The challenge within each and every organization when it comes to Digital Investments is controlling the current and future budgets. That becomes more challenging in the age of digital transformation where high costs arise. It even becomes critical when investments go wrong, or even when digital leaders invest in the wrong products, services, processes, and people.
According to a report by IDC, digital transformation spend by businesses worldwide is expected to hit 1.7 trillion dollars in 2019.IDC
Getting Business, Finance, and IT together
What’s meant here by Business are the decisions taken around investments in digital transformation. That requires financing in order to kick-off new products and services or even continuously developing them. That usually requires a Business Case to prove all the benefits, cost deduction, and added value behind each investment.
But, what happens when companies invest in the wrong IT roadmaps, products, or services? How often does that happen? and what needs to be done to make sure that investments go right?
Usually, companies measure their investments by measuring certain KPIs such as ROI. However, some investments require major changes especially in IT infrastructure, even before producing any results. So figuring out the wrong investment could be too late and the loss could be very high. What to do?
Companies are wasting millions on digital investment because they are measuring the wrong KPINick Ismail , nformation-age.com
Getting it right!
Use MVP in case of doubts
It is always recommended to start with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) concept and scale it up in the right way.
Use Lean and Adaptive approaches for scalability
Your KPIs must be measured biweekly, or weekly, or even daily in fast-paced environments. Good KPIs must use analytics to get them analysed correctly and to help organizations make the right decisions toward the right development and scalability roadmaps. Lean your decisions on the data produced by relevant KPIs you define, adapt your plan, and continuously improve your product by scaling it up.
Stepback when you see investment goes wrong!
It’s better to lose 50% of your investment instead of 100%. The best for sure is to win 100%!
As a digital leader, it’s your job to make sure that decisions about investments are valid, profitable, and fulfil business needs. However, when things go wrong, it would be wiser to stop the project or adjust the plan. I’ve seen companies losing millions of USD investments because of wrong decisions. What’s worse is that, despite the failure with the implementation, companies sometimes prefer to continue till the end, rather than losing what’s been invested, and then the loss would be much bigger and worse.
Organizations are not only losing money when digital investments go wrong, but as well time-to-market which is even more critical for maintaining a competitive advantage and to stay ahead in the markets. Adam M. Skafi
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