Digital Transformation: 3 Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Nearly 75% of technology implementation projects fail to achieve the objectives expected by the organizations that deploy them. This is a huge number.

However, we can learn from all these failures to avoid the most common mistakes made by organizations that often spend astronomical amounts of money to implement technologies that should contribute to improving their performance.

Let’s explore the three main errors in digital transformation and how to avoid them.

MISTAKE  #1 : Adopting tools for decision-makers rather than users

The initiative for a computerization, automation or technology project usually comes from senior management. Since everyone does their best based on what they know, executives tend to approach these projects according to their own reality and areas of expertise, rather than the needs of end users, such as operations teams.

The risk: technological demobilization of front-line actors

Enthusiasm tends to wane and a certain reluctance sets in when employees are subjected to severalimplementations of technologies that have turned out to be more of an additional task thantools to help them achieve their goals.

This is how the flavor-of-the- month vicious cycle is likely to start.

Solution: adopt tools that meet the needs of all areas involved

Considering the “User Journey” in your digital transformation ensures that the real needs of all end users of the technology are taken into account, and not just the needs of the decision-makers who launch the process with their own reality in mind.

So, in the case of a Daily Management ecoSystem like UTrakk, you need to ask yourself how it will be used at the point of execution by front-line managers like supervisors, then by team leaders and operations managers, etc.

Some questions to guide you:

• Who will use it? 
• How will they use it?
• In what kind of situations will they use it?
• What value does the tool bring them?
• What constraints does the tool create for them?
• Etc.

MISTAKE #2 : Thinking about buying digitalized best practices rather than digitalizing proven best practices

Too often, when adopting a technology, organizations choose a digitalized best practice and then try to mold their way of doing business to it. When organizations change to incorporate generic models and ways of doing things that are not natural to them, they often find themselves sacrificing their own best practices and proven processes that have developed over time.

The risk: rejection of the technology and/or increased operating costs

If the chosen technology does not quite match the organization’s reality and winning methods, users will probaly just reject it. Operating costs can also turn out to be greater than expected if the technology requires the collection and entry of data that was not previously necessary, or if a tool only generates profitability at a higher volume than the organization can handle for example.

Moreover, the organization could lose part of its DNA, or even a differentiating value compared to its competitors.

Solution: choose flexible technology tools

It may be a wise choice to bing in experts to accompany your technological choices and avoid losing one of the organization’s differentiating values. Choose solutions that have a culture of agility and can easily adapt to the organization’s own best practices.

Rather than imposing a way of doing things, flexible technology provides a framework within which users can work in the way that is most natural to their reality.

For example, a tool like UTrakk offers overall management guidelines, but provides the flexibility to allow the organization to decide how the tool will be used according to its organizational culture and best practices.