Is your transformation delivery facing these setbacks?

When executing transformation delivery, leadership often encounters common challenges that can prevent value delivery and sustainable change within their organisation. In the Middle East, one study indicated that 54% of respondents felt their organisation’s investments in digital transformation projects had been wasted.  

Unfortunately, sub-optimal digital project delivery can cost financial service companies significantly, particularly in an industry that relies heavily on digital systems and processes. 

Opportunities are vast in the MENA region to reap the benefits of digital transformation, if common roadblocks are addressed and mitigated during analysis, planning and execution, ensuring the transformation vision is successfully realised.  

8 Common Challenges of Digital Transformation Delivery 

1. “Our projects are delayed and run over budget.”  

   A combination of strategic, technical, and organisational challenges often leads to delays in digital transformation delivery. 

   A lack of a clear vision and disagreements on the priorities of the transformation project within leadership can often lead to scope creep. If priorities of the project are vague or poorly communicated to various stakeholders involved, overspending and delays are more likely to occur due to weak boundaries in place.  

   Unrealistic expectations can also be an issue with a lack of understanding of what is required to successfully execute the transformation. Underestimating the amount of time needed for tasks by various departments is likely to result in costly delays when transformation delivery runs well past estimated timelines.  

2. “Our projects don’t deliver on quality and the value we hope for.”

   This issue boils down to when IT or the architects of solutions do not fully understand the context in which solutions are needed. This could be due to poorly conveyed information about the purpose of the transformation project, or how solutions will solve actual business problems.  

   For instance, if IT is building an HR management solution according to business requirements without understanding the actual vision of the transformation and how it will solve HR’s challenges, it is unlikely to be successfully adopted by end users who are unlikely to see any value in it. 

3. “We lack 360° visibility of our digital program.”

   Often, the direction of transformation programmes is defined at the top with leadership, with the hope that with effective communication, all organisational levels will get with the program. However, this is unrealistic and purely wishful thinking.  

   Without the organisational structure, systems, reporting and processes to support digital transformation, management has very little way of overseeing the progress of the initiative. Without weekly meetings involving a dedicated task force, existing employees are typically pulled off their daily tasks, which does not encourage strong buy-in of new solutions, systematic progress reporting, and does not foster sustainable change. 

4. “It seems vendors and contractors are running the project.”

   Many transformation initiatives are solution-centred, rather than business-centred. In other words, solutions developed or implemented may not always be the best-fit solutions for the organisation, nor serve to solve its specific problems.  

   When there is a lack of clarity about the vision of the transformation project, a common mistake is for leaders to let vendors and contractors of a solution guide its direction, whether in planning or execution.  

   However, vendors and contractors do not fully understand the needs of the business and are not usually equipped to design, develop or customise solutions that are tailored to solve the organisation’s specific problems. Additionally, when it comes time to train end users on how to use these solutions within their everyday routines, they will lack the context to understand the best application of these solutions in relation to employee tasks and roles.  

5. “IT are unclear on the business strategy, with misaligned priorities.”

   This issue often arises as a result of poor communication and understanding between business functions and IT or vendors. Not all stakeholders, such as IT, are engaged from the start of the project, and thus do not have sufficient context for how to build or develop effective solutions based on the business team’s requirements.  

   Additionally, requirements assigned to IT by business functions are often one-directional or not as inclusive as they should be. When specifications and tasks are defined by management without opportunities for input from IT, the space for questions or potential issues to be raised on whether all requests are feasible is missing. This leaves very little room for IT to be proactive in the analysis phase of the transformation and make recommendations for the initiative in line with leadership’s vision. 

6. “We work with outdated processes and experience constant setbacks.”

   Legacy systems may house outdated, inconsistent, or incomplete data. This affects the quality of analysis, generation of insights and decision-making. Old systems also often operate in isolation, preventing seamless data sharing across departments, where a unified digital ecosystem is critical for sustainable organisation-wide transformation. 

   Established ways of working may also rely heavily on manual work. Transitioning to new systems and ways of working will require specific skills, training and time for adoption, and may face initial resistance. 

7. “We fail to report and discuss the right key performance metrics.”

   Often, KPIs are not strategically defined to promote the desired behaviour change needed for lasting transformation. When misaligned to the overall goals of the transformation initiative, KPIs inevitably result in employees working towards goals that do not facilitate the actual needs of the organisation. Additionally, it becomes difficult to measure and monitor the success of transformation delivery when KPIs are vague, irrelevant or misaligned with the goals of the initiative. 

8. “We don’t understand or assess project interdependencies due to siloed behaviours within and between departments.”

   Cross-functional communication of what is required of each stakeholder and department involved in the transformation is critical to successful delivery. Without understanding what the scope and timelines of tasks are, for teams across different departments, frequent roadblocks may occur where one party is inadvertently holding up the progress of another.  

   As such, early involvement of all relevant parties during the early planning stages of a transformation project is crucial. Workshopping and the raising of potential issues as early as possible can save time and resources later during the delivery of the project. Additionally, the right questions need to be raised during these early planning stages, but also regularly during weekly update meetings with a dedicated task force to mitigate risks that could occur over the course of the project.  

At Renoir Consulting, we understand the complexity of transformation delivery and have 30 years of experience in helping companies achieve their vision through transformation. Our mission is to facilitate transformation deliveries that affect lasting change through solutions that are fully adopted for desired, sustained, measurable results. Besides the solutions implemented, we believe that people and behaviour change are the keys to any transformation initiative. Only once new ways of working are embedded within an organisation’s culture, can a shared vision of transformation be realised.