#91 Halloween Episode: Top 5 digital transformation haunting hurdles to avoid

Hello and welcome everyone. We are back with another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast brought to you by the Automation Guys. So with me here on the show as always is Arno. Hello Arno.

Hi Sascha.

Yeah, cool. Just before the show, I looked back a bit what we have been up to throughout the year so far. You believe it maybe or not, Arno, but we have nearly done 100 episodes. So we will have the 100 episodes very, very soon in the box, which is absolutely amazing. And yeah, once we have reached that big milestone, I think we, we have to do something special. I know, let's think about something really nice for our listeners when we hit the 100.

Yeah, so as well from the listeners, but yeah, we have to make it one.

It's specific, we need to do special one.

Yeah, I think it's been over 2 years that we, uh, yeah, yeah, I think we started, uh, quite a while ago.

Yeah, um, doing this regularly, um, so yeah, nearly 100 soon, so, uh, Yeah, we will do something special and look out for that. So that means we have talked a lot about all things process and automation here. Low-code, no-code, RPA, workflow, process mining, and so on. So it was really great. Yeah, big thanks because when I looked at it, I thought, wow, this is amazing. It would have been possible without our listeners, of course, and with our amazing guests we had on the show as well over the last sort of nearly 100 episodes. So really, really exciting. So yeah, that brings me now to today's topic. There is a very interesting statistic: 70% of organizations have already piloted automation technologies, but many struggle to achieve the full potential of digital transformation, with less than 20% managing to scale across multiple parts of the operations. And that's, that's, yeah, that's really sad because there's so much potential in these technologies. But yeah, it is, it is complex for lots of business to get started. So organizations often fall into the same common traps. We hear that day in, day out. And yeah, and that's why we thought we will go through a list of the top digital transformation pitfalls to avoid today. And yeah, so when avoiding those kind of pitfalls, yeah, you will reach a faster, more seamless digital transformation journey. So let's dive straight in. Yeah. So with that one, we go to pitfall number 1.

