A number of interesting findings emerged from a recent digital transformation report by ‘Third Stage Consulting’.

Successful transformation duration in mid-size companies ($50 – $1B) was 14-16 months while in large companies (0vewr $1B) it was 31-34 months which is interesting because the duration of the ‘Proven Path’ was 18 months.

The variables with the most significant impact on implementation time and cost include:-

Level of organisational change support

• Those that invested the most in organisational change experienced lower duration and cost. 51%-54% of all companies who implemented traditional programmes experienced ‘operational disruption’ after go live which included being unable to ship product, close the books and increased employee frustration. This is not a technology issue, it is an implementation issue. When transformation is seen as an IT project and follows a standard IT implementation plan and not a full business transformation plan then operational disruption is significantly more likely and can lead to increased internal cost of implementation of between 50% to 300%.

The variables with the most significant impact upon operational disruption included:-

• Clarity of business processes – those that spent more time defining clean business processes early in their transformations were less likely to experience disruption
• Level of executive alignment – those that rated higher in executive, stakeholder and project team alignment were less likely to experience disruption
• Time and effort spent conference room pilots – the more thoroughly a company tested its process and systems, the less likely they were to experience disruption.
• Investment in organisational change, education and training – those that implemented more complete and effective change strategies and education were less likely to experience disruption.