Obstacles and challenges

1. Obstacles and challenges

As an organization works to implement and drive digital transformation, it needs to be understood that there will be bumps in the journey. What are these bumps?

2. Challenges ahead

Some bumps are common among industries and organizations, but some may still need to be discovered. The right mindset can help to ensure an organization continues its digital transformation progress, even in the face of challenges. Here are some challenges and obstacles you may face, with Kissflow being the resource utilized for some of these: Culture, Siloed Work, Legacy Systems, Digital Skills Gap, Poor Investment. Let’s explore each of these as each of these can hinder organizational digital transformation.

3. Culture

Our first challenge or obstacle is the culture of the organization. Organizations have cultures and if I went into an organization and said let’s change your culture, I may get eye rolls and/or cynicism. Organizational culture change isn’t easy, and if it isn’t embraced or done right, a whole digital transformation can be impacted. Culture is the people,and we need to ensure people are one of the focuses of a digital transformation.

4. Siloed work

The second challenge is siloed work. From Kissflow, we read about siloed decision-making. “Silos lead to disconnected decision-making as each team or department focuses on solving its problems and achieving its own goals. The problem is compounded by a lack of unified vision that propels every team towards a common business goal. This then restricts efficiencies and impedes innovation within the organization.”

5. Legacy Systems

The third challenge is legacy systems. We could find some people who have stories about trying to transform digitally and the problems with legacy systems. From Kissflow: “Even in business, moving out of your comfort zone is difficult. You can see this in enterprises still using legacy systems despite the availability of more agile and robust platforms. After all, they have invested substantial capital in these systems and are still benefiting from them. However, with obsolete software and outdated technologies still powering them, these legacy systems are among the top bottlenecks in digital transformation. They are often slow and inflexible, making adapting to transitions and integrating with new technologies harder. An even more pressing concern is their vulnerability to security breaches.”

6. Skills-gap

Our fourth challenge is the skills gap. Think about yourself as the learner or others in your organization. Did they go to school to deal with technology? Are they engineers? Are they change management experts? We need to help empower people with digital, data, and AI literacy so they can be a part of digital transformation. We don’t need everyone in an organization to be technical, but we need them to have sufficient skills to succeed.

7. Investment

The final challenge is that of poor investment. Leadership has budget decisions to make, but are they making good decisions? Of course, there isn’t an easy button to investing in digital transformation. That said, leaders must truly invest fully in digital transformation, or the organization may falter. This is not an exhaustive list of challenges and obstacles to digital transformation, so ensure you are familiarizing yourself well with challenges and creating strategies and ways to succeed against these challenges.

8. Let's practice!

Now, let’s test your knowledge with some exercises.

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