Digital technologies is a priority for six in ten company executives as they look to accelerate digital transformation projects. But why do so many fail? It’s because for many companies the transformation means managing the huge change from traditional legacy system methods to becoming digitally-savvy.
Toby Mankertz, Principal Advisor – Business Transformation at Columbus UK, learned the hard way from his company’s own global transformation project and shares his lessons learned – the four key areas that must be addressed if benefits are to be achieved.
Over the next few years investment in digital transformation is expected to reach $3.4 trillion by 2026, with Western Europe making up a quarter of all investments.
The demand for IT consultancies will be higher than ever. This should shake IT consultancies into switching up their tactics to maximise return on investment by lowering needless costs, deliver higher quality services, and uncover improved services for future offerings.
Four key pillars of support will be required to support a strong digital backbone: readily available data, implementing digital project management tool to help relieve the pressure of operating globally, having a fixed billing system to ease growing financial burdens, and adopt an evergreen approach towards change for opportunity to grow further in the future.
Pressure is mounting for IT consultancies to keep up with technology and market changes. An increasing number of hybrid workforces in particular, has highlighted communication and data accessibility issues.
With IT consultancies also dealing with rising inflation, increasing customer demands, and more complex client projects, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with competitors.
This is why IT consultancies need a strong digital backbone to demonstrate what they preach to clients – from easily accessible data to efficiently managed resources. Without these capabilities, businesses will find future growth challenging.
No matter their location, businesses can improve resource management and accessibility by adopting digital project management tools. This will allow for capacity and skills to be better utilised by IT consulting firms.
Improved global workforce coverage will be gained with a frictionless operating model to help unify systems. By adopting the correct digital support, it will be effortless for IT consultancies to utilise the right people with the right skillset for any project without having to worry about where they are based.
This is reflected in a recent report which found efficiency has improved by around 42% when businesses adopt a digital transformation project.
The IT consulting industry is rapidly increasing in size, with many businesses now operating from offices across multiple geographies. However, disparate legacy systems have left many firms with poor data visibility. Siloed information can negatively impact on the speed in which the information is received, the reliability, and validity of the data – three crucial factors that compromise the end result of a project.
Here’s where digital transformation can play a key role. The implementation of digital project management tools can create a single data source, which is accessible for employees no matter their location or legal entity.
The management of large-scale projects will benefit greatly from a digital transformation strategy that increases data visibility and accuracy. Timely data insights for instance, will help project managers reduce client project delays as defects can be spotted and sorted as and when they happen.
It can also be beneficial for businesses to have an intelligence tool to collate, process, and analyse copious amounts of data from both external and internal sources in order to enhance report performance. For instance, actionable insights such as the ‘health’ of projects can help project managers to introduce effective project management practices across the whole organisation.
Managing cash flow and late payments are constant challenges for many IT consulting businesses. PwC research from September 2022 revealed that the length taken for invoices to be paid had reach a five-year-high. Here, digital technologies can ease the financial burden.
The right digital transformation strategy and project management tools provide accurate financial recognition of projects, especially fixed price for both internal and external projects. So, for instance, you can have just one billing solution instead of five separate systems, eliminating internal billing and ‘lunching’ from each other – providing an immediate reduction in the manual workload for many employees.
A singular system can be helpful for finance teams as all projects will follow a singular pricing strategy instead of different strategies that can be harder to track. A one-stop pricing and billing solution eliminates any arguments or disputes internally about “wooden money” – costs, margins, budgets/allocations – because all departments will be following one pricing strategy.
The digital transformation process can often lead to disruptions throughout a business with many changes happening at once. To help businesses fulfil their goals of becoming a true global consultancy with one source of the truth, an evergreen IT management strategy provides a cloud-based system, capable of sanctioning smaller, incremental updates across the year. This helps IT consultants to constantly improve and develop the business, instead of having a big yearly update which can be a long-drawn-out, complicated process of learning and change.
Through implementing an evergreen IT strategy, IT consulting businesses can be safeguarded from future updates by system providers. It will provide businesses with a regular stream of security improvements to protect and solve possible bugs or cyber issues. This means businesses experience minimal operating effects and downtime when applying updates, stay at the forefront of technology changes, and achieve their overall digital transformation goals of having one source of the truth.
Case in point: Embrace digital technologies now to achieve business growth goals sooner
With technology constantly advancing and the fast-paced nature of the industry, it is important for IT consulting businesses to have solutions that are scalable with their growth goals and objectives.
A solid and secure digital backbone is key for any solution, so choosing the right one is important, especially with evergreen being the next generation of cloud solution.
Look no further than Columbus for an example of how an IT consulting business can implement a large standard and next generation scalable digital transformation solution and never look back!
Since replacing its legacy ERP system with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations, Columbus has seen a 9% growth in Q3 of 2022, however this is no surprise as it’s the 6th consecutive quarter of organic growth for Columbus, making them front runners in the industry.
Digital technologies will leverage your business to the peak of its powers!
IT consultancies that invest in digital technologies and update systems will reap the rewards now and for many years to come. The ability to gain quicker reaction times to market movements, have frictionless business operations, and easily access data for everyone no matter their location, all depends on whether businesses are ready to take the digital leap.
