Why Do Companies Resist Digital Transformation?
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I understand that words like digitalization, digital transformation and anything 4.0 are a pain in the neck for many people.
We hear this everywhere – it is really important, it is happening everywhere and there are a lot of subsidies supporting it. And still many companies resist.
Which is why I decided to put together ten reasons companies list and also one different point of view for each of these objections. Maybe you will find yourself in one of these situations and you can see with fresh eyes if there is a different way. The key to this is long-term vision.
We Function so There is No Need to Change
You know that feeling – after a long time your company finally gets to a point when you feel processes are well set and everything starts to work. And then some stranger comes and starts telling you that you have to change everything and they use the horrible word – digitalization.
But look at it from a different point of view – something is working for you and someone gives you an advice how to make it even better. Will you pass the advice and get mamd on that person or will you try to find a way how to use it to progress even further.
Digitalization is not equal to having to turn the company upside down and just throw away the tons of work you have already done. It is the tool that can help you achieve even higher efficiency. Sometimes a small nudge is what you need to have a miracle.
But you have to go about it from the right direction so the time devoted to the selection of a partner is really worth it.
We Cannot Afford Such High Costs
Yes, everything is getting more expensive or prices are at least fulctuating. It is clear why companies don’t want to dive into large projects – large projects, larger costs. And the battle with costs is difficult already as it is. At this point, we turn our attention to the long-term point of view mentioned in the introduction. Because any project with a long-term impact, you need to look at it from the long-term benefits point of view.
You are now working with a specific set of costs. As soon as you learn digitalization could help, you just puut the costs side by side and voila – there goes your background information for a decision.
Digitalization Is the Cause for a Larger Security Risk
Logically, if we are implementing more technologies, we are facing a higher risk of cyberattacks. Unless we also implement the necessary measures to ensure security.
The same would apply to the purchase of physical equipment – it could happen that someone would steal it – you would probably just put into place antitheft measures – the same goes for a virtual property.
It is also interesting that majority of successful attacks in the cyberspace is successful thanks to individual employees not adhering to the sufficient security measures.
Maybe it is a good idea to go through the current cybersecurity approach and find the potential threats.
We Don’t Have the People
Technical background in companies is usually a result of a long-term effort. Technicians have their approach, their tools and their customs. Technologies you need are probably not the ones digitalization would recommend.
Your technicians would have to learn how to use new technologies and approaches, they would have to set up new processes and maybe external help would need to be employed in the form of outsourcing, helpdesk or their combination to reach optimization.
The question is if it would be such an obstacle for your technicians to learn using new resources which could bring to your compmany savings and higher efficiency. Is that such a big sacrifice?
New Things Always Bring Problems
This could be a real problem but within IT, it could be a new type of technology as well as new traditional physical server. Of course, no one can guarantee that anything new will work as it should – mistakes happen. But if this is really true, then it does make sense to dive into new things that will result in the biggest benefits.
It is true that any new technology doesn’t have to come with an inherited problem, it is still new in the company and problems could come from not working with it long enough. But even these problems pass with time.
Service makes Us Dependent on the Provider
This is true, If a company decides to select cloud services, it truly is dependent upon the decisions of the provider. But – it is interesting that companies are not afraid gto use Software as a Service (SaaS), for example in the form of email services or accounting but they are not as excited to use Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
The threat is the same in principle. You could have also been stuck in the net of lots of SaaS services and then you are reluctant to use digitalization. Reconsider, however, if such an approach is truly efficient and brings you the highest return on you investment.
Rather than resisting to specific technologies or approaches, it is more appropriate to resist bad partners. IT selection is one of the most important aspects in the operations of any company which is why the most important step is to select the right partner that really helps you with selecting all the rest.
Data Will Bury Us
Data overload or their insufficient amount happen when a company has not yet fully adapted to working with them. It is true that digitalization is a source of many data, often a lot of new data, but the thing is to know how to handle them.
Let’s go back to the accounting example. This also incudes many data and many various data – amounts, dates, labels. But companies have learnt to work with them and now they enjoy the fruits of better efficiency.
This use of data can be also found in other areas of operations. They can be collected in CRM regarding the efficiency of a sales team. Data can be collected in marketing to evaluate with activities have the biggest impact on potential customers and what can be done to take the best care of the current ones.
The market also offers many sensors that enable the collection of data from operations, warehouses, stores and anything else, evaluate them and show through clear graphs, how the company works.
We Would Have to Change
That is most probably true. But what is wrong with it? I will remind you with two examples that are related to change and both of them seemed highly improbable.
Nokia has to be a known brand to you. This company has been the champion of mobile devices and for a long time it held a large piece of the pie. And then the need for change camme and Nokia resisted. That marked the beginning of her end.
Electric cars are also known to you. When they made their first appearance on the market, one of the objections to their wide spread was that people would not want to adapt to the fact they would have to plug the car in so often. And the opposite is trie and cars with electric engines have become more common on our roads.
These two examples show that approach to changes is key for a company to survive and strive. However, it is also important to evaluate if the benefits of change overrule the costs. Don’t forget that some costs are not visible at first.
I Will Never Get that Pass My IT Department
It is true that IT departments are very rigid in this regard and any change coming from the outside doesn’t have to be accepted with whoohoos and cheers. But if you really calculated that digitalization is the right step for your company, then these logical arguments combined with a tech partner supporting your decision from the professional point of view should lead to a successful digitalization effort, despite the technicians not approving.
The bottom line is that digitalization provides even the technicians with the optimization of their work. They receive modern tools that make their operations more efficient and thanks to that even their inner tech explorer can constantly work with new things without their work deteriorating in quality.
They do exchange they physical toys for the virtual ones but those can still pose the challenge technicians are looking for.
Digitalization Is Too Complicated or Too Much
It is true that when you decide to get fully immersed in digitalization, you are facing a lot of activities and it may seem like a road with no end. Which brings us back to the selection of a good partner. Digitalization can seem too much but you don’t have to take that bite alone.
With a professional patron who takes care of the analyses and changes, you can manage even the biggest challenge without having to learn abilities you will need only once.
Conclusion
Surely we could find other objections that arise in companies and hinder the progress of digitalization. We have gone over those that are the most frequent and there is also a short reply to them. You can now evaluate from both sides if the objection has a larger vaue that the benefits of digitalization and if it is not worth it to plunge into the change that leads to lower costs, higher efficiency and bigger satisfaction when handled properly.