So there's this sort of go big or go home mentality in digital transformation, and we see this a lot where, you know, people want to go wide, they want to go kind of big. And, you know, and I think that there's a reality that, you know, some business leaders and technical leaders as well are trying to kind of get ahead and sort of drive the full force of digitalization into a business. And, you know, this can often lead to, you know, starting with overly complicated projects or prematurely implementing the automations, you know, across business operations. And I guess instead what should happen is organizations should start simple. I think organizations will know their internal capabilities, so they'll define what simple looks like, if that makes sense. And, you know, and then they could use that success and specifically from a sort of a case study perspective, as almost like a poster child for the rest of the organization to kind of foster this digital transformation that needs to come into the business. You know, you have to start somewhere and deliver something and something meaningful, you know, choose the right process to automate. You know, we've talked a lot, in this podcast, you know, you mentioned 100 or so episodes almost, but we've talked a lot about use cases as well. And they are genuinely low-hanging fruit out there that you can go pick, you know, the onboarding, the offboarding, accounts payable, accounts receivable, you know, processes within site, HR, for example. So these processes are very generic across a lot of businesses. And when you start, doesn't have to be perfect, you know, it just has to be something that people can actually start to use. You know, if you look at employee onboarding, that again, that's a very good example where you could pull in, you know, workflow automation. So that's kind of human-to-human task flow, robotic process automation to actually move work away, especially mundane work away from people. You know, you could use artificial intelligence to go out and actually scan through CVs, for example, you know, during the kind of recruitment campaign, reporting to actually see the health, the state of your processes. You know, you mentioned ProcessMiner. So there's all kind of these tools that if you choose a very familiar use case and you then apply what might be perceived as reasonably complicated technology, people will get it, they will understand, and also they will see the benefits very quickly. You know, and again, the point here is, you know, some make that mistake and start starting with a very complex project because they want to speed up their return of investment because, you know, the technology vendor said that's what you need to do. You need to exploit automation to get your ROI numbers. And again, you know, you can find yourselves encumbered by the sort of sheer complexity of the project. Then if you start a bit smaller, you can better facilitate, you know, your team's sort of educational needs of the new tools, familiarization of of how the tools will help them. You can fine-tune your operating model. So if you bring digital workers within site, the process to the forefront, people understand how that works, you know, and then you can build on this newfound knowledge to, that can be then applied to more complicated projects sort of moving forward, you know, the old lessons learned thing. But I think this is a true example of where that could be, very beneficial. You know, and there's a lot of people out there, organizations that falsely assume they need to acquire, you know, very kind of expensive technical expertise, drive significant change with, with inside your business. But, you know, you don't need that. You know, your digital transformation journey can start at the back of really good common sense, very good business analysts, you know, some technical support, some oversight. And again, a familiar use case, you know, choose something that is generic. You know, again, I'm gonna bring in the onboarding or the accounts receivable, accounts payables, the invoice processing, you know, that has been done for so long. So people are really familiar with those examples. You know, and I think, you know, this is where low-code application platforms come into their own because, you know, you sort of experiment, you know, you can actually start sort of showcasing some early successes of a digital transformation journey using sort of low-code application development platforms because it's very quick to use. You can plug in lots of nice automations within the platform. You could train your in-house development team to effectively start developing software that, you know, connects systems and connect people with their processes, automate the processes. You know, I touched a bit on RPA and bring elements of RPA in, and that would start to sort of unleash, you know, all of the other possibilities and open people's mind up as to, you know, what is possible. And if you present something that's a success, it's going to be very easy to embark on your next phase of your journey. because, you know, that, that, that, that's gonna build on, on, on, on, on positivity. Um, so, you know, all of this is, you know, it's, it's, it's sort of part of the, uh, it's almost unavoidable in, in the kind of the learning process. Um, and again, the key is to, to, to, to learn from these mistakes and make sure they're not costly mistakes. Um, because if you do start simple, you can pivot away. You can always, you know, raise your hand. You can come to a technology partner, you know, Sascha, you know, like me and you, we kind of help people on these initial journeys, get them in a direction, make sure there's a proper roadmap, you know, try and assess their strategy and also kind of look if they're traveling in the right direction, right? So, and this can be anything from looking at their digital transformation strategy, also trying to look at, you know, are they choosing the right technology? Are they actually choosing the right use cases? You know, so sort of just shaping that initial starting block, helping people to sort of take that first couple of steps. They can then start to see the successes and realize it's not very difficult if you've got the right help, the right help, support, the right tech. And essentially sort of building on that positive energy to make digital transformation successful and avoid failure, right?

Absolutely. So you just touched briefly on the topic of strategy, and that's also one of the— so you need to have that strategy in place even if you go very, very small and iterative, but you need to have think of where do you want to go. So in advance for your digital transformation, without one clear strategy, yeah, you will have not enough focus for it and you will use your resources not maybe to the most effective way. So have some long-term goals. Along with these shorter-term plans. And this is where you do these iterations and that. But of course, you have to have that long-term goal. So if you don't have one, yeah, things will become a bit difficult. So, yeah, take these long-term goals with a variety of timescales and keep that there to start with. And of course, that shouldn't be just a decision of one person or just one or two people in the company. So ideally, you need to speak with all people, or with a group of people across the organization, with the different departments, because effective processes are generally going from one department to the other, or lots of processes go through different departments. Of course, to have them really effective running through from one department to the other, yeah, that needs to work together. So yeah, have that group of people across different departments in your organization, and especially those who will use the new tools you developed and the new platforms and new automations, et cetera. So then, yeah, because that group of people will really make it a success, or they will tell you if it was a success. And they're very keen on a success as well. So that feedback is very important as part of your strategy. Yeah, by including the colleagues, even if they are not really technical, because low-code and no-code doesn't, does not really necessarily require too much sort of technical people. It was really important to include your colleagues from different teams in the design process. You need that really substantial buy-in. And that will will really boost that productivity further down the line and ease the workloads. And of course, these colleagues, when they find out this solution works really well for them, that's the energy Arno talked about earlier. So they will bring that excitement to other departments, to other groups in the business, and then they will sit together, they repeat the process again. So it's really critical that you and your company take that time to also understand processes before you start automating them. So that's also part of this strategy. And if you don't have that in place, yeah, you will make too many mistakes, I guess, on the way. And then you will think, oh damn, this automation thing overall will not work out, or we stop that because we have done too many mistakes. So yeah, you can plan for success. And the strategy is really, really important for that.

