The Last Digital Mile: The Secret to Digital Transformation Success

The difficulty of digital transformation has been well documented over the years with many studies finding that a large share of transformation projects fail to deliver their targeted outcomes.

One of these studies—a McKinsey Global Survey on digital transformations—reported that more than eight in ten respondents said their organization had undertaken a transformation initiative in the five years prior. However, only 16% of respondents said their organizations’ digital transformations successfully improved performance and equipped them to sustain changes in the long term.

This reality is reflected in the conversations we’ve had with organizations that have attempted to digitize or move asset management to the cloud. There’s often an expectation that technology alone can help organizations improve asset management and reap the benefits of lower costs, reduced risk, and enhanced performance. However, standing between them and their success is a lack of content to drive more effective asset management.

In asset management, accurate content is the last digital mile to unlocking transformation success.

The challenge is that most organizations spend little time thinking about content until it’s too late. Instead, effort is funneled into implementing new solutions and some general change management. This may involve some level of data translation where data is lifted from one system and put into another. However, there’s little consideration given as to the quality and completeness of the current data, or how that data will be maintained or evolved.

To prevent this from happening within your organization, here are some things to consider before embarking on your digital transformation journey.

1. Asset management relies on complete and accurate content

Effective asset management requires a comprehensive view of asset health and risk, accounting for asset age, operating condition, maintenance plans, and strategy compliance. With these insights, organizations can make data-driven decisions to improve performance, while managing cost and risk.

2. Content needs to be evolved on an ongoing basis

The operating environment is a dynamic one and any content created can quickly become out of date. For example, assets are added and decommissioned all the time in most organizations and operating context is subject to change. You need to have a process in place to ensure your content is always up to date.

3. Content should be connected across systems

All too often the content needed to make decisions is siloed across different systems and it’s no different when it comes to asset management. Typically, strategy content sits across at least three separate systems, including one for Asset Strategy Management (ASM), one for Asset Condition Monitoring (ACM), and one for work execution. So when thinking about your digital transformation, you should be thinking about how you can connect and better leverage those data sets.

4. Creating content does not need to be overly complicated or time consuming

Don’t let a lack of content stop you from beginning your digital transformation as content can be created and evolved over time. That’s one of the biggest benefits of Integrated Asset Performance Management. It digitally connects the traditionally siloed functions of APM and provides a process to support the creation and evolution of content. It also allows you to start with a small number of assets and realize value from your transformation sooner.

To learn more, download our Integrated APM Infographic