transformation requires everyone to be on board. Not only your leadership and senior management teams, but employees, and each stakeholder who is directly and indirectly associated with the brand should be considered – in short; it’s essential to keep everyone in mind while making your digital transformation blueprint. The utmost care and diligence is key to a smooth digital transformation of any company.

A Lack of Understanding of Digital Culture can de-rail efforts

It has been seen that many companies fail miserably to make employees feel comfortable with their vision for digital transformation. Helping everyone understand its importance and how they can grow, both personally and professionally will keep things pointed in the right direction. By introducing your employees to a nurturing and positive digital culture even before planning for change via digital transformation will help.

Here are some things you might try:

• Start small, and up-skill everyone to encourage unified growth and progressive digital culture in your business.
• Assess the digital literacy of your team to find your digital leaders internally, and provide additional support programs to everyone.
• Don’t rush, starting small is the key. Change takes time, and effective digital transformations generally account for 10-15% of change per year. Give everyone (your leadership team, managers, staff, and your customers) enough time to adjust and transform your business for the future.

Poor Leadership Buy-in and Low Definition

One of the significant challenges and the most common reason to fail in digital transformation is poor strategies, vague scope, as well as no proper implementation by the company. Change starts at the top, and when a leadership team doesn’t buy-in and take the reigns for change, your chance of success is diminished.

CEO’s need to understand:

• Different business requires a different methodology. What works for one company, won’t necessarily work for another, so it’s often best to bring in an expert team to help guide you. Digital transformation strategies vary from business to business and industry to industry.
• Security cannot be overlooked, cyber-crime is rapidly evolving, and security of your business’s data is a primary concern in today’s world, as indicated by leading research firms Forrester and Gartner.
• The need for a precise and proper initiative towards measurable output is critical, and sadly many C-level executives fail to lead the charge.

If your transformation leadership team has a solid understanding of these requirements, the better chance of success you’ll have, so your CEO and the top-level team must drive a clear strategic plan which should plan and continuously check and measure your digital transformation.

Insufficient Resources and Poor Resource Management

A lack of resources and resource management can be dire to successful change. So always prepare a careful strategy and road-map according to the resources available to you. Before, during and after starting your digital transformation process, it’s essential to maintain a realistic, up to date plan which takes into account resources available at each phase of your journey.

Talk to the experts at Liquid Digital before you start your business evolution and let them help make successful change a reality for you.