Yeah. So the next one, the next pitfall is going it alone. So, you know, we always say this in our messaging that, you know, if you work with a technical partner that's been there before, you know, they've got really good experience working with other customers, especially applying automation, you know, not just initial projects, but also automation at scale. So that will kind of be the future state that you want to be, or even working with a vendor. It can be a very easy and cost-effective way to ensure that your digital transformation program is a resounding success. And, you know, and it sort of accelerates, you know, the whole process, you know, and this, this, This includes, it kind of accelerates your building of new capabilities, applying the technologies. And then also from a business perspective, it will give you that sort of agility to perhaps go into new markets, you know, and launch new products because you've got this confidence that you can actually bring automation into your business for a particular service or product that you're offering or product set, and you know, you're not gonna have a very high cost to sort of manage that. So you're gonna be profitable. And again, sort of, you know, find a very committed partner with proven experience and expertise with inside the vertical is important because, you know, they can help you deliver sort of the tailored and the impacted outcomes that you wish to achieve and then get you to the return of investment that, that, you know, everybody was talking about in the business case, you know, when, when you started sort of touching on why should we bring this into the business, you know, and again, when you look for a partner, if you're gonna sort of bring a low-code platform into the, the fold, you know, make sure obviously they, they, they, you know, have that proven track record, you know, and they'll help you sort of adapt to sort of how to work and how to bring maybe some of your technical expertise on board so they can do some of the development, you know, and make sure that sort of work within sight, your perhaps from a technical perspective, existing infrastructure, for example. And that can also allow you to digitize at a pace that works for you, you know, partners, I certainly speak for ourselves, but we're quite flexible in the way we work with our customers. We know certain customers have got more skill sets than others. So there's various demographics in terms of the customer space that we work with. And it's always to do with trying to carve out a plan for digital transformation at a pace that works for a specific customer. And, you know, and again, this, this, this, this is not just limited to, to low-code. I'm talking about wider advanced technologies as well, like RPA, AI, machine learning, you know, intelligent chatbots, all of the kind of the progressive new automation technologies as well. And of course, if you go to a partner, they, they will have a library or suite of solutions that they've already sort of created as part of automation initiatives, perhaps for other projects, for other clients. And they reuse that. We do that a lot where we've got a specific, let's say, invoice processing process that we've done for a specific customer. We know the pitfalls, we know the sort of failure points. And all we do is we sort of take what works best for that customer and sort of just apply that knowledge to the new customer. And of course, that, you know, that maximizes returns of investment in terms of time, you know, effort people put in because you're not constantly reinventing the wheel. And of course, that boosts productivity. And, you know, at the end of the day, that just makes sure that you get to that point where you could see the outcomes of your digital transformation. Faster.

