5 IT Issues Holding Back Your Digital Transformation

Digital transformation isn’t easy under the best of circumstances, and it can be almost impossible when IT roadblocks get in the way.

These five all-too-common IT issues are easy to identify, and solving them will put your business back on track to realize the many, many benefits of digital transformation.

Too many paper-based, manual processes

Paper-based, manual processes, often supported by Excel workbooks, are an opportunity to advance the value proposition of digital transformation. When companies can reduce or eliminate these processes, the benefits of digital transformation begin to appear. Example manual processes include:

1. Drawing control.
2. Contracts management.
3. Warranty claims management.
4. Regulatory submissions.
5. Performance reports for management.
6. Various informal status tracking systems.

Unlike paper-based data, a company’s digital data can be shared and analyzed to improve operations. Engineering leadership can champion several strategies for digitally transforming manual processes:

1. Moving the manual processes to a software package that you already operate.
2. Implementing a software package or a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering.
3. Implementing a custom application based on a low-code platform.

An unsatisfactory strategy is to transition manual processes to fillable PDF forms and store those in an electronic content management (ECM) system. This approach, while appealingly cheap, does not advance digital transformation because the result remains unstructured data that is difficult to access.

No integration among IT systems

Some companies operate with limited or no integration among their IT systems. Examples include:

1. Design systems can’t access inventory data.
2. Reporting systems rely heavily on Excel to integrate data.
3. Product return processes don’t see sales data.
4. Manufacturing systems don’t see operating cost data.
5. Forecast data is not readily available to other departments.
6. Logistics staff rely on public data sources for internal data.

Combining data from multiple IT systems for reporting and data analytics, often called business intelligence (BI), will advance digital transformation. Improved data access can be achieved through various strategies, including:

1. Replacing informal application integration and reporting applications with a formal application based on an extract, transform and load (ETL) software package.
2. Implementing a highly structured data warehouse for BI or a semi-structured data lakehouse for BI and data science.
3. Dynamically integrating data sources by implementing a sophisticated data analytics software package.

Inadequate strategies for integrating IT systems include:

1. Routinely converting Excel data into database tables. This approach leaves all the related systems dependent on brittle Excel workbooks that require constant monitoring and revision.
2. Dumping data from multiple IT systems into a single, unstructured data lake. This approach forces end-users to cope with the impossible tasks of developing complex queries and handling data integration.

Collaboration struggles

Some companies struggle with employee and partner collaboration. Examples include:

1. Multiple employees can’t work with the same data concurrently.
2. Employees can’t share project data with partners.
3. Electronic connectivity with product and service vendors is limited to email and attachments.
4. IT systems don’t support the languages used by staff.

Engineers can improve collaboration and advance digital transformation through various strategies, including:

1. Sharing documents in a cloud repository.
2. Implementing a simple custom workflow application based on a low-code platform.
3. Allowing external partner staff access to internal systems using well-defined roles that control the extent of the access.
4. Upgrading IT systems to support more languages.

An undesirable strategy for collaboration is to use the partner-operated collaboration environment. This approach typically gives the partner too much control over the work and may increase cybersecurity risks.

Overlapping IT systems

Some companies operate too much software with overlapping functionality. This situation is often the result of failure to prune IT systems after mergers. Examples include working with:

1. Multiple ERP systems.
2. Multiple manufacturing systems.
3. Multiple electronic document management systems.
4. Microsoft 365 and Google Docs.
5. OneDrive, iCloud and other cloud document repositories.
6. Numerous brands of data visualization software because they are typically free to start.

Projects to prune the IT systems are rarely fun and can be costly and disruptive. However, delaying the inevitable also postpones the benefits of cost-cutting and digital transformation.

You can prune IT systems to simplify the environment for digital transformation with these strategies:

1. Move the data from multiple IT systems to the surviving system and decommission the abandoned systems.
2. If you are dissatisfied with the performance of an IT system, use the opportunity to select and implement a new system.
3. Select Microsoft 365 or Google Docs. Ensure all new documents are created in the selected environment. If documents in the system being decommissioned need updating, move them to the chosen environment first.
4. Choose the surviving brand of data visualization software.

An unsuccessful strategy is bringing all the data from overlapping systems into a data lake or lakehouse. This strategy:

1. Creates a data lake or lakehouse with high operational complexity leading to increased costs and low system availability.
2. Forces end-users to cope with the impossible tasks of developing complex queries. This approach makes it almost impossible to verify the accuracy and completeness of most queries.

Not modernizing IT systems

Some companies repeatedly defer modernizing IT systems, falsely believing the costs exceed the benefits. Due to technology limitations, older IT systems make digital transformation more complex. Examples include:

1. Failing to rationalize overlapping software packages.
2. Deferring software package version upgrades.
3. Not retiring systems with few end-users.
4. Delaying application integration proposals.

Engineers should try these strategies for modernizing IT systems, enhancing functionality in the environment and advancing digital transformation:

1. Replace some IT systems by implementing a software package or a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering and converting in-progress and historical data.
2. Upgrade software package versions where available.
3. Act on application integration proposals.

A radical modernizing strategy is implementing a replacement SaaS offering and abandoning much of the historical data stored in legacy IT systems. While this strategy is appealing because it’s low cost and advances digital transformation, it risks losing data that organizations often undervalue.

Many companies are successful despite these IT issues, even though they increase costs and risks while reducing net income. However, the continuing pressure for cost reductions and competition for capital means IT issues have escalated into significant impediments. Overcoming IT issues will advance digital transformation and reduce operating costs.