How CIOs Can Overcome Fears of Digital Transformation
What determines whether a digital transformation initiative succeeds or fails isn’t a mystery. These five tips will help guide you in that effort.
It’s a steamy 92 degrees in Austin, Texas, as I write this. The only thing more predictable than another really hot summer in central Texas is that digital transformation is coming to your organization.
Digital transformation (DX) is so hot that more than eight in 10 respondents to a McKinsey survey say their organizations have undertaken it in the past five years.
However, DX’s path to success in many companies hasn’t been a sure bet. According to the same McKinsey study, only 16% report that these efforts have been successful, and 7% say that while performance improved, it wasn’t sustained.
Chief information officers and other C-suite executives can’t simply ignore the DX imperative. Not at a time when innovative use of digital technologies like social media, analytics, mobility, artificial intelligence, and automation are spelling the difference between winners and losers across every industry.
Digital readiness -- the ability to transform operations and infrastructure to serve customers better, gain efficiencies, and compete with scrappy new digital-native players -- was the No. 1 concern in a recent survey of 825 board members and executives globally by North Carolina State University and consulting firm Protiviti.
Digital transformation is a uniquely vast and complex challenge, and it’s no wonder CIOs and other C-suite executives are losing sleep over it. However, they can take comfort knowing that what determines whether a DX initiative succeeds or fails isn’t a mystery. In fact, it often comes down to five common factors:
1. Make DX not just an important priority but an urgent one.
It may seem obvious that companies should tackle digital transformation with the utmost urgency, but the daily fire drills that hit every business -- like an IT outage -- can easily take precedence.
This is understandable, but organizations must approach DX as if their lives depended on it -- because they do. They need to recognize that DX is a long game and never let shorter-term issues distract them. The next four points can help cement that philosophy within the organization.
2.