That's good. So yeah, and you mentioned this as well about the, so as well as talent and capabilities. I know lots of customers, they actually do not want to become a solution developing company, right? So they have a problem so that they they have an idea of what problem they have to solve. But it really, really is possible to do it without own skill set. And then for that, of course, you need to bring in a partner. You can get you going there. Maybe you have one member later on upskilled. But generally, yeah, there are lots of companies do not want to build a sort of a tech team around that, right? So the next one is, it's a bit in line with what you mentioned, but it's one of the pitfalls to avoid, is trying to do it without the team generally. So it is very, very important that you're not Yeah, sort of get going on your own and try out a few things in the beginning. So it's really, really important to bring the entire team along. As I mentioned earlier, everyone who will be part of the process and use these solutions going forward, they have to be part of it from the beginning, ideally. So I could coordination between, between these team members, make sure everyone is working towards the same goal. That again goes back to sort of strategy. And then if, if you would do it on your own in this department and in that department, everyone just picks a tool to, to do some low-code development, no-code development, everyone will do sort of maybe the same mistakes. So yeah, avoiding these mistakes is very important. And I guess doing something together as well as encouraging everyone to learning these new technologies and to play with these new innovations. Yeah, it really will really build a culture of innovation in a company if you do it as a team. Yeah, and long term it will also save costs by people doing these things. On their own again and again. So you avoid that double work. And yeah, not so often, or very often actually, there will be chaos if everyone frickles— well, not frickles, that's the wrong word— but does stuff on their own without any guidelines, etc. So of course we want everyone to be excited about low-code and experiment with that, but it has to be sort of as part of a team. So yeah, and when that is in place, yeah, you can use all sorts of people in your organization, the business users, low-code developers, IT teams. So everyone can use these low-code tools. But yeah, communication between these teams really is very important for that effective automation outcome. So Yeah. Yeah. So that's my point here on that one.

Yeah. I just want to add something small. It's like the, you know, you don't want heroes, you know, inside these programs where it's one person that's really, really good and they get very frustrated and they don't take the whole team with them. We talked about the episode where we chatted about specifically about the rugby with the Rugby World Cup that's just been on. And, you know, it's all about kind of teamwork and understanding people's— and heroes sometimes also have to sit on the bench and wait their turn, right? Because you can't just have heroes dotted around and then everybody else is not at that pace and the whole thing just kind of fails.

So that's why you need a strategy, isn't it? So then you know exactly who to deploy and what to deploy at the right time. Isn't it?

