Overview

A seamless digital transformation tops any modern organizations’ mid to long-term vision. The benefits are too many. Moving away from legacy business approach to digital business approach enhances business agility and efficiency. The Return on Investments (ROI) might increase as digital technologies enable to market products and services faster at lower costs.

Nevertheless, it is equally true that building a digital ecosystem is like constructing a house of cards. One blip and the whole structure would collapse. Indeed, and this is not a hypothesis.

Did you know that digital transformations face several hindrances? Several studies indicate that around 70% of digital initiatives fail. Sometimes digital transformations fail to meet the objectives while other initiatives are unsuccessful in generating business value.

Digital transformation and apparent increase in the ROI are a classic example of paradox. Some of the largest corporations of the world made hasty decisions on digital transformations and were wrong-footed.

A close examination of some recent business case-studies on failed digital transformations reveals that organizations often miscalculate. One of the largest automobile makers’ digital transformations hit a roadblock as its digital initiatives did not align with ‘core-competencies’. A consumer goods company learnt that economic factors too play a role to accomplish the desired outcome from digital investments. An energy giant failed to make any impact from digital transformation as it focused on too many things, too quickly.

Digital Transformation: Is it a double-edged sword?

Yes. While strategical miscalculations often sink, the digital projects, a fragile IT security framework can bring a double whammy. Indeed, from cloud to IoT and from RPA to AI-enabled trading algorithms, data is at the thick of things. So, if any digital transformation fails to give adequate attention to data security, the initiatives can prove to be like a double-edged sword.

With systems constantly interacting among themselves or humans in the digital ecosystem, information flows and networks need to be robust. Who possesses the data? Who processes the data? Who controls and monitors the data? These are some of the burning questions that cannot be ignored.

Therefore, to ensure digital transformations without any pitfalls, it is imperative to have centralized risk assessment mechanisms. In the backdrop of disparate technology platforms, organizations will have to strongly assert on access control technologies. Otherwise, the digital transformation will remain half-baked.

The bottom-line

For a digital transformation to be successful, the process should be brick-by-brick and security, especially access controls must be robust.