Corporate digitalization - 4 mistakes you don’t have to make

Digital transformation is one of the greatest business challenges of the 21st century. For years, many Company Directors have known that some day they will deal with the issue of digital transition, yet plenty will find some explanation to justify postponing the project until later.

This is likely because it seems too much to deal with and many people aren’t aware of solutions that could help them with the process. There is also a fear that instead of boosting a company’s stability and revenues with digitalization, this change would have more of a negative effect due to possible errors.

However, changes in society and readiness to trust technology (partly due to the coronavirus) has meant that customers are willing to accept and even demand this approach from corporations. With market conditions where practically all services are available online, no company can afford to put off their digital transition without putting them at a major disadvantage against their competition.

As a society we are prepared for corporate digitalization. Despite the need for digitalized solutions, companies must still carry out digitalization in a way that would allow them to avoid great pitfalls and errors. 

The following article will present the 4 most typical mistakes that companies make in the field of corporate digitalization, so you no longer have to worry about these potential errors.

1. Treating digitalization as the end and not the means

From a business perspective, digital transformation is a desirable process as it boosts efficiency, reduces expenditure and makes the company’s internal processes smoother. Not only is digitalization desirable, it is necessary as it is forced by fierce competition in the market in order for the company in question to secure a competitive advantage over the other companies. Therefore, digitalization is not the end but rather the means to making a company better equipped to achieve its goal in a shorter period of time.

Many company directors are looking for the perfect digitalization process as a desirable outcome. Yet, it is easy to forget that digitalization is not a finite process, but rather a continuously developing field that is undergoing change itself. As a result, specialists responsible for digital transformation and company executives are not only faced with the task of defining the fields to be developed and establishing indicators to monitor growth, but also establishing a digitalization strategy that can initiate and keep the company’s never-ending digitalization on the right track.

2. Heading down the path less taken may leave you in the dark and without any points of reference

History and economic development have gone hand in hand with continuous technological renewal. The purpose of this renewal is to suitably present the values created by the company faster, with better quality and more effectively to the buyers, thus accelerating the commercial cycle.

Digitalization is “just another” milestone in this technological development, which began precisely seventy years ago with the appearance of the commercially available personal computer. As we saw countless historical examples of what happens to companies that are capable of successfully adapting to new technology and those that fail to do so, it doesn’t seem so hard to opt for introducing corporate digitalization and executing it properly.

Additionally, company directors no longer have to worry about utilizing new, revolutionary methods as there have been a number of outstanding examples of technological adaptation in the past few decades.

3. Losing sight of the transformation strategy 

Many companies make the mistake of only identifying the final stage of the journey – the perfect digital future – while ignoring the pathway to this outcome. As discussed above, there is no perfect digitalization process due to the individual, continuous renewal of the solution. Yet we must still have a transformation strategy that ensures that we are following our corporate values and satisfying our company needs while progressing along our pathway of digitalization. 

For companies that only establish a vision of the digitalized company, during the transitional period, which can sometimes take many long years, paper-based documents can disrupt normal operation as an anomaly. The reason for this is that in lack of an overall company strategy, they forget about paper-intensive departments such as HR or finance, which can pull back from the development of the company due to monotonous administrative activities. 

Furthermore, forcing an idealistic vision can lead to inflexibility, reducing the adaptability of the organization and also resulting in the appearance of informal processes. This is explained by the fact that only a transformation strategy can examine in detail which fields must be included in digitalization in order for them to comply with the demands of increased efficiency.Lack of transformation strategy for corporate digitalization solutions will not remedy the real problems and will only obfuscate or amplify them, leading to a host of new issues.

4. Failure to ask for help when lacking the necessary in-house resources of digital transformation knowledge

A good digital transformation strategy is about planning and smoothly executing the transition. However, in order to suitably carry out the plan, it’s indispensable to have partners or colleagues who have an extensive body of knowledge and experience in this field. The lack of necessary capacity or knowledge can cause major issues and disruptions in realizing the strategy, which can often evoke the greatest fears of executives in relation to digital transition.

These can be easily avoided through the choice of suitable professional partners, who can readily support and carry out the digital transformation strategy you have individually or collectively developed.

Summary

It’s safe to say that although digital transformation is something that companies must deal with in the present, it isn’t one-time event in the history of technological adaptation, it’s an ongoing process. Fortunately, we have many examples of how other companies have overcome the challenges of similar technological transformations, which provides us with a rich body of ideas.

Digital transformation is a tool that can make our company more effective and when combined with the right partners and transformation strategy, we can set out on the pathway of continuous digital optimization.