Yeah, exactly. So the last one, kind of the last point I want to talk about is sort of just risk aversion, you know, and people, like I said earlier, you know, we do learn from our mistakes. You know, I think, you know, the most successful organizations that we've worked for out there sort of reward and embrace this mindset. And, you know, they realize that experimentation is a prerequisite for innovation and also for creativity, you know. And I think there was a thing that I read about Google where they found that employees felt that they could take risks without the shame of being criticized or for, you know, feeling bad for or failing, these individuals actually did better work, you know, and this sort of this culture or this ethos really fosters faster time to value for product development innovation within your business. Because, you know, when workers feel not worried about absolute perfection the first time around, you know, they feel a bit more relaxed. And I think this is where true sort of creativity comes out because, you know, that, that, that, that is a, a, a very good foundation where people are relaxed to, to sort of build successful automations on or any sort of thing that, that they achieve really, I guess, in life as well. So, you know, and, and, and kind of back to, back to this Google example, you know, members in that team iterate a lot quicker and, and more often. And again, it's also a bit like SpaceX with the things they do. They fail fast and they learn from that. They're not scared of a big explosion. So, and I think if you have got the sort of the repeated iteration in the context of digital transformation, that's when you will start to understand for your particular organization what type of risks you can take, which ones you should avoid. And, you know, that will give you a sort of very solid foundation to understand, well, risks are taken care of now. You know, let's look at other elements that we need to do to make this program successful. Yeah, and again, you know, don't expect to be right the first time. Just iterate. And this again is is where the tools and the technologies we use to build business process automation solutions allow it. It's an enabler for that. You know, you look at low-code platforms, for example. If you look at just traditional workflow where you create an application, we automate the process, that's up to 70% quicker compared to high-code. Or conventional high-code development. So that gives you a lot of bandwidth to actually play around with and iterate. If you don't get the process right the first time, that's okay. You can still iterate because it's still not costing as much as a conventional development team would have cost it if you would do the same thing. If you were to use a sort of a coded approach, then again, If you iterate, that's throwaway. So that's a lot of resources that you waste. You know, that's just kind of one example. There's so many examples out there where low-code actually comes into its own when you start doing experimentation and iteration. You know, we see it on a daily basis where people don't really understand what their requirements are. They'll give you one or two lines, they'll say, this is what we want to achieve. We might go and pick something off the shelf to say, Well, this is a very good example we've got from a previous customer. Let's go and provide you with a baseline. Let's in a couple of days give you something to play with. All we need from you now is your feedback. And then that feedback gets very important because that gets pushed into the front of the funnel and that goes through the sort of development process and produces outcomes very fast while you still have that stakeholders' attention, you could show that to them and say, is this what you mean? Yes, that's almost right, but can it do this? So it sort of facilitates this sort of creation of the product kind of organically, but in a really, really quick pace or at a quick pace. So it's sort of like evolutionary, but it's revolutionary because it's fast, if that makes sense. And I think the point here is that get feedback and incorporate real-world experience into your product development because that's when you would, you know, yield very, very, very good outcomes from any digital transformation project that you tackle. And again, you know, it is all about fast iterative don't worry about mistakes. You know, of course, there's a lot of other things that we talk about, governance and things like that. That is important. But if you start small, then those elements will be small as well. And as you evolve, then there will be sort of devolution where you say, well, governance is now a separate work stream that we need to think about. That is important. So all of those things, those building blocks will eventually look become crystal clear. But when you start day one and you try to unpack all these things and you throw governance in, stakeholders are just going to look at this and be like, wow, this is a really, really tall mountain to climb. We can't do this. And that's, you know, earlier when you mentioned the statistics of, you know, say, you know, 7% of these organizations has already sort of piloted automation technologies, but they sort of struggle to find traction and then 20% of them sort of just falling to scale.

Yeah, absolutely. Because I think choosing the right processes in the beginning, as you mentioned earlier, is the right thing. So start small, which was the right one, was the low-hanging fruits. And lots of these big organizations we have worked with, they say, okay, this sounds great, all these technologies are awesome, but They nearly see it like, okay, we have one shot at it. I don't know why they think that sometimes. And then they will obviously, they will take, they want to take a big one. So a big one which has been problematic in the past or is problematic at the moment. Sure, you have to concentrate on it, but eventually, and not too far into the future, very often they pick these big projects with the complexity where you you need all this governance straight away. And, uh, yeah, and that's, that's where it gets really, really hard. And then they, they nearly see it like a waterfall project. Uh, that's what we see as well with lots of things in local government. They, they— I think this is how local government, or generally government, is structured. Often say they have to nearly address it like a waterfall project because it's like a one-off project they have to get budget for. Um, but we know digital transformation and process automation and all these initiatives is continuous thing. It's It's you do something, you analyze, you improve, and then it continues again. So this is where it is more successful in organizations who embrace that. If you are like a big financial corporation and you still take digital transformation as a waterfall project, yeah, it's hard. It's hard. You have to approach it. So that's one reason. But organizations, as we mentioned earlier, they really fall often into the same traps. So the last 5 points we addressed, the pitfalls we addressed, are to be avoided. I hope these 5 points have been useful and gave you a few pointers, few insights. If that was useful to you, please leave us feedback on the automationguides.net website or give us some feedback the podcast platform where you hear that. If you like that episode, please give us 5 stars. Yeah, and as always, reach out to us to have further discussions if you're interested. Yeah, yeah, check out our community on theautomationguys.net. We will be really, really excited to have you there and have more conversations and discussions about all things process and automation. So Yeah, we will be back with more episodes, getting our 100 episodes in very, very soon. That will be very exciting. We will be back here next week, and until then, let's automate it.