11 Critical Barriers to Digital Success in 2024—and How to Beat Them

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In an era marked by rapid technological advancement, digital transformation has become a key strategic priority for businesses.?

As organizations strive to adapt and thrive in this digital age, they’ll likely encounter various challenges that must be navigated effectively.?

Digital transformation is not simply about integrating new technologies into an organization’s operations— it requires a holistic shift in how a business operates, engages with customers, and delivers value.?

This comprehensive transformation affects all facets of an organization, from its business model to its culture, and requires significant change management .

Change management is a crucial component of a successful digital transformation. It involves preparing, supporting, and helping individuals and teams within an organization to adopt and adapt to changes. It’s a complex task often met with resistance, misunderstanding, and fear.?

With digital transformation, the scale of change is often large and fast-paced, making change management even more challenging and important.

Faced with these complexities, a clear understanding of the potential challenges can help organizations pave a more efficient and successful path toward digital transformation. The journey may be difficult, but with strategic planning, effective change management, and a robust understanding of the challenges, businesses can position themselves for long-term success in the digital era.

Why Is Digital Transformation Difficult?

Digital transformation involves not only adopting new software, technologies, and processes that are more efficient and automated than traditional business practices and processes but also an entirely new, innovative way of doing something that is core to your business.

That means organizations must consider everything when taking on a digital transformation initiative– from how people will react to the change, how it will impact customer relations, the cost, how it will align with business goals, etc.?

Digital transformations empower organizations to take their business into the future, position companies to withstand competition, and grow into new areas.

Digital Transformation Challenges to Overcome

While digital transformation presents unique opportunities for organizations to innovate and grow, it also forces critical thinking and potentially reimagining aspects that are core to your business.

Regardless of the industry, you’re going to encounter challenges. Here are the most important challenges to consider when undertaking digital transformation projects in 2024:

1. Lack of change management strategy

Organizations with a thorough change management strategy are six times more likely to meet or exceed digital transformation objectives.?

Having a solid change management culture is crucial for any organization’s success— a lack of a change strategy sets any new project or implementation plan up for failure.

An effective change management strategy involves planning a project by identifying the root causes of issues– and building relationships with all stakeholders and employees.?

2. Driving adoption of new tools and processes

New processes and technologies often present challenges in the form of resistance to change from tenured employees who feel there is nothing wrong with their current methods.?

For new software implementations , organizations must provide comprehensive onboarding training and continuous employee performance support to help employees become productive and proficient with a tool quickly, allowing them to understand the value of these new processes.

3. Lack of a digital transformation strategy

Why are you replacing legacy systems and manual processes with new digital systems? Does your organization have a plan (or need) to implement advanced and complex systems? Are you ready to properly migrate your existing systems into new ones?

These questions should be answered before implementing a digital transformation process.?

There is no such thing as a successful transformation project without a predetermined strategy. Don’t be sold on false assumptions and buzzwords—choose from the variety of digital transformation models available, based on where your organization can improve, and what areas of the company need an upgrade.

4. Lack of proper IT skills

To succeed in your transformation efforts, you’ll need a skilled, high-performing IT team. But that is difficult to put together, especially given the current tech worker shortage.?

According to an enterprise study, 54% of organizations said they’re not able to accomplish their digital transformation goals because of a lack of technically-skilled employees.

The challenges presented to organizations include a lack of skill sets in cybersecurity, application architecture, software integrations, data analytics, and data migration. Organizations that lack IT professionals can combat this challenge by outsourcing this work to outside consultants and digital transformation experts to help bridge the implementation and migration gap.

But for organizations taking digital transformation seriously, creating an in-house team or having a digital transformation leader within your organization’s IT team who can create and manage your IT strategic planning is a must.

5. Siloed organizational structure

In many organizations, departments or teams may operate in isolation, leading to poor collaboration and communication, inefficient resource allocation, duplicate efforts, and fragmented approaches that undermine the success of digital transformation initiatives. Poor organizational structure and the lack of interaction between teams can hinder the flow of ideas and innovation, while disjointed data may negatively affect decision-making.?

Tips for Overcoming Digital Transformation Challenges

Here are some helpful strategies enterprises can implement to overcome the challenges of digital transformation and reach their potential with the empowerment of new digital systems and technologies.

