Measuring the Real Business Impact of Your Digital Transformation Program: Are You Seeing Tangible Benefits or Just an Expensive Upgrade?

The journey to here

Whether it be fluff or otherwise, grandiose or minimal, Digital Transformation has been a constant in the lives of pretty much everyone over the past few years.

Some organisations had been planning for these large programs knowing that the investment was required, while for others, COVID triggered some new programs and accelerated other programs. For more than a decade, the core of digital transformations and, indeed, the result was to migrate from "heavy" on-premise systems that were perceived as slow-moving, complex to change and challenging to innovate to allure and promise of SaaS services that off increased flexibility through configuration and change that could be managed without the overhead of IT. It made sense, and the vision was solid.

Coming into 2025, it certainly feels like the "Digital Transformation" surge is waning. I make this call primarily and anecdotally based on what I read and hear. However, as someone who has watched the project market keenly, I know that the resource shortages from 12 months ago are no longer, project roles continue to dry up, and the contract market has shrunk accordingly.

Assuming my assessment is correct and we've transitioned from build to business as usual, a few questions emerge: Did companies get what they wanted from these large (and expensive) initiatives? And Did the Digital Transformation investment deliver on the (at least) promised outcomes of a more manageable and faster-to-innovate enterprise?

There are always exceptions, but from my conversations, the needle hasn't moved much from where we started. Even if only considering the commitment to technology becoming the change enabler, many still lament that:

IT remains slow to respond;
Implemented technology is not delivering what people need, and that
Despite increased skills creating more sophisticated, keener users desperate to innovate, they don't have the access they require.

What might have gone wrong?

If the "brief" was to move legacy technology to the cloud, the box has largely been ticked, as our technology services are increasingly served by a plethora of services delivered by services well outside of the traditional IT-heavy data centre.

However, whilst the underlying technology may have been upgraded, organisations have not updated their operating models to align with it, and yes, it is essential. Specific skills, approaches, and frameworks that support new platforms remain relatively untouched, undiscovered or ignored. This not only means that risks related to these new technologies are not catered for, but perhaps more importantly, that significant opportunities provided by the technologies are missed..

For many, running new technology under legacy techniques may mean that new opportunities that can be delivered are not adopted. For others, the lack of consideration of the broader change impacts has left them with increased discord between IT and the business as new rules of engagement are formed "on the fly."

Success?

To those who have invested in successfully transitioning to new technologies and transitioning your business into a more modern technology stack. Celebrate the win!

In reviewing the overall Digital Transformation programs (assuming some of the afore-discussed objectives), did (or will) your investments:

Provide digital tools that allow you to implement business changes faster through self-service;
Provide better ways to collaborate with technology resources when change is required;
Reduce the need for people to "go outside" (shadow) in-house deployed applications to meet emerging requirements

If some of these questions create doubt or concern, it may be that you realise that you've upgraded but not transformed.

If this is the case, all is not lost, as the investment has likely established the proper foundation; however, now it's time to assess where your investments can yield more than "shiny" new technology. It's time to review and complete the transformation by looking at your operating model.

Not as scary as it seems, shifting the operating model can be simple and incremental and will, in the end, offer the business more control over managing change.

Over the past few years, my experience in IT Strategy, Project Delivery, and People management has led me to create a simple operating model called Delivery2.0.

Delivery2.0

Before unveiling Delivery2.0, here’s a snapshot of the traditional view of the organisation's backend:

Foundationally, the delivery of Tools, People, and processes to support the company's day-to-day running is a must. Whether Compliance workers deliver frameworks and processes, HR ensures that staffing is in place, or IT ensures that everyone has a device and a secured login, I'll refer to those working to deliver these services as Foundation Builders.
Alongside and reliant on the efforts delivered by the Foundation Builders, modern businesses are continually working to support their ongoing changing and emerging requirements. Whether large or small, companies tend to manage these initiatives through managed projects for the short—to long term as required. I refer to them as Business Capability Deliverers.
Whilst most would agree that Foundation Builders and Business Capability Delivers are different in their world view and focus within their roles, organisations have traditionally grouped (or siloed) these mindsets into skill areas, e.g. IT, Legal, and Marketing. Within these silos, the "project people" and the "policy" folks are then separated.

Delivery2.0 redefines the operating model to reflect:

The term Business Capability best captures the need to continually deliver and improve capability better than "projects", which are scoped and finite.
Foundation Builders and Business Deliverers are more effective within dedicated structures that support their skills, ambitions and motivations.
Business Capability is best delivered via Agile approaches to working with a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous business environment.
Foundational Capability requires highly structured, more traditional approaches to ensure that it delivers robust services. While Agile is an option in this area, traditional PM methodologies such as Waterfall and Prince2 generally provide better results.

As depicted below, the organisations can be viewed as operating over three tiers:

Enterprise is the actual front line, the interface to the company, and the Leaders who guide the organisation. It is the Enterprise that sets the organisation on course through strategy, which, combined with emerging change, looks to the backend to deliver upon
First, jumping to the bottom, the Foundations layer ensures the business has the core functions to run daily.
The Business Capability is the glue and the engine room. Armed with the foundational services, Tools and Processes, and the direction of the enterprise, the Business Capability layer continuously triages and delivers to the business the most appropriate solutions possible given available resources.
Delivery2.0 has been developed from the notion that Business Capability needs to be established as an always-on, continuous improvement activity rather than an as-required bespoke afterthought.

What’s on offer?

Here are just a few of the benefits that can be achieved from the adoption of Delivery2.0:

Having the right people in the right chair
Applying the correct methodology to the right projects
Breaking out skills from Silos to work together on implementing business capability with all the skills required
Providing a process to ensure that business initiative is captured, triaged and prioritised based on a whole of business focus.

Aside from this, you can benefit from:

Staff who are working with like-minded individuals
A model that builds business awareness versus technical skill development will ensure your IP is spread across the business.
Providing a mechanism to encourage everyone to have their initiatives heard and sponsored

The Path to Delivery2.0

There are challenges in change. These challenges often stem from people understanding what the change will mean for them and the benefits (or otherwise) they should anticipate. Given that Delivery2.0 looks to have people work within constructs that meet their natural abilities, and re-align rather than consolidate the transition is not as disruptive as it is evolutionary. The flow of resources from traditional silo's into a blended model can create power struggles that may need to be managed based on the greater good.

The model, as depicted in general, needs to be considered within each organisation based on:

Organisation Sizing and needing to scale multiple layers in larger organisations possibly;
The aforementioned change considerations

The essential and non-negotiable part of this change is that it must be understood, endorsed, and adopted at the enterprise level as seats are moved into new squads.

Once leadership ratifies the case for change, the structure and processes outlined within Delivery 2.0 can be established, and ways of working can be adjusted to your circumstances.

Conclusion

Digital Transformation initiatives over the past 5-10 years have delivered a significant uplift in the capabilities of technologies at the core of every organisation. Whilst these delivery programs have been successful in deploying the foundational capabilities, there is a significant opportunity in assessing the opportunity to access further benefits from this uplift by transitioning to an operating model that can leverage upon technologies that can respond to organisational change faster than ever, benefits that may be locked behind legacy ways of operating.

Delivery2.0 offers a way to re-align business operations to access these opportunities, solidifying the investment in Digital Transformation programs.