Reasons why Digital Transformations fail and how AI-Powered Chatbots with Automated Workflows can help
Digital Workers to the rescue
Chances are, you have found yourself on this blog because you’re a Business Owner, a CIO, or an IT Manager, who’s looking toward digital transformation to stay relevant with changing times. Can’t blame you though.
According to this survey, market pressures are the leading drivers of digital transformation as most efforts are spurred by growth opportunities (51%) and increased competitive pressure (41%). With high-profile data breach scandals making daily headlines, new regulatory standards like GDPR are also providing the impetus for organizations to transform (38%).
So, yeah, I get how you must feel.
Hearing the buzzword “Digital Transformation” that businesses nowadays use might make any Business Owner, CIO or an IT Manager anxious and feel pressurized, thinking about the time and effort it takes for proper implementation as well as the budget constraints.
No worries though. Once you clearly understand what digital transformation is, why it fails for some companies, the challenges involved, and how to strategically go about it, digital transformation becomes a piece of cake for you.
So without further ado, let’s get started by seeing what digital transformation really means at an organizational level.
What is Digital Transformation?
According to The Enterprisers Project, Digital Transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. It’s also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, and get comfortable with failure.
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s move on to the reasons why some companies might fail at digital transformation.
Reasons Why Digital Transformations Fail
As humans, we like our routines, whether they are boring or not. So our first response to any kind of change will be, well, a straight-up “NO!” I’m no exception, to be honest. But we all know that change is the one thing that’s constant in this world and embracing change will help us in the long run. Evolution teaches us this. The animals that were able to adapt and overcome environmental factors are the ones we see today. I’m talking about us humans as well. We were able to beat evolution at its own game, so I’m sure we can go head-to-head with digital transformation as well.
Here are some of the reasons companies might fail at Digital Transformation so you can prepare yourself better before you actually go and do it. Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome, my friend.
1. When people aren’t on the same page, they aren’t on the same page
You might’ve heard that changes in an organization should always start from the top level. That’s because when the management is on the same page, it becomes easier to get other employees on the same page. For this, the management should and must agree on a digitalization goal that would open up a sea of opportunities for the organization to streamline existing business processes — be it internal IT support or HR support offered to employees.
After the top-level zeroes-out on a digitalization goal, the next step would be to strategize on how to introduce changes that’ll accomplish the goal without any hiccups.
2. Unrealistic estimation of available technology
It is tempting to get excited while approaching new ideas. And digital transformation is no exception. Companies tend to get carried away while strategizing, thinking that they just need to curate the current technologies in their company for their digitalization efforts. But sadly, that’s not the case most of the time.
Not analyzing the capabilities available at a company’s disposal to support scaling digitalization efforts leads to the failure of the pilot. Yep. You heard that right.
The remedy? Well, I would suggest you look outside your company, probably toward B2B companies that offer a no-code platform or tools that’ll transform the way your business operates and keeps you ahead of your competitors, to say the least.
There are more reasons to ponder over to know what should be done right to achieve digitalization goals. But they aren’t as much important as the above two reasons are, which, once you get a grip over, enables you to go about digital transformation in the right way.
To help you be more prepared before you actually start with the digitalization efforts at your company, let’s take a look at some of the challenges you might face during the initial pilot.
Challenges you might face during the Digital Transformation journey
1. Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor
Having the right technology is great and all. But having people who know what exactly should be done with the technology becomes ever more vital for organizational initiatives to thrive. And digital transformation is no exception to this.
Businesses should be ready to hire skilled talents who can lead the digitalization efforts internally across verticals or upskill existing employees to be digitally literate. It can also be beneficial for companies to have business partners who take care of digital transformation internally for them.
2. Lack of Overall Change Management Strategy
Change Management is crucial for a business. Therefore it is incumbent on a business to properly go about Change Management with the right Change Manager at the helm backed up by the Change Advisory Board (CAB).
Proper Change Management Strategy by the Change Manager is essential to introduce changes at an organizational level without eating up available resources, time, or budget.
3. Proper calculation of time frame for Digitalization Initiatives
No one can really come up with the timescale for digitalization initiatives. Literally no one. Because, as you would know, digitalization is an ongoing thing that companies will have to implement and continuously improve upon, to keep up with today’s constantly changing digital scenario.
According to Mckinsey’s roadmap for digital transformation, it may take five years for companies that may have outdated internal processes to overhaul and streamline processes with digitalization.
So coming up with a realistic time frame when strategizing digitalization is imperative to let employees know how long it’ll actually take to realize the digital transformation goals. This gives those involved in digitalization to relentlessly put in the effort and work towards the goal without getting frustrated.
4. Putting a leash on budgets
According to IDC, digital transformation spending will grow to more than 53% of all information and communications technology (ICT) investment by 2023, up from 36% today.
So when plenty of cash is flowing into digital initiatives at large, it is natural for CIOs to expect a substantial Return On Digital Investment (RODI). But more often than not, the results tend to be quite disappointing for CIOs. The primary reason: unsuccessful efforts to scale digital innovations beyond early pilot work.
Because of the mediocre RODI, CIOs tend to put a restrain on the cash flow that’s going into digitalization instead of tracking the efforts taken for digital transformation and removing hinders then and there.
5. Nope, Never
You may have already heard this. Employees refusing digitalization efforts that include automating tasks with Conversational AI that might be repetitive and dull and causes attrition. That’s because employees are afraid that AI and Automation will replace them at their current jobs.
