If your business is still using legacy IT and manual processes, the urgency to get on board the transformation train can feel overwhelming. While digital transformations can result in fantastic outcomes, 70% of businesses said they would have seen a better return from their investment had they approached the project differently.

If you’re considering transforming your business, learning more about common project pitfalls can help you get the most from your investment in transformative technology.

Most common digital transformation mistakes

Unwieldy strategies with unrealistic timeframes and goals

It’s great to have a vision of where you want your business to be post-transformation. But it’s essential to be realistic and break the project down into small steps because you simply cannot do everything at once and do it well.

Start with an MVP (minimum viable product), test your results, record what you learned and implement that knowledge in your next mini-project. If you got positive results, do some internal PR to keep stakeholders engaged, excited, and supportive. Follow that formula, and each project will be more successful than the last.

Lack of budget and resource planning 

Trying to tackle a transformation as one large project often leads to inaccurate budgeting, skills auditing, and resource planning. As a result, businesses incur additional, unnecessary costs in the form of training, bringing in new expertise at the last minute, and avoidable delays.

Breaking the transformation down into mini-projects makes allocating a sufficient budget and understanding your skills gaps much simpler. It’s also a great idea to add buffers to the budget for each mini-project. After all, it’s better to under promise and overdeliver.

Lack of clarity and communication with employees

It is common for senior leaders to have a clear vision for digital transformation which isn’t shared or understood by the people delivering the project. This knowledge gap results in confusion and disengagement among middle managers and employees.

Bring everyone on the journey with you by clearly articulating your vision, goals, and rationale. Then, redefine your employees’ roles to help them understand what part they are playing in the bigger picture. It’s also a great idea to set SMART targets and KPIs to keep employees responsible and accountable.

Selecting the wrong partners, too many partners, or no partners at all

If you aren’t immersed in the world of technology, there’s no way you can keep up with the speed of emerging IT solutions. If you try to go it alone, you risk making bad decisions and investments.

Some organisations go down the route of hiring multiple vendors instead of one solid partner. As well as making the project even harder to control, this approach usually results in businesses being lumbered with inflexible systems that don’t integrate well and are hard to manage.

It makes perfect sense to bring a single expert on board who can get to know your business and your vision, help you make the right decisions, and deliver a transformation that serves your business today and into the future.

Unfortunately, finding a reliable IT provider is easier said than done. Therefore, some businesses fear that by selecting a single partner, they are risking ‘putting all their eggs in one basket’.

If that sounds familiar, download our helpful guide to discover what you should look for in a potential IT provider – and the questions to ask them. Fill out the form to download.