{"id":35362,"date":"2019-11-14T11:06:17","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T11:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/?p=35362"},"modified":"2019-11-18T10:05:56","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T10:05:56","slug":"how-to-maximise-success-in-your-digital-transformation-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/2019\/11\/14\/how-to-maximise-success-in-your-digital-transformation-project\/","title":{"rendered":"How to maximise success in your Digital Transformation project"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Successful Digital Transformation depends on various contributing factors which include creating the right cultural conditions within your organisation and having the most efficient technology in place. Sarfraz Ali, Senior Director of Market Development at Smartsheet, discusses the key to achieving Digital Transformation. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Starting with the business vision, you must secure stakeholder buy-in and then leverage investment in the right tools to ensure the smooth planning, communication, implementation and completion of mission-critical Digital Transformation projects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The pressure to digitally\ntransform the business is greater than ever before, but these projects don\u2019t\nalways deliver the benefits to the business that were promised. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What\u2019s going wrong? And what is the difference between those businesses that succeed and those that fail on the road to Digital Transformation? Key findings from a recent survey may help shed light on this: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The most successful projects start with a clear, shared\nvision and purpose <\/li><li>Continuous stakeholder support through all stages of a\nproject is vital to successful completion<\/li><li>It pays to invest in project management tools \u2013\norganisations with a single, unified platform were three times as likely to\nreport better than expected project outcomes<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>We conducted online interviews with 622 senior business managers in three countries \u2013 the US, UK and Germany \u2013 and found a worrying disparity between the reported \u2018success\u2019 of Digital Transformation projects and their impact on the business. While the vast majority said that the project was a success against internal targets (88%), in the final analysis, only 49% could say that it had a significant impact on the business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>UK respondents had the least\nconfidence in the tools and support they received when running projects\ncompared to their peers from the US and Germany, with only 44% of UK\nrespondents reporting that their projects ran to schedule compared to 61% of\nGerman respondents, indicating there is scope at least for the UK to improve\nits performance and possibly Germany and the US, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Digital Transformation: Promise vs reality<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Keeping up with the competition is one of the key drivers of Digital Transformation (83%) and yet only 13% said their projects had actually improved their ability to keep pace with the competition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nearly half of Digital Transformation projects are running late and in organisations where projects are struggling to stay on schedule, only 27% of respondents were confident that the project would have a powerful impact on the business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Confidence is high at the\nbeginning but begins to drop almost as soon as the rubber hits the road. While\n71% of respondents said the project ran better than expected in the development\nand planning phase, once they hit phase two \u2013 sourcing suppliers \u2013 confidence\nplummeted to 22%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maintaining support from\nstakeholders over the lifetime of the project was identified as a key risk\nfactor by respondents. Three out of four respondents (73%) said they enjoyed\nhigh levels of support at the beginning of a project but support at later\nstages fell to less than half (48%). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Project success hinges on access to good project management tools and yet despite the recognition of this, half of respondents lacked complete confidence in their solutions \u2013 and 5% indicated they had no confidence whatsoever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Stakeholder support as a driver of success <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the key results of the\nsurvey was the impact that stakeholder support had on the success of projects.\nAlthough there is a link between stakeholder support and project success, it is\ndifficult to say with certainty whether support falls away in response to\ndifficulties with the project or difficulties enter into the project workflow\nas a consequence of waning support from stakeholders, but a closer look at\nproject implementation from start to finish may give us some insights into this\nquestion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As we stated earlier, optimism and stakeholder support is generally high at the beginning of projects, with 71% saying their projects were running better than expected at the development phase, but this rapidly drops to 22% when it comes to sourcing suppliers. At the same time, the number of respondents that reported &#8216;issues&#8217; with their project jumped from 28% to 76%. Not surprisingly, these delays have a knock-on effect on the next phases of the project \u2013 covering implementation, monitoring, completion, trialling and