How Organisations can Accelerate Time to Value for Their Digital Transformation Journey

Most companies have a form of a digital transformation initiative that they are running. The headache for IT vendors who are managing digital transformation for these firms is the promise they give to their client in terms of value and time to deliver the initiatives.

The Head of Customer and Ecosystem Enablement at SYSPRO Africa, Doug Hunter mentioned that most companies are not looking at the Return on Investments when it comes to digital transformation initiatives so then it makes it difficult for them to gauge the impact.

“We did a research recently and found out that most Kenyan CEOs and CFOs don’t look at ROI so that can be one reason why digital transformation in Kenya is a bit slow,” Doug noted, “If you want to get value you need to look at ROI. From our research, we found out that people are not measuring that. Most people are looking at what they have and doing renovation rather than innovation.”

He further explained how it is easy to get value for a firm’s digital transformation initiative. A firm needs to take a specific business project that’s relevant to its business and is not just a low-hanging fruit that’s easy. The firm will then looking at the ROI of the project, look at a software vendor who can improve the business processes and come back later to look at the difference brought about by the improved business system (processes).

When IT companies are hired to take a firm through their digital transformation journey, they are normally giving a lot of promises or rather pressured to do so. This has forced some IT companies to even over-promise what they cannot deliver.

In response to this, the Head of Customer and Ecosystem Enablement at SYSPRO Africa said that the technology is about getting innovations and getting them to work (Basically promise and deliver)

“I do not think it’s the tech companies that over-promise, it is the clients that over-estimate the time it will take to deliver. There’s an element of over-promising but you also need to weigh the risk in terms of the time it will take to deliver,” Doug said.