Digital Transformation Challenges Organizations Need To Overcome

In recent years, Digital Transformation has become a strategic priority for organizations. Significant investment has been made across many companies to create strategic and organizational capabilities that enable them to compete in the contemporary digital arena. However, it is not trivial; organizations face numerous challenges in their digital transformation journey. There is no panacea, and the combination of tool and process choices can make or break an operation. In particular, we'll discuss the following challenges that many organisation's face when navigating digital transformation:

Ineffective use of Data

Rigid Development Processes

Forgetting the People Impact

Risk Aversion

DreamFactory: The Best Tooling For Simplifying Digital Transformation Challenges

Ineffective use of Data

The value of data cannot be maximised without a strategy for harnessing it. If organizations want to avoid drowning in data, they need to develop a smart strategy that focuses on the data they need to achieve their goals. The data harnessed must address a specific business need, help the organization reach its strategic goals, and generate real value and ROI. The relationship and attitude towards data must change - acknowledging data as a precious corporate asset rather than a cog in the machine, ensuring data resources can be used, shared, and moved quickly and efficiently. This critical asset enables processing and decision-making. A robust strategy ensures that data is managed and used as an asset.

Rigid Development Processes

Slow development flows cripple software houses. Several factors, including poor communication, lack of cohesion, inflexible technology stacks, and slow-release cycles, cause these bottlenecks and only add to the digital transformation challenges experienced by an organisation. Adopting a DevOps approach can remedy this. In a DevOps environment, the entire team is responsible for delivering both new features and stability. The traditional process of developers firing code over the wall to operations is not compatible in highly collaborative environments. In a DevOps culture, responsibilities are equally balanced, with procedures to ensure both teams have insight and visibility into application performance; this culture results in faster iteration processes, which inherently eliminate inefficiencies by the power of sheer volume. There is no hiding.

Forgetting the People Impact

There is no doubt that a skills shortage inhibits further expansion and impacts organizations' ability to implement new technologies - employees can further exacerbate this by pushing back against change. Digital transformation requires much more than acquiring, implementing, and integrating the latest technology. It begins with people and should end with people - even if digital literacy is low, your team must be at the forefront of the transformation - this is a cultural transformation as much as it is a technological one; the right tools and partners are useless without engaged employees. Be empathic with employees and acknowledge that change is disruptive while emphasizing that it also brings opportunities and is necessary for long-term sustainability and growth. Implement upskilling and digital literacy protocols to transform everyone within the organization, not just the technology and processes. The employees are the lifeblood of an organization - overlook that and any digital transformation initiative will not be set up for success.

Risk Aversion

Many organizations are risk-averse. It's in their DNA, and zero tolerance for failure is part and parcel of the brand. Qantas is proud to be continuously ranked among the world's safest and most reliable airlines, and one reason they are in the premium tier. A record like this requires a meticulous and granular risk-averse mindset in flight operations, logistics, and maintenance. Digital transformation requires embracing risk and breaking down old paradigms, injecting fluidity into a system rather than holding onto rusting legacy processes. These organizations have to be cautious yet bold and create their own maps; the modern world requires innovation, and the friction between risk and transformation is an incredibly difficult hurdle to overcome.

DreamFactory: The Best Tooling For Simplifying Digital Transformation Challenges

The above focus areas are only some of the hurdles that can be expected on the long road to overcoming digital transformation challenges. In parallel to addressing these, you may also want to incorporate various SaaS products and microservices into your existing IT infrastructure. This is where DreamFactory can help. 

As a comprehensive API management platform, DreamFactory dramatically simplifies integrating new apps and services into your existing IT infrastructure. For example, DreamFactory’s native integrations for OAuth services allow you to quickly implement an SSO strategy across all of your business systems. Plus, with DreamFactory’s automatic API generation tools, you never have to worry about the time to code REST APIs – DreamFactory takes care of that job in minutes to provide you with a fully Swagger documented REST API!

Want to learn how DreamFactory how can help you achieve your digital transformation goals? Contact the DreamFactory team and schedule a free hosted trial.