Digital transformation initiatives are often difficult and complex – but they’re worth it.

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New technology always comes with new challenges and risks. In an era dominated by privacy and security concerns, it sometimes seems like it’s best to opt for low-tech or legacy methods of managing areas of your business – even if productivity suffers.

The problem with this approach is that it quickly leads to complacence, which eventually leads to obsolescence. In a competitive, tech-enabled market, staying put often means being left behind.

New technologies definitely give employers and managers new concerns to address, but that’s no reason to shy away from development. Instead, leaders need to identify the real value-drivers behind digital transformation and deploy solutions that address their new concerns.

True Digital Transformation is More Than Just Tech

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Digital transformation involves tech-enabled change, but it’s also about wide-scale organizational change. True digital transformation demands rethinking some fundamental assumptions about the way your business operates.

As a result, it often disrupts long-established ways of doing things. If company culture doesn’t adjust accordingly, this disruption can lead to significant business problems that demand immediate attention – but it wouldn’t be accurate to say that tech itself “caused” these problems.

Streamlining operations and process management is inherently valuable for any organization. Enhancing employee productivity, enabling innovation, and accelerating time to market all predict success. But just like any other kind of business expansion, these benefits must be grounded on robust, scalable infrastructure in order to generate real value.

Part of that infrastructure consists of technologies like cloud-enabled computing and remote employee tracking software. Another part of that infrastructure consists of abstract, human elements, like how well your remote team works together, how secure your processes are, and how well you handle your customer data.

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Why Digital Transformation Initiatives Fail

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According to a study by Everest Group, more than 70% of all digital transformation initiatives fail to provide business value. Experts often cite lack of vision, underwhelming senior management buy-in, and substandard expertise as core reasons behind failed transformation initiatives.

These issues create ripple effects that go all the way down the enterprise chain. Everything from employee time clock software to enterprise resource planning tools must follow a singular vision, with clear leadership and high-quality implementation. When these elements aren’t in their proper place, the transformation effort can suffer.

There are many different digital transformation goals you can pursue. The details of your strategy will be different depending on which goals you focus on. For example, if you wish to streamline remote work and improve productivity, full-featured employee computer monitoring software will play a major role in your success.

On the other hand, if your primary focus is automating manual processes and becoming more agile, you may need to shift towards a different set of technologies. Employee time tracking will still play a role, but the way you use the technology may change in important ways.

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Keep People at the Center of Digital Transformation

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Technology isn’t actually the root cause of the problems it appears to create. Ultimately, people are the single most important determinant of digital transformation success. The way your employees use -- and embrace -- the technology you implement is what matters.

This is why it’s important to combine new technology implementations with comprehensive employee performance monitoring tools. You need to make sure your employees are using the technology safely, securely, and correctly in order for your transformative initiatives to produce results.

Computer activity monitoring plays a bigger role ensuring digital transformation success than most enterprise leaders realize. Simply giving new tools to your employees isn’t enough to guarantee your organization will meet its goals. You need to record and improve performance by using an employee computer monitoring software as your team works towards enterprise goals.

Capture employee activity data and analyze it to generate insights about the success of your digital transformation initiatives. This way, your employees remain at the center of your organization’s transformation, and their compliance is the critical factor that determines success.

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Managing Cybersecurity Risk When Implementing New Technology

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One of the greatest challenges that come along with new technology deployments is increased cybersecurity risks. Accommodating remote workers and building out cloud computing infrastructure can radically change your organization’s cybersecurity risk profile.

If you don’t take the appropriate steps to secure your organization during digital transformation initiatives, you may end up exposing your employees to new risks.

This is another area where computer activity monitoring has an important role to play. It is not always possible to guarantee security against unknown threats and vulnerabilities. However, you can identify unsafe behaviors and put protocols in place to avoid preventable security breaches and losses.

Using an employee computer monitoring software as workers acclimate themselves to new technologies will help information security teams identify the right policies to put in place. It’s critical that your cybersecurity policy takes real-world user behaviors into account, instead of laying out an oversimplified ideal of enterprise workflows.

Data Privacy Compliance is Part of Transformation Culture

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Data privacy compliance is another common risk that organizations face when undergoing digital transformation. When the way your business collects, stores, and interprets customer data changes, putting the proper safeguards in place can be difficult. Very few organizations get it right from the very beginning.

However, there are national standards and best practices that companies can follow to ensure best-in-class data privacy protection. These include Europe’s GDPR regulation and California’s CCPA. Adopting compliance standards that meet or exceed these ones can help protect technology implementations against disaster.

While many of the specific rules and regulations differ from place to place, some of them are universal. The underlying principle that organizations are responsible for protecting the privacy and security of their customers is the foundation of both regulatory frameworks.

You can’t effectively protect customer data from exposure if you aren’t sure how your employees actually handle that data. Employee computer monitoring software helps organizations guarantee that their processes are compliant with data protection standards, and gives leadership clear visibility into how well employees internalize those standards.

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Used Appropriately, Technology Reduces Risk

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While it may seem like implementing new technology can create problems where they didn’t previously exist, this isn’t exactly the case. Improper implementation can create problems. Unsecured workflows can create problems. Technology itself is still one of the most useful problem-solving tools out there – when used the right way.

Tech-enabled workflows boast higher productivity and lower costs. When implemented alongside secure, compliance-oriented computer activity monitoring solutions, they also provide superior protection against cybersecurity risks and data mishandling.

Today’s business leaders need to identify the key value drivers of digital transformation and implement solutions that protect users from new risks. Technology has a powerful role to play in protecting user identities and keeping private data secure, and it falls on transformation leaders to put those tools in the right hands and achieve those results.