You & Digital Transformation: How to overcome 3 common challenges

More than 60% of transformations fail, but why should this be a con-cern for CIOs? The fact is major tech-nology projects are often transforma-tion projects. These projects signifi-cantly change the way organizations conduct their business and how work gets done. They therefore have a huge impact on most of the employ-ees in the company.

When these projects fail, the CIOs are often blamed for the failure.1

Q. Why do so many transformations fail?

A. 72% of transformation programs fail to deliver their actual targets due to organizational issues.2

Whoa, after reading that, is it any wonder that senior executives are not satisfied with the results of their transformation programs?

Picture this – we’re going to take a trip.

You, me, and some close friends. We’ll take a sailboat from Barcelona to Rome…

Challenge #1 How do you prepare?70% (of executives surveyed) express dissatisfaction with the communica-tion of objectives to employees, and 75% express dissatisfaction with training, commitment and people management.3

To get ready for our sailing adventure, we’ll make a list of what we’ll need. Gear, food, maps, tools … we’ve got it all.

You’re the captain of this ship. So, before we start sailing, how will you motivate the crew?

Well Captain, you once told me that resistance comes from unclear expectations from stakeholders.

What if you were able to show people the positive impacts that a transfor-mation project will have on their jobs? Would this help to avoid resistance to change?

People, processes, infrastructure, money, technology, etc. … being able to tie them all together, and aligning them with objectives of the transfor-mation program, can seem daunting.

What if you could do it? … consist-ently.

Let’s give all people involved in the transformation the right combination of blueprints, scenarios, roadmaps, action plans, and dashboards tailored to their needs. This will allow them to work towards the same objectives and contribute in the most effective manner based on their specific roles and responsibilities.

With that, management is now able to create visibility and impact anal-ysis to communicate the right mes-sage to the right people. Picture an environment where you can test sce-narios to understand which parts of the organization are impacted, and to what degree they are impacted, while achieving corporate goals.

Challenge #2 How do you kick off a transformation project?If we’re committed to taking the com-pany digital, what are our anticipated obstacles?

– Incomplete information to make fact-based decisions and under-stand the impact of change

– Difficulties measuring impacts and managing risks

– Failure to prioritize the factors that need to be transformed for our move to digital to be successful

We’re ready to set sail. The crew understands their roles and we’re fully utilizing our resources to make this an enjoyable journey.

Umm, are those storm clouds ahead? I assume we checked the weather before we left port? What do you mean it changed? Are we heading into a hurricane? How can we get around it? I hope someone knows the answers to these questions.

What if you could visualize and simu-late the impact of change before you kick off your transformation?

You & Digital Transformation: How to overcome 3 common challenges

© MEGA - November 2013 – Illustrations © Anton Novikov – Photo © Jan Schuler

bring more value to this trip. We’re going to task you, the CIO, with mak-ing that happen. With your resources committed to maintenance and repairs, how are you supposed to deliver that next level of value to our group?

Some of the things the CEO and CFO are expecting are:

– Grow the business more quickly – Reduce operational costs – Attract and retain new customers – Improve efficiencies

Taking the company digital can achieve all of those things. Let’s fig-ure out how to deliver those specific results. Of course we’ll want to man-age IT complexity, as well as align IT and business operations with corpo-rate strategy. We’ll have to simultane-ously do all of that while taking into consideration external factors and the changing market landscape.

This will allow us to monetize more opportunities and simultaneously improve efficiencies within the organization.

Sources1 http://www.cio.com.au/article/427861/transformation_success/

2 McKinsey & Company study “Beyond Performance” and Deloitte Global Survey 2008.: http://www.valueteam.biz/why-72-percent-of-all-business-transformation-projects-fail/

3 Capgemini Consulting in partnership with the Economist Intelligence Unit white paper “Trends in business Transformation” http://www.reply-mc.com/2010/09/19/why-70-of-changes-fail-by-rick-maurer

4 Cameron, Bobby, and Chip Gliedman. Sustaining Business Innovation In An Empowered BT World. Boston: Forrester Re-search, Inc., 3 May 2012. PDF.

5 Murphy, Phil. “Phil Murphy’s Blog.” As Application Rationalization Grows Hotter In 2011. Forrester Research, Inc., 15 Dec. 2010. Web. 17 Sept. 2013.

A successful journey…Ahhh, we’ve arrived safely at port.

What are the lessons we’ve learned during our trip?

When we’re engaged in change, we have less control due to the speed of change, increased complexity, and globalization. We should be able to incorporate agility in our day-to-day operations. How do we do that if we don’t have a dashboard and GPS that navigates us through storms and future adventures time and time again? These transformation tools will help you to be better prepared to kick off your journey, and will help you navigate through unexpected issues with the least amount of risk possible.

Just like in sailing, it’s important to prepare, but we’ll need to manage change and obstacles that were not predicted while simultaneously con-tinuing to move forward.

(Whew. Is it just me, or did this trip sound a lot like being back at work?)

Are you ready to take your next trip with us? We can introduce you to a few Transformers who will be happy to make it a success.

Let’s talk about “proactive visibil-ity”. If you have scenarios planned out, you can track progress and avoid risks throughout the entire transfor-mation process. This allows you to adapt the strategy of your transfor-mation before you put it in place.

Now you can see that the impact of your transformation efforts is starting to generate the results you’re looking for.

Challenge #3 How do you manage change while in motion? – 79% of business decision mak-

ers see technology as a source of business innovation4

– Ongoing operations and mainte-nance costs consume 65% of IT budgets on average - with some firms admitting that costs exceed the 90th percentile.5

Whew, excellent work navigating us through that storm, Captain!

The rest of us are still looking for something new and exciting to do to