Traditional businesses throughout the world have long realized that digital transformation is the way to go if they want to succeed in today’s fast-paced environment.
Let us fast forward to the present day. There’s usually no dedicated landline, talks take place via text or another real-time app, and management doesn’t drive to a dismal little office or physical location to “deal with problems.”
Most experts would agree that today’s virtual work world’s flexibility, creativity, and fast pace are far superior to yesterday’s slow-moving, manual environment, until they realize that they are probably going to handle more decisions and activities in one day than most people born a couple of generations ago handled in a year.
Adults make around 35,000 decisions per day, on average. Consider how many decisions a CEO or project manager might have to make in a single day.
The incorporation of digital technology into all aspects of a business is referred to as digital transformation. It profoundly alters how business is conducted and value is delivered to customers. It boosts efficiency, transparency, customer experience, staff engagement, and culture, while also saving time and money.
Because the epidemic has disrupted traditional corporate procedures, digitalization has become especially more important in the post-Covid-19 era. As a result, an increasing number of non-IT businesses are digitizing their traditional processes and redesigning their products and services.
Why Digital Transformation is Important in Project Management?
Digital transformation is a simple notion to grasp but a difficult one to put into practice. These difficulties stem from a failure to activate the entire company. According to a recent MarketPulse poll conducted by IDG, about one-fifth of line-of-business customers who could be involved in digital transformation are not.
Understanding why digital transformation is vital is the first step toward seamless integration.
Because of on-time project delivery, firms who establish and implement a digital transformation plan realize improved revenues, increased performance, and better client retention.
According to Accenture’s Technology Vision 2021 research, the top ten percent of organizations leading tech innovation grow their revenue two to three times faster than their competitors. In the same poll, it was discovered that:
Nine out of ten enterprises (90 %) and IT executives agree that their firms must accelerate their digital transformation with cloud at its core in order to remain agile and resilient.
The rate of digital transformation for their company is accelerating, according to two-thirds of executives (63 %).
In 2021, more than nine out of ten (93%) leaders believe their company innovated with urgency and a call to action.
Digital Transformation in Project Management
How project managers work is evolving as a result of digital revolution. While project managers have always been in charge of project planning, procurement, and execution, they are also at the forefront of implementing new project management technologies.
In truth, most project managers have already implemented process automation and workflow technology, even if only in a few areas such as reporting and scheduling. And the majority of them recognize that using digital project management tools can help them improve their project management skills.
There are essentially no sectors of a company that have not been impacted or transformed by digitization. It plays a critical role in a company’s success, whether it’s communication, marketing, business development, or product development.
Another crucial area where digitalization has yielded positive results is project management. The project management process has been elevated to a new level thanks to modern digital tools.
With that in mind, here are the five most significant impacts of digitalization on project management.
Collaboration Has Become Extremely Streamlined
Without incorrect email exchanges or excessive Zoom meetings, new digital tools enable real-time cooperation among all participants of a project. Positive relations, more time for creative blue-skying, and better employee engagement are all benefits of increased collaboration led by project managers.
It’s Easier to Communicate Among Project Team Members
COVID-19’s impact on physical gathering and distant work has ensured that communication method is here to stay. Email, the once-dominant mode of communication, is now being displaced by real-time communication platforms, which allow for instant connection between physical office buildings and distant offices.
It’s Now Easier to Allocate and Manage Resources
Project managers must be able to see what is happening at the time. This is made possible by digital tools with advanced interfaces. They can use digital tools to manage resources, allocate tasks, and examine a variety of project-related information.
Now you may see the results. The Trump Methodology
Days are gone when a project leader would spend the majority of his or her time trying to persuade others to follow their procedures and submit reports. It’s all about encouraging work that produces quantifiable results in today’s digital world.
Data, not Guesswork, is used to Make Decisions
The more digitized a business is, the much more big data and critical success factors it has access to in order to make choices. Once data is centralized and accessible, it becomes a treasure mine of data for project management, labor analysis, and budget estimates.
This useful data can also be applied to project management processes involving reports, compliance documents, and other knowledge assets.
Ownership is demonstrated by Project Teams and Team Members
Collaboration is a crucial benefit of improved digital capabilities, and it does more than simply benefit the internal project team or firm; it also instils a sense of ownership in everyone who uses the platform.
Users who understand how their individual cog affects the company wheel are more likely to spot areas for improvement, predict and schedule their task workloads more successfully, plan future initiatives, and feel more connected to the project management team as they see the company’s successful project outcomes.
