According to a number of industry analysts (McKinsey, BCG, KPMG and Bain & Company), the risk of failure for digital transformation projects is somewhere between 70% and 95%. Partnering with a reputable Systems Integrator can increase the chances of success but not all digital transformation partners are the same, and the choice can make the difference between failure and success, says Franck Morales, VP evolution platform at Orange Business Services.
Don’t let failure be baked-in
IDC predicts that 75% of organisations will have comprehensive digital transformation road maps in place by 2023. Driven by consumers embracing online services at the start of the pandemic and many businesses continuing to work remotely, this shift means enterprises must pick up the pace or risk falling behind. But that’s easier said than done. Changing the way your entire organisation works is a major challenge and, according to McKinsey & Company, 70% of transformations fail. A new approach is needed to help ensure that transformation projects are successful and delivered at speed.
The biggest roadblocks to digital transformation stem from its complexity. Aligning business goals with digital strategy, managing interdependencies between network and cloud solutions, and staying on top of cybersecurity is a lot to think about, all whilst working with multiple vendors to piece it all together. This needs specialist skills and dedicated time. McKinsey & Company found one of the main factors why transformations fail is that organisations either don’t have the right capabilities, or for those that do, their people have multiple responsibilities within their roles, so they can’t provide dedicated oversight.
Building blocks
You can’t buy transformation off the rack. It must be tailored for each enterprise’s journey using digital building blocks operated through the cloud-native delivery model. Ideally, multi-cloud orchestration and optimisation should be independent of the underneath infrastructure.
Infrastructure is a good place to start. Infrastructure transformation isn’t simply about buying a mix of best-of-breed solutions. It requires a carefully thought-out strategy that first considers the business goals and all the complexities and interdependencies involved in integrating the network, cloud, and security to enable an optimised experience and user-to-application ratio. Moreover, it must provide the operational efficiency necessary to compete in today’s dynamic digital markets.
The first step in preparing a plan for what the infrastructure transformation strategy should achieve is to harvest data from the current network and analyse it to identify the challenges and goals of both the IT and business stakeholders. This will provide an overall picture of the infrastructure, its constraints, issues and required changes to support business goals as part of the modernisation and transformation strategy.
The next stage should outline the target and define the strategy by selecting the best combination of technologies tailored to an enterprise’s needs, context, maturity, and scope. Each enterprise needs to map its own path to optimised performance, innovation, and value. The rise in complexity and the demand for an agile infrastructure to better support business outcomes, has made finding the right balance difficult for many enterprises. By aligning business strategy with the infrastructure strategy, the balance between several key elements current infrastructure, company strategy, new projects, cloud impact, technology, and cost is solved.
This is also the time to look at an enterprise’s security posture and ensure its alignment with the strategy without compromising either data protection or user experience. A security audit of the network can pinpoint any potential security risks, and a digital transformation partner with a distributed connectivity and security portfolio will provide enterprises’ hybrid working teams the freedom to work how and where they want.
Cost
According to IDC, 69% of tech leaders worldwide are very or extremely concerned about the growing amount of technology investments required to remain competitive. Cost is a reality of digital transformation, but it’s important to understand what the financial benefit the transformation will bring as this will help with resistance to change. Questions such as how to optimise the transformation roadmap to minimise the amount of outward cashflow? How to balance the performance, features, risks, benefits, etc., with the reality of the costs involved? The ideal transformation partners should be able to work with their enterprise customers to put together a complete package, which can be presented to business and C-level executives so they can review the full plan before giving their go-ahead.
A winning partnership
The best partners should know how to design, implement, and manage digital services. They should have consultants located around the world that understand their local environments, cultural needs and regulatory challenges who can help organisations introduce better ways of working, designed for the market they’re in. These consultants should be supported by experts in cloud, cyberdefense, and an ecosystem of partners such as AWS, Fortinet, Microsoft and Cisco and not just the major players but also innovative start-ups as they can also help enable the delivery of TCO through digital integration and orchestration.
A digital transformation plan should be built with the business lines, the IT department, and an enterprise’s highest level management team to result in design that will have the greatest impact. Depending on an enterprise’s need, consultants should be able to work in-house and oversee transformation projects, freeing-up in-house IT teams to focus on the wider business, while still giving them the reassurance that the installation is being expertly managed.
Always transforming
Digital transformation never really ends. Market changes and new innovations mean organisations always need to constantly rethink how they work and be agile enough to pivot to meet the demands of their customers in an ever-changing world.
Buying individual products is not the answer. Success comes from partnering with a network-native digital services company that takes a holistic and vendor agnostic platform approach, combining the capabilities of cloud, connectivity, security, and digital integration.
Look for a provider that is more than just a systems integrator – one that is also a network operator, over-the-top service provider, as well as having a wide ecosystem of leading technology players.
This type of a network-native digital services company is better positioned to manage your workload end-to-end thanks to a Telco Cloud Infrastructure that brings a cloud native experience to secured digital infrastructure and delivers success because it can ensure consistency across connectivity, cloud, and security end-to-end which is integral to scalable digital transformation.
The author is Franck Morales, VP evolution platform at Orange Business Services.
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