What I learned from a messy billion-dollar digital transformation

Aligning stakeholders and systems for co-evolution

The hardest part of this transformation wasn’t the technology; it was getting humans to work together in new ways. We learned that if the people and processes don’t evolve in sync with the new systems, the transformation will falter. In fact, roughly three-quarters of digital transformations fail to deliver ROI, and of those that fail, 70% are due to a lack of user adoption and behavioral change. Armed with that knowledge, we doubled down on stakeholder alignment and change management.

First, my colleague Hugo Michou took the lead in establishing a strong governance structure. A steering committee with executives from every major function (IT, operations, finance, merchandising, etc.) met bi-weekly to review progress and resolve disputes. This was not a perfunctory committee…it had teeth. If marketing and supply chain had a data-sharing issue, it got aired and addressed in these meetings rather than festering. The governance team’s mantra was “no blind spots.” By having all the stakeholders at the same table, we caught misalignments early. For example, when we discovered that a new inventory system feature might slow down front-line staff workflows, the operations lead flagged it and we adjusted the rollout plan on the spot. In the past, that kind of issue might only surface after full deployment (and lead to finger-pointing between IT and business). Governance gave us a forum to navigate complexity collectively.

Next, we focused on communication and culture. We knew from prior failed projects that sending a few emails about “new software coming, get ready” wouldn’t cut it. So we tried a more personal approach. We identified influential employees in each department (respected veterans, informal leaders) and recruited them as change champions. We shared with them not just what was changing, but why, and even showed them that messy “spaghetti” map to illustrate how their work fit into the bigger network. This transparency helped win allies. People started to see the transformation not as an IT dictate, but as a necessary evolution for the company’s survival and growth. One warehouse manager told us that seeing the full picture of the supply network made her realize the importance of standardizing processes: “We can’t master the whole value chain the same way as a simple chain…we need to understand our complex ecosystem, where all systems and agents communicate with each other.” Comments like that were a good sign: mindsets were shifting.