Let's address a difficult question about digital transformation: Is it actually profitable?
For a vast majority of businesses, the answer is a firm no. A widely cited McKinsey study found that a staggering 84% of executives feel their digital transformation efforts are not succeeding. This points to a significant disconnect between technology investment and business outcomes.
Most organizations have already taken significant steps. You may have migrated key systems from on-premises servers to cloud platforms or embraced the flexibility of subscription-based software models. On the surface, these decisions represent technological progress.
But are these initiatives delivering the promised financial returns and competitive advantages?
The core issue isn't whether the new technology works, but whether the organization is realizing the full value from its investment. If your experience mirrors the industry-wide data, your digital projects have likely failed to produce the level of profitability you initially projected.
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The reasons behind the failure are complex, but there are 3 major impacting trends that businesses are reporting.
According to research from Forbes, the vast majority of companies are failing to achieve full value from their investments in technology and there are 3 major impacting factors:
1. No Plan
2. Skills and Strategy are not aligned
3. Speed

Surprisingly, most businesses have no revenue or profitability expectations for their digital transformation. According to Gartner, a staggering 77% of strategists say that their company´s digital efforts are missing revenue expectations.
Forbes.com has found that 95% of executives say that their strategies and their skills are not aligned. Just consider for a moment how unlikely it is, that you will create change when you don´t have the people or the skills to do it?
Now, much of your success will depend on how quickly and how well you enable your workforce to realize the value of not only new technologies that you aquire, but also the technologies that have already implmented.
"Proof is in the pudding" as they say. Let us show you, how we will make your Digital Skills work. It will most likely be the best spent 30 minutes of your entire project.
With the facts of this blog in mind, many businesses are learning that Digital transformation is about skills. Not technology.
This is why executives are now realizing the rise of the skills-first economy.
Now, your Skills strategy and the path you chooose will determine, more decisively than ever, your company´s financial success.
The benefits
When companies do get their skills and strategies aligned for profitable tech transformations, the benefits are hard to miss.
In fact, businesses that do get skills right are seeing average increases in profitability of 23% according to Forbes.com.
To realize increases like that, most executives in the skills-first economy will need to think hard about a plan to get their skills and technologies in sync. Fast.
When done correctly, such a plan and its implementation can lead to amazing future proof results. And don´t forget, that by no means is initial failure the end of the road, a successful turnaround is always possible.
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