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The introduction of any changes is risky, and digitalization and digital transformation projects are no exception. With dozens of projects of different sizes behind me, I can confidently say that risk management is a key element.

What risks do we have?

– Information security

New information systems, huge volumes of data require protection from losses and «hacking», as well as from incorrect operations. New levels of security are needed. New requirements for personal data protection are emerging. However, it should be remembered that if you start to ban everything that is not allowed, your people will look for workarounds, thus increasing the risks. Then it looks like you’re protecting everything, and the data is still compromised. And the key here – the ability to evaluate what is really valuable, and what you need only or becomes obsolete at the moment of appearance.

– Resistance to change and company culture

In the process of transforming your business, you will inevitably encounter staff resistance to innovation and in a favourable scenario you will lose 10—15% of employees.

There are many reasons for this. A special chapter will be devoted to working with resistance. It is worth noting the issue of culture, because culture has a strategy for breakfast. If you don’t know how to work with change and teamwork, nothing good can come of it.

– Terms

When implemented correctly, when changes are introduced from the top, from top, and supported by ordinary employees, digital transformation takes 2.5—3 years. In large companies this period may extend to 4—5 years.

Even the first results will be visible only after 9—12 months, but most managers lay 6—9 months for the entire transformation. For this period, you will have time to implement only 1—2 projects on digitalization or automation.

– Non-streamlined processes

This is one of the key elements of digital transformation. You can go the classic way – first automate what you have, and then reengineer processes. However, automation without prior optimization is not feasible. You will spend a lot of time and resources, but in the end, you will create a very heavy and clumsy system. Optimization is the most important step in the transition from manual labor to automated labor.

– Unstructured data

If you can’t structure data, transform it into useful information, then everything else is meaningless.

– Staff competencies

Digital technologies place a new level of demands on the knowledge and competencies of both the people adopting these technologies and the users. Large-scale measures are needed to educate and retrain, motivate and overcome resistance to innovation.

At the same time, research of one of the federal projects showed that in Russia only 26% of people have advanced digital skills. According to DICE, in Europe, this figure reaches 57%.

– Costs and people overburdened

Digital transformation is a high-cost initiative without guarantees of success.

According to research, only 20% of the changes are implemented successfully. Others fail for various reasons, including because of its redundancy. If there are 250 changes per person per year, you can hardly expect a positive result.

– Technology Disappointment

Gartner’s Gartner Hype Curve, a consulting agency, issues a report every August. This is a graph of public expectations about a particular technology. According to the agency, in the ideal case, the technology successively passes five stages: the launch of the technology, the peak of elevated expectations, the bottom of frustration, the slope of education, the plateau of productivity. However, it also happens that technology doesn’t make it past stage three – the bottom of disappointment.

Of course, it should be remembered that the Gartner chart is just a forecast, there are exceptions to it, but it still helps to assess the risks of early use of new technologies.

In summary, the most common causes of failure are:

– the unpreparedness of the IT systems used;

– data quality and availability;

– poor quality work with change management;

– Poor quality project management.

We will discuss this issue in a separate chapter.