Why traditional economy businesses fail with tech initiatives and execution?

Hello heroes of the traditional economy! 😎 Hope everyone is just fine and the year started off very well for you.

When the year starts usually many people start to write their goals and a plan how to achieve them. Many of this goals are also related to their company, business, venture, work and other professional aspects, now in this list of goals there is always something related to growth of the business which require a good understanding of the current state of the company, where do you want to get next and how will you achieve that.

Of course there is never but never shortage of ideas, it’s when execution starts the fun begins baby and sometimes people haven’t even expected so much fun 😁

I was surfing through X, going through interesting posts of people who either started and growing their business in the traditional economy, others acquired a traditional business each being at different stage of growth. Saw many discussions around tech, processes, tools, etc. so I was sitting and reflecting also about my discussions with others that were telling me about Digital Transformation projects that either didn’t move forward with the implementation or halfway in the journey failed. I’ve seen myself projects succeed and fail and also based on the discussions with other people I noticed some common reasons why this happens.

💥Here are 4 reasons why some of these projects fail, and the best approach to avoid and tackle these challenges 👇

1️⃣ Strategy, Roadmap… hello… is anyone here?📋

Asking the wrong questions and without a clear strategy in place, transformation projects can become impactless and eventually, fail. Define clear goals, create a roadmap, and ensure everyone on the team is on the same page.

2️⃣ Hmmm…. BUDGET you say 💸

Transformation of a business takes time, resources, and, most importantly, money. Not having a realistic budget can lead to poor implementation, and eventually, project failure. Make sure you have a budget in place, and be prepared to adjust it as needed.

3️⃣ Wind of change 💨

People develop certain habits in time, and change can be difficult. If you don't align the people in your company with the transformation plans and changes, the project will likely fail. Most importantly if you plan to implement a digital solution that will directly affects their productivity and work without making sure to find out about the challenges they have and how your solution will solve them, again the project will fail and it will not improve the productivity and bottom line. Take steps to ensure employees are involved and engaged throughout the process, and communicate changes effectively.

4️⃣ Lack of Expertise ❌

A transformation project requires expertise in areas like technology, business processes, people and change management. Without the right expertise, the project may not be properly scoped, planned, and executed. Consider bringing in people or companies with the right expertise to help guide the project and ensure its success. Also the company or expert you hire from outside should work closely with the people who are directly involved in the specific process or vertical in the company for which the transformation is planned.

But things are not so complicated, c’mon let’s do it 👊

💥Here are the steps that should be taken to ensure a successful implementation your transformation project.

Sooo where am I now? What is the current state of the company?🤔

Identify the pain points and challenges you're having right now, What stops you from growing? What are the work processes and work flows you're following? What goals are you trying to achieve after developing and deploying the digital solutions? How is the team operating and what stops them from being fully productive, is it the tedious manual work they are doing?

Scope down the solution ✍️

After you gathered all the information regarding your pain points, workflows, processes and talked to your team about this write down how will the solution work and solve the problems you identified, be as specific as possible. Write down the people who will use it, what will they do while using the solution, how it will help them and the features. You can also do this step in the form of a mind map, which will show you visually how will the solution interact with the users at each touch point and what will be the output.

Strategy, roadmap, plan here we go 🚀

Now start making an implementation plan and how will you execute on developing and implementing the digital tool and solution. Identify the resources you need, people involved, timelines and the results you need to achieve. The plan and roadmap will help you understand the stages in which you develop and deploy the solution, for example the first version can include a set of basic and important capabilities to test how it works, what are the results and learn to improve further.

But what about the Development and Implementation?🧐

After having the plan and roadmap in place start executing and developing the solution. Carefully monitor how the implementation goes and adjust if the situation requires.

So next is Operations Monitor & Iterate ⚙️🔎

Once you finished everything and deployed the solution in your company, measure carefully how is working, how easy people are getting used to it and see what are the results. Monitoring will help you improve, update and spot new opportunities where the AI solution can be implemented in the company's processes. Also because technology is in constant evolution it's important to keep up with the changes and improve your solution.

At first it may sound difficult especially that businesses in the traditional economy don’t have that tech side of the business but if you follow the following steps with any transformation process you will be surprised by the results you get, how successful is the implementation and the impact the solution will have on your business and it’s operations.

Cheers for successful transformation projects!😎👊

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