Five essential steps for successful digitalisation projects

Let’s start with small steps, involve our colleagues, measure the impacts accurately, and there are other equally important steps worth following to ensure a successful roll-out – we’ll outline these. Before rolling out digitalisation projects, it is worth carrying out a detailed process analysis. Earlier we showed why 70 per cent of digitalisation projects fail. The aim of this line of reasoning is to demonstrate that, by adhering to certain rules, an IT development project of this kind can indeed be successful.

1. Do we see our key processes in real time, or are we working from last month’s reports?
2. Do we know the status of a contract’s drafting and approval?
3. Can we check what a particular colleague was working on last Wednesday?
4. Do we handle matters received by email via email?
5. Are our customers satisfied with the speed of our responses, or do they often complain about delays?
6. Do our colleagues use several different systems to carry out their tasks?
7. If a colleague is off sick, can someone else take over their work seamlessly, or is all the knowledge contained solely in their head?

If you have answered ‘no’ to several questions, it is worth considering digitising your processes.

1. Let’s start the roll-out of the digitalisation project in small steps, with quick results

Let’s not try to digitise the entire company all at once! Let’s choose one or two of the most problematic processes, and we can achieve measurable results with them within three to six months. For example: automating invoicing, generating contracts or managing incoming correspondence. The customer service department of a large Budapest-based company started in exactly the same way: with a single process – handling customer complaints. When the turnaround time was cut by more than half, both management and staff began to believe in the project. After that, it was easier to move on to the other processes.

There are at least three key figures worth keeping an eye on when you start out:

1. Cost: How much time/money do we save? (Example: a saving of 10,000 working hours per year)
2. Time: How much faster is the process? (Example: from an average of 8 days to 3 days)
3. Quality: By how much does the error rate improve? (Example: from 12 per cent to 2 per cent)

Let’s assess where we stand at the moment, before the project begins. Then let’s build a dashboard for senior management where they can monitor progress on a weekly or monthly basis.

Managing change is unavoidable. Let’s communicate honestly about what we’re doing and why. Not because we want to make people redundant, but because we want to remain competitive. Let’s train our colleagues thoroughly – it shouldn’t just be a two-hour training session; ongoing support is also needed. Let’s appoint ‘champions’ from the business side – colleagues who understand the processes and enthusiastically support the change. They will help others and provide feedback to the developers.

Knowledge of Hungarian regulations and support in Hungarian are essential – you cannot rely on the English-language helpdesk to respond. You need a partner who understands the challenges faced by Hungarian SMEs and large enterprises, and who can integrate flexibly with existing systems (SAP, etc.). But most importantly: they should not merely be a supplier, but a partner who, drawing on their experience from similar projects, helps to rethink processes, rather than simply aiming to implement a piece of software. An important consideration when selecting a system is whether it can cope with the expected number of users. There are many programmes that work well with 50 users, but slow down exponentially when there are a hundred or several hundred users. It is also worth paying attention to the system’s GDPR and NIS2 compliance status, and how well it integrates with the existing IT infrastructure. Choose robust technology that meets your requirements; for example, PHP, which is designed for website development, may not be the right tool for developing and maintaining large-scale enterprise systems.

1. Process analysis: Let’s sit down with senior management and identify the three most problematic or resource-intensive processes. Which ones are slow? Which ones are costly? Which ones generate a lot of errors or customer complaints? This will be our starting point.
2. Internal benchmark: Let’s measure how much time and money these processes currently cost. Ask the staff members where they see the biggest problems. We need this data to get started.
3. Pilot project: Choose an expert partner and launch a pilot project for one of the processes, which will allow us to validate whether the selected system meets our expectations.