1. Invest in a digital adoption platform

A new digital application or process will not automatically be more effective – you’ll need to provide proper onboarding, training, and support to your employees or end-users to empower them to use these systems better. Invest in a digital adoption platform (DAP) to ensure your digital transformation project’s success.

DAPs provide organizations with no-code tools to create in-app content to provide a contextual onboarding experience and ongoing performance support.

With a DAP, create in-app guidance, contextual learning, and on-demand self-help with a no-code editor, that guides employees and other end-users through digital tools, tasks, and workflows.?

With a DAP, you can create:

• Interactive walkthroughs and user flows that take new users on a step-by-step tutorial of how to use different features
• Product tours , task lists, and onboarding experiences that include popup windows highlight different areas of a product and overlap task lists on a user’s screen that must be completed.
• Hotspots , tooltips , and field validation highlight important areas of an application that may not be used often, such as core features.
• Embedded, searchable self-help knowledge bases that include a searchable repository of FAQs on the platform, and allow companies to include links to other performance support resources in their Sharepoint, Google Drive, internal wiki, or anywhere on the web.

The best digital adoption platforms also offer features that allow end-users to provide feedback on the training and support content, right when they’re using it.?

They also provide detailed analytics on what features are being used, what flows are the most successful, areas of your new digital tools that need to be explained further, the overall product adoption level within your organization, and more.

2. Create a change leadership team

Look at your current workforce and identify influential, innovative, and trustworthy individuals. Bring together a cross-functional team consisting of these high performers to create a change leadership team. This team will help create a vision for your digital transformation process that aligns with business goals and is created by those connected to your organization's inner workings.

This allows organizations to take a proactive approach to digital transformation initiatives focusing on the people aspect of change that ultimately accelerate digital transformation .

3. Hire a digital transformation consultant

Not every change is an extensive digital transformation project.?

Digital transformation is a wholesale realignment of core processes, tools, and experiences. Most organizations have never gone through an entire transformation process and lack internal change agents , which challenges and intimidates organizations.

Hiring a digital transformation consulting company will provide you with the comfort of professionals who have done this before and know what they’re doing. They’ll provide you with a framework and foundation for finding success, with a track record to back this up.

4. Align business goals with digital transformation strategy

At the end of the day, your transformation process should align directly with your core business goals. It should empower employees to be better at their job functions, overcome customer experience challenges with more intuitive systems that solve customer problems, and drive more revenue for our organization.

As yourself- what are the reasons for your organization’s digital transformation? This should be front-and-center of everything you’re working toward when implementing new processes.

Understand your customers’ needs, pain points, and friction areas in your offerings, products, and services. Analyze your current processes to identify outdated systems that need infrastructure improvement.

5. Monitor and adapt continuously

As digital transformation is an ongoing process, it’s crucial to establish a system for continuous monitoring, measurement, and evaluation of the initiatives.?

Establishing a system for continuous monitoring, measurement, and evaluation empowers organizations to identify areas that need improvement and make adjustments in real time. This proactive approach ensures that digital initiatives remain aligned with business goals, resources are allocated effectively, and potential issues are addressed before they escalate.?

To help you align your systems with business goals, consider implementing a quality management system (QMS) .

Ultimately, continuous monitoring and adaptation lead to a more successful and sustainable digital transformation journey, helping organizations stay competitive in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Continue reading about how to overcome common digital transformation challenges here .?

?? Digital transformation clicks with Whatfix

Whatfix streamlines the build vs. buy decision in user onboarding, offering a no-code platform that crafts personalized in-app guidance and support. It’s an ideal solution for businesses exploring efficient ways to onboard users without the heavy lifting of developing custom software. With Whatfix, create dynamic flows, pop-ups, and task lists for an engaging onboarding experience directly within your apps.

Leveraging Whatfix’s analytics, pinpoint workflow inefficiencies and user engagement blocks to optimize onboarding paths and improve user experiences. The platform’s capability to gather real-time feedback through in-app Surveys further refines your strategy, making Whatfix a compelling choice for businesses seeking a balance between customization and convenience in user onboarding.

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