Top 8 Challenges in Digital Transformation and how QA Solves them

Digital transformation means integrating digital technology into every aspect of a business. This process essentially changes the way a business organization functions and delivers value to its consumers. Apart from being an operational change, it is also a cultural change. This transition compels organizations to shake up their existing order of operations and adopt an experimental approach while being prepared for potential failures in this journey of transforming their business model.

Let us look at the definition provided by The Agile Elephant. It makes the concept of Digital Transformation slightly more concrete by emphasizing precisely which aspects of a business get modified under such a process, which includes a change in "leadership, different thinking, the encouragement of innovation and new business models, incorporating digitization of assets and an increased use of technology to improve the experience of your organization’s employees, customers, suppliers, partners and stakeholders."

Digital transformation can bring about a lot of positive business changes. At this point is an essential step for any company that has the will to survive in today’s fast-evolving market. However, hastily trying to execute the process just because it is essential can cause more harm than good.

Here are some of the most common risks companies can face while implementing the process of digital transformation:

1. Cyber Security:

Digital transformation would call for an increase in digital technology devices used for various business actions. Those combined with the growing sophistication of data security threats would inevitably make the organization more vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

2. Challenges in the Workforce:

On the one hand, the new distribution in the workforce and the growing trend of the gig economy provide better efficiency but on the other, they also come with the requirement of governance for new identities as well as the challenges regarding monitoring threats.

3. Risk of Deploying Cloud System:

Even though this is not an exclusive digital transformation issue, the risks related to shifting systems to the cloud remain a concern.

4. Third-party risks:

While making the shift to digital transformation, employing third-party vendors to maximize the utility of resources is inevitable and essential. However, without proper monitoring, their vulnerabilities could expose your business to further risks.

5. Automation risks

Process automation is an integral part of digital transformation. However, without a proper strategy, it could lead to risks and failures that are unprecedented.

6. Brand reputation:

Lack of proper management and security of personal data, both related to the organization itself and its consumers, can lead to irreversible damage to the company’s reputation and brand loyalty.

Regardless of industry, these common risks make digital transformation a challenging procedure for most business organizations. However, having an efficient Quality Assurance system in place can help de-risk your digital transformation to a great extent. Here is how a trusted QA system can help you achieve some of the significant objectives of digital transformation:

7. User satisfaction and brand reputation:

Quality Assurance experts are end-user satisfaction driven and hence work towards making the user experience smoother. Whether it is a single or a multi-channel delivery, a complete company-wise QA can ensure that the project requirement coverage is optimum, and the product meets the user expectations. Quality Assurance also helps create and automate specific test cases, execute solutions, and simulate end-user usage experience to that litmus test the product’s real-life efficiency limits.

Since Quality Assurance provides such a water-tight testing environment, by the time a product is launched into the market, the organization is completely aware of its efficiency levels and limitations, which helps them regulate end-user experience and provide a better service. This, in turn, helps uplift the brand reputation and loyalty.

8. Quality awareness:

QA helps accelerate the digital transformation process through application-level and pipeline automation, positively affecting the entire development lifecycle. Plus, a bird-eye view of the quality metrics of a product helps developers create a perfect blend of manual and automated testing for the best coverage. It also allows testers to create and adhere to a single quality blueprint, thus providing an improved quality of multichannel, responsive user experience to their consumers.

The right Quality Assurance service provider essentially helps strengthen every business procedure at every point of the development lifecycle and makes it leak-proof. It also alleviates the challenges posed by new technology in the complex process of Digital Transformation. Every organization that has invested in comprehensive digitization of its business model have recognized the vitality of an efficient Quality Assurance organization and prioritized a good portion of their IT budget towards strengthening their QA model.

Anuj works for Qualitest Group- the world's largest testing services company.Qualitest’s global service delivery platform includes the United States, Israel, UK, India, Portugal and Romania.