Last week, ProcessMaker’s CTO, Taylor Dondich, was interviewed on BPM.com’s podcast. He called out six key trends impacting the BPM industry. This post will explore the failed promises of digital transformation and how it’s affecting the market.
The Promise of Digital Transformation
Many expected digital transformation to fundamentally change how businesses operate and deliver value to their customers by incorporating digital technology into all areas of the business. The goal was to digitize all business processes. Staff would interact with these processes via their laptops, the Web or through a plethora of mobile devices. One of the biggest problems to working today is resetting the expectations created by the over-promised digital transformation hype. The sweeping changes that were supposed to be created by such a massive shift from manual processes to digital workflows were expected to fundamentally alter how a business operates. Prediction of cost savings, better customer satisfaction, and agility have been realized only in small pockets of most businesses.
Value Creation Conundrum
Enterprise leaders are struggling to create the value promised by their sizable investments in digital transformation. In his contributions to The Enterprisers Project, John Marcante, CIO of Vanguard, points to well-established market index statistics. “Just look at the S&P 500. In 1958, U.S. corporations remained on that index for an average of 61 years, according to the American Enterprise Foundation. By 2011, it was 18 years. Today, companies are being replaced on the S&P approximately every two weeks. Technology has driven this shift, and companies that want to succeed must understand how to merge technology with strategy.”The shift to a digital culture requires organizations to continually challenge how employees work. Business experts assumed this new paradigm would foster experimentation, data-driven decision making and the ability to rapidly adjust. It’s uncomfortable to make this transformation.
