Digital Transformation Success: Lessons Learned from Deployment

As many organizations are shifting to the cloud, the selection, pre-implementation and deployment processes are critical to making digital transformation successful. A recent survey of 1,675 CTOs and enterprise architects found that more than half of surveyed organizations plan to transition existing ERP systems to the cloud. Results also found that many projects fail to meet expectations due to lack of buy-in from end users. How can you combat this and modernize your organization to see success in a digital transformation project?

Get comfortable with change

Consider adding change management strategies as mandatory – not as a “nice to have” to the project plan. Change can be challenging, and the adoption of a new system is significant for many employees. Deliberate and intentional planning for the change can ensure a successful project and better adoption of new ways of working from team members.

Ready your team

Deploying a new enterprise management cloud (EMC) system is a huge endeavor. Develop a training strategy early in the process to expose end users to the change. Exposure to the software early in the process will allow your team members to become more comfortable with it and become leaders to help within their teams. As the team becomes more familiar and comfortable with the basics, increase training to job-specific tasks within your new system.

Another key element to prepare your team is identifying executive sponsors and internal leaders as project champions. Buy-in from leaders comes from the top down, and encourages employees to embrace the transformation

Prepare your data

Moving your systems into a single source of truth means that data will likely need to be cleaned up. Data integrity is a challenge that many organizations face and considering the data transformation is key to the success of a cloud deployment. Improving the quality of the data moved to the new system will improve the way your organization can use the data in a new system, especially with an enterprise management cloud solution that removes the siloes that may have existed in legacy systems.

Keep it simple (at first)

One of the best things about digital transformation is that it is often a significant upgrade from legacy systems and brings the opportunity to impart leading practices. Identify gaps between software and existing processes, and assess where you might be able to adapt to a best practice or truly need to modify an existing process to close the gaps. As teams become more familiar with the application, explore what the solution can do to fit needs as they are discovered.

Digital transformation is an exciting project and can make a significant difference in the way your organization does business. Taking time to plan for project issues before they happen can be critical to project success.