The solution to this is obvious. CIOs and IT Managers should come up with ways in which they can educate the employees about the different technologies that’ll be incorporated into their digitalization strategy and how these technologies will prove to be a companion to employees helping them with mundane tasks so that employees can upskill themselves by tacking complex tasks at hand.
Hmm… that’s about it when it comes to challenges that you might come face-to-face while starting out with digital transformations inside your company.
Now that we’ve seen about the challenges, let’s see where you can start with your digitalization efforts and how it impacts the workplace for your employees at scale.
Where and how to start with digital transformation
Most businesses concentrate on customer experience and how they can streamline processes to meet customer needs better. But what they forget is that just as customer experience is important for a business to meet its revenue goals, employee experience at the workplace is equally important. Satisfied employees turn into your brand ambassadors who truly make the customer experience better.
So not to beat around the bush, here are the two low-hanging fruits where you can start your digitalization efforts.
1. Employee Experience (EX)
Workplace IT support or Employee IT support can be the first place you look at to improve employee experience with digitalization.
Automating banal, repetitive tasks like password reset, account unlocks, etc., and quickly delivering the automated solution via AI-powered conversational digital assistants on communication channels like Slack or Microsoft Teams helps employees to self-serve and resolve their IT issues themselves, on-the-go.
Automating IT support workflows leaves room for internal service desk agents to focus on taking up complex, high-value problems that truly need a human touch. That’s what service desk agents also want ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Because, according to Gallup, 60% of employees say “the ability to do what they do best” in a role is “very important” to them. What more can an employee ask for, right?
2. HR Experience
The work of an HR is no joke. Constant screening of candidates, taking care of onboarding/offboarding processes for employees, addressing employee grievances,… phew, what a work that must be.
The least you can do for your HR is to automate some of the repetitive HR processes like onboarding/offboarding employees so that they can take care of these through AI-powered chatbots on communication hubs like Slack or Microsoft Teams. This helps HRs to focus on taking care of employee grievances that truly require
Enter Digital Workers.
Think of digital workers like intelligent chatbot who can deliver resolutions to common workplace IT issues like password resets, account unlocks, etc., through conversational AI and automated workflows on a chat hub like Slack or Microsoft Teams. These digital workers can be highly domain-specific like IT chatbots or HR chatbots.
Digital Transformation in a company almost always starts with integrating digital workers with business processes, turbo-charging the processes with Artificial Intelligence and Automation that digital workers incorporate.
There are world-class platforms out there to build domain-specific digital workers but the question comes down to whether they offer world-class solutions or not. It is important to properly analyze business needs and choose a platform based on those needs instead of going full-on out for the platform with the most features.
Here are some aspects that you should consider before going for a digital worker/chatbot-building platform with AI and Automation.
1. A no-code platform with Intuitive UI
Empowering frontline workers like service desk or help desk agents to create and deploy digital workers that perform certain tasks for them should be your main goal while opting for digital transformation. That’s because service desk agents very well know what the common IT issues that employees call them for and how employees want those issues sorted out for them.
For internal IT agents to create digital workers that deliver automated resolutions to employees at scale on their favorite communication hubs like Slack or Microsoft Teams, the digital worker/chatbot-building platform should require no coding from the agents’ side and one-click integration with chat platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams. Because service desk agents may not be experts at coding languages, unlike developers.
2. Not only Automated Workflows, but Conversational AI as well.
Not only automating workflows, but the platform for building digital workers should have incorporated AI-powered conversation flow designers as well. Sadly, nowadays in the market, a chatbot-building platform either has a builder for setting up automations or it may have only a designer for conversational flows and not both.
3. Feature-rich User Insights
Knowing what employees want empowers CIOs and IT Managers to better streamline IT processes for them by setting up digital workers that talk to them in a way they would appreciate and resolve IT issues for them in an instant, real-time, with the power of AI and Automation. For this, it is essential that the platform incorporates an Analytics and Logs feature that’ll chew-down all the historical data from the digital workers’ conversations with different employees and show you easily understandable, actionable insights.
4. Takes care of itself
Over a period of time, the platform should train digital workers based on the digital workers’ previous conversations with different employees to better recognize employee intent and to extract required data from an employees’ query using Natural Language Understanding.
5. Gentle on your budget
There are many Platform-As-A-Service offerings out there in the market today, but a platform that takes care of all your business’ digitalization needs without requiring a huge budget for it is crucial for better RODI. Maybe a platform that offers monthly/annual subscription plans for the only the features that you’ll ever need, like a pay as you go platform.
And that wraps up our discussion on what digital transformation is, why it fails for some companies, the challenges involved, and how to strategically go about it, so you can handle digitalization with ease.
To top it off with a famous quote we are all familiar with,
“It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives, but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”
— Leon C. Megginson, 1963.
Yeah, you read that right. It was in a speech by Louisiana State University business professor named Leon C. Megginson at the convention of the Southwestern Social Science Association. Not Charles Darwin.
Now that you know how to go about digital transformation, I would recommend that you check out this blog on how to transform your Slack channel into an AI-driven digital help desk for your employees. If you are a Microsoft Teams user, check out this blog. Or, if you’re confused as to whether to go with Slack or Microsoft Teams as your business’ primary communication hub, then check out this blog.