evaluation \u2013 from which few projects ever fully recover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When projects get delayed, their business impact is significantly reduced. The survey found that 49% of projects had a significant impact on the business and 35% had an &#8216;incremental&#8217; impact, but projects that ran without delay were more than twice as likely to have the strongest impact than those that suffered delays \u2013 68% compared to 27%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And this was closely linked to\nstakeholder support over time, as the figures revealed that 73% of respondents\nenjoyed full support for their project at the beginning, but it fell rapidly to\n52% in the supplier sourcing phase and by the time it reached the\nimplementation phase had fallen to 48%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Overall, 40% of respondents\ncomplained that they lacked support, but splitting the figures geographically\nrevealed that the UK suffered more (51%) compared to Germany (32%) and the US\n(37%). Interestingly, the UK also suffered higher rates of project delay (56%)\nthan the average across the three countries (52%) and significantly higher than\nGermany (39%). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So why did stakeholder support\ndecrease over time? Respondents pointed to lack of time (48%), other priorities\n(41%) and lack of shared vision (26%) as the most common reasons, suggesting\nthe link between delays and stakeholders is very much one of stakeholders\ncontributing to project delays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Project success <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What made some projects more\nsuccessful than others? In a word, cooperation, as respondents who had enjoyed\nproject success said that shared vision, business buy-in and communications\nwere the most important factors in achieving their goals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They enumerated five main\nbarriers to transformation in business that have to be overcome to achieve\nsuccess, with each roughly equal to the others (ranging from 37% to 40%): <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Resources \u2013 Lack of investment in transformation initiatives <\/li><li>Talent \u2013 Lack of skills to do the job <\/li><li>Culture \u2013 Difficulty getting everyone to embrace change <\/li><li>Communications \u2013 Silo mentality blocking effective interaction<\/li><li>Leadership \u2013 Lack of vision to guide digital efforts <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>In all of this, the role of\ntechnology in supporting communication and cooperation was key. Half of\nrespondents (50%) were extremely confident that they had the best tools for the\njob, but this varied geographically, with Germany more confident (55%) than the\nUS (50%) and the UK (46%). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Government and the healthcare\nsector were generally least confident that they had the best tools, at 35% and\n43% respectively against a high of 59% in the telecoms and software sector and\na score for all sectors of 50%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eight out of 10 businesses (81%) undertaking Digital Transformation projects have specialist software, with 63% using Microsoft Project and 24% using Smartsheet. But the percentage that used a single platform \u2013 recognised as a key indicator of success in managing complex projects and facilitating effective communications across multiple departments \u2013 was 39% compared to 35% that used a number of integrated solutions and 7% who used a specialist, standalone solution. The remaining 19% reported they had no specialist software to manage their project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those organisations that used a unified, single platform solution reported higher levels of success and satisfaction with their project outcomes than those that integrated a number of different software solutions to achieve their aims. Of those who used a single platform solution, 63% said their project was running better than expected in comparison to just 22% of those who were using integrated solutions.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Overall, everyone agrees that collaboration is important to achieving optimal outcomes, but this survey has shown that this is often more difficult than it looks. Success depends on creating the right cultural conditions within your organisation to ensure consistent stakeholder support and cross-departmental communications, aided by the adoption of the right technology to facilitate joint planning, resourcing, implementation, completion and evaluation of critically important Digital Transformation projects. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Successful Digital Transformation depends on various contributing factors which include creating the right cultural conditions within your organisation and having the most efficient technology in place. Sarfraz Ali, Senior Director of Market Development at Smartsheet, discusses the key to achieving Digital Transformation. Starting with the business vision, you must secure stakeholder buy-in and then leverage [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":35370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9442,10,93,23,24],"tags":[76,10605],"class_list":["post-35362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-transformation","category-germany","category-top-stories","category-united-kingdom","category-used","tag-digital-transformation","tag-smartsheet"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35362"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35375,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35362\/revisions\/35375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}