Failed digital transformation projects have cost businesses in Ireland an average of €323,000 over the last year, according to the results of a survey by digital provider Auxilion.

The survey of c-suite executives found that three out of four respondents cited poor IT governance as the reason for the failure of digital transformation projects. And for over a third of these, this occurred in the last 12 months.

Along with the failure of digital transformation projects, more than half of respondents have had to abandon a project due to poor governance.
 
In terms of the most important business priorities, these were found to be ensuring IT governance and securing business operations. Expanding into other markets, supporting digital transformation  and enabling employee engagement were also cited.

Auxilion’s Eleanor Dempsey (pictured) said: “Companies are clearly underestimating the complexities of driving change, automating processes and replacing technology.
 
“The skills required to drive digital transformation are scarce, and not readily available internally. To transform meaningfully, businesses not only need to deploy new applications and technologies, as well as business behaviours and processes, but then embed these changes across the entire team.”
 
Despite being among the top business priorities for respondents, a fifth said enabling digital transformation was one of the biggest pressure points for their organisation in terms of IT. 

When it comes to the potential challenges to cloud adoption and management, the biggest challenges cited were lacking the knowledge and skills within the internal team, struggling with data compliance requirements around the cloud and not having visibility of all devices accessing the cloud.

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Dempsey added: “Transformation projects are driven by people, and they must have the right IT governance in place to work in a collaborative and impactful way to both manage and benefit from change.
 
“In fact, getting the governance part of the puzzle right is crucial to embracing digital thinking and capitalising on transformation. But if this is done effectively, organsiations can benefit from heightened productivity among employees, enhanced service delivery for customers, and increased growth for the business.”

As well as cloud – which seven out of ten respondents say will be in place in their organisation by the end of 2022 – other technologies are rising in popularity.
 
By the end of the year, two-thirds will introduce the Internet of Things and will have Artificial Intelligence in place, according to the survey results.