Transformative Technology Transitions: Five Challenges Your Enterprise May Face

Transformative Technology Transitions: Five Challenges Your Enterprise May Face

The Market for enterprise mobility solutions is projected to grow at a staggering CAGR of 28.9% from 2022-2027. Statista claims that by 2025, there will be nearly 75.44 billion Internet of things technology (IoT) devices. Unified Communications spending is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 4.1% (Gartner). And 91% of Fortune 1000 companies are investing more in Big Data and AI. 

In today’s increasingly modern world, if your enterprise is not keeping up with all the new technology, its dying. 

And quickly. 

But transitioning from old to new comes with many challenges. According to McKinsey, 70% of large-scale transformational initiatives don’t even make it to completion. 

So, as your enterprise seeks out more transformational solutions, here are five hurdles to a successful large-scale technology transition that you and your IT department have to watch out for. 

Problem #1: Resistance to adoption

Human inertia – especially technology inertia – is hard to overcome. It can feel impossible to get employees to leave their old way of doing things and move toward new and better tools. 

An interesting survey by PWC found that while 92% of C-suite executives say their technology experience their company provides is satisfactory… 68% of staff members agree. One shortcoming many enterprises have is understanding and investing in their entire infrastructure of technology and not just in siloed experiences. When technology doesn’t work together or fit into an employee’s workflow, it becomes difficult to adopt. 

And education surrounding the new technology is wholly important. If people aren’t confident in a technology, they may revert back to an old and more comfortable way of doing something. Good news, though, in that same PWC survey, employees reported a willingness to spend about 15 hours per month learning a new technology. That’s across sector and across select major countries. 

Some ways Harvard Business Review suggests to encourage adoption after a technology transition are:

• Incentivizing the technology use through gamification apps or periodic competence appraisals and rewards. 
• Investing in the infrastructure as a whole, not just in siloed spurts. Supportive technologies are just as important to the key transformative ones. 
• Make sure to include a robust technology education program as a part of your technology transition plan. 

Problem #2: Lack of Budget

As discussed earlier, it’s often more effective to conduct a full digital transformation as opposed to a handful of siloed technology changes. Because when technology works together, it works better. 

But that’s expensive. 

There is an irony that plagues most IT departments. Implementing digital transformations may promise to reduce operational costs. But companies have such high current operational costs that they can’t approve the necessary budgets to really make a full transformational initiative work. 

That’s when it’s time to turn to your complex invoices. It’s not rare for enterprises to waste upwards of 20% of their budget on less-than-ideal technology contracts. So, one huge way to free up working capital in your environment is to get control and visibility of those complex invoices and look for new carriers & renegotiate contracts. A tiring process in itself. 

Check out Cannon Group’s Strategic Sourcing process here →

Problem #3: Poor Change Management Strategy

Many IT departments often underestimate the scale and scope of a transition. Planning and outlining the resources you need ahead of time is important to get right. If you aren’t planning for the many failures you may encounter, then you are planning to fail. 

Along with resource planning, a true vision needs to be set and, with it, strong communication of and alignment to that vision are key. As Brent Gleeson, a contributor to Forbes, puts it, two things that can kill a transformative initiative are under-communicating a powerful vision or over-communicating a poor vision.

If you are working inside of a large organization, it can be easy to neglect some of the stakeholders and their needs as they relate to a certain technology. When you’re planning your change management strategy, you should take a deep inventory of everyone who this new technology would affect. Getting their initial buy-in can be helpful later on. 

Lastly, strong project management and clear communication along the way will get your initiative through the finish line. Without clear deadlines, weekly status updates, and a project manager pushing things forward, transitions can drag on. 

Which can lead to team fatigue and, ultimately, failure.  

We assign a dedicated project manager to every one of your projects. They, along with our experienced negotiators and financial analysts, ensure every short-term and overarching deadlines are hit with efficiency and cost-effectiveness at top of mind. 

Problem #4: Not having enough agility

If you don’t have the budget you’d like, then you definitely don’t have the agility you need. Break/fix fires are everywhere in IT departments and take up time – your only real non-renewable resource. 

Most problems teams face when setting out to accomplish larger technology transitions is that their team’s attention to the project is laser focused at first but diminishes as other urgent priorities pop up. Because larger scopes have larger timelines, it’s very easy for them to get put on the backburner and eventually go cold, so to speak.

Digging into your infrastructure for efficiency savings and freeing up working capital is one way to help with this agility. But often, tapping into managed/outsourced IT solutions can help add agility to your in-house team members. You can either outsource the more mundane day-to-day tasks such as complex invoice management — of which many people still do by spreadsheeting (which is a bad word in our CIM program) — or you can look for help with the actual technology transition itself. 

Check out Cannon Group’s Complex Invoice Management capabilities here →

Problem #5: Gaps in Digital Understanding

According to a survey taken by Capgemini, 77% of companies say their team is actually missing the digital skills necessary to transition to more transformational solutions. When staring at a major technology infrastructure change, unless someone on your team has direct experience with a new solution, there can be a large learning curve. 

This is where expertise is invaluable. Reaching out to consultants who have tangible and successful experience with major transitions and newer technologies can save your enterprise from extremely costly mistakes you might otherwise encounter. 

Check out Cannon Group's Case Studies here →

Get In Touch With Our End-to-end Technology Consultants 

At Cannon Group, we are an end-to-end technology consulting and managed services firm who can help assess, migrate, orchestrate, and manage any technology. All while using a combination of integrated software and human expertise to gain full visibility on your IT spend and, in turn, keep your costs contained both now and in the future. We’ve been driving digital transformations for 20+ years and have helped hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies. 

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