How Can a Program Manager Assist With Digital Transformation?
To thrive in digital transformation, you simply must have your project management up to par with the influx of technologies that are coming into your firm.
Many businesses make the mistake of believing that digital transformation is a decision that begins and ends with the CEO or the IT department.
While executive buy-in is critical, most digitization projects should prioritize project management to ensure that your objectives (which should be defined ahead of time) are met.
Clear goals and communication are one of the most important parts of your digital transformation program management to ensure that your company stays on track.
Challenges During a Digital Transformation
Every business is unique and will confront unique challenges. We’ve compiled a list of the most important ones, which are likely to have an impact on most businesses.
The needs of the customer are overlooked: Companies have traditionally worked in isolated divisions, each of which is accountable for a certain role inside the organization. Customers’ interests are only valued at the highest levels of decision-making in such a framework, which poses a risk.
Employees start focusing on the output rather than the outcome when it comes to actual work that customers have to interact with (marketing materials, customer service, product, etc.). It becomes a matter of making a booklet rather than imparting information, of closing support tickets rather than assisting consumers.
Client Feedback is Limited: As a follow-up to the preceding point, if customers’ requirements aren’t prioritized, it’s likely that client input isn’t sought out or correctly collected when it does. This makes it much more difficult to find out how to improve the product or service, especially when reorganizing everything around digital capabilities.
Even for a major corporation, digital transformation is a startup scenario. It’s full of unknowns, and providing the proper solutions to the market necessitates continual feedback from clients.
Decisions are not based on Data: It is significantly easier to acquire and evaluate data when developing custom software. Most businesses have financial information, but not much in the way of usage statistics. As a result, decisions are made based on intuition. To use data to support one’s judgments, one must adopt a new mentality and develop a new set of internal competencies.
What Role Does Technology Play In Digital Transformation Success?
Upper management must plan meticulously for digital change. While the shift to new technology may appear inevitable, transforming traditional firms into digital powerhouses will not be accomplished through CEO willpower or the adoption of off-the-shelf digital capabilities. And it is here that CEOs who want to stay ahead of the digital revolution must be cautious in their digital transformation approach.
To begin, picking the correct tech path necessitates a thorough grasp of company procedures and culture, as well as matching that knowledge with the ideal platform that can function in tandem with it. Any company’s executives and experts are ideally qualified to lead the charge on digital transformation and achieve high success rates.
The best way to do this is to use the citizen developer concept. These individuals, who are basically leaders and investors in a sector, are the most likely to come up with, develop, and incorporate solutions that are applicable to their specific field of expertise. Putting technology in the hands of these citizens developers will pay off handsomely in terms of traditional firms’ successful digital transformation.
In a way that no other traditional or ERP system can, no-code solutions empower citizen developers. Users can design adaptable custom solutions that can change as a company grows and can be managed across digital channels, linking people, data, and technology.
Many businesses have long recognized that digital transformation is altering processes and management requirements, particularly in these three key areas:
Dashboards that can be customized
The ability to construct dashboards allows project managers to observe how it affects projects, finances, people concerns, and other factors in real time. The ability to configure these dashboards so that just the information important to the team is visible simplifies and streamlines procedures and encourages wise decision-making.
Truth from a Single Source
Companies provide a single source of reliable information by aggregating project data into a single location. Isolated technologies exist in every company to some degree, but a strong software solution will allow you to connect them into a single, easy-to-use, real-time portal that all team members can access.
Workflows that are Adaptable
When it comes to digital transformation, the term “Ultimate Flexibility” comes to mind. You’re not engaging in the digital future if your project management solution doesn’t allow you to easily and quickly construct unique workflows and tools–and then dismantle or replace them just as quickly.
Conclusion
Regardless of how you look at it, digital transformation is a long-term undertaking. As a result, the program manager must be able to adapt to changes in an industry or a market in order to meet the changing business objectives. In this regard, program management in digital transformation requires flexibility and scalability.
The influence of the digital revolution is being felt across all industries, according to a statistic from the Technology Vision 2021 report: 83 percent of CEOs feel that their company’s business and technology goals are becoming inextricably linked, if not indistinguishable.
Alain Onesti, suggests that businesses that invest in technology solutions with strong skills that allow them to adapt to business changes and technological developments would achieve better results and emerge as undisputed industry leaders.
