7 Digital Transformation Traps: #5 Inability to Monitor and Track Value

As a product leader, you might be tempted to dismiss the idea of digital transformation. You and your team are already at the cutting edge of technology, right?

But the truth is digital transformation is a lot harder than you might think. McKinsey estimates that 70% of digital transformation efforts fail. 

And our most recent Product Excellence Report revealed some of the main challenges product teams and leaders are facing:

• 57% of respondents are focused on driving innovation and delivering the right products
• 49% are focused on driving efficiencies across the product organization
• 48% of product leaders said identifying bottlenecks, clearing blockers, and helping teams ship faster were their top challenges

It turns out that digital transformation can help product leaders and teams overcome these common challenges. 

Here’s our take: avoiding digital transformation is not an option. If you put it off for too long, you risk losing your competitive edge, falling behind industry disruptors, and missing out on opportunities for growth and innovation. Plus, you’ll find it much harder to attract top talent. In other words, your choices are either to adapt or face the consequences of stagnation and irrelevance.

But it’s not all bad news: You don’t have to face this transformation alone. Productboard has teamed up with Umbrage to combine our expertise in product management and digital transformation strategy to help you navigate the seven most common pitfalls organizations face on their digital transformation journey. 

In this post, we’re looking at Trap #5: Inability to Track and Monitor Value.

Trap #5: Inability to Monitor and Track Value

If you want to quantify the impact of your initiatives, you’ll need to establish mechanisms for monitoring and tracking the value generated through your digital transformation efforts. Without a clear understanding of the value that’s being created and its alignment with your program’s objectives, making data-driven decisions and optimizing your transformation process will be a struggle. 

You can generate amazing ideas, run the right product discovery, create stunning designs and user experience, and get the product developed and to MVP, but that’s where the journey truly begins. Teams need to be focused on making sure they are building a product that will eventually provide an ROI for the business — that’s always the North Star. It’s where true product management really comes into play and the entire team should be focused on how to track the value delivered by each product in a portfolio, whether directly or indirectly. 

To address this pain point, you can implement a value tracking system, like Productboard. Our 2023 customer survey revealed 80% of our customers report building products that better address customer needs. Whichever solution you choose, this system will allow you to monitor and track the value generated at each stage of the digital product’s lifecycle so you can identify areas where you can increase value and gain more insights for data-driven decision-making.

How to Get Started

To get started, design a dynamic funding model that combines top-down and bottom-up inputs to support the delivery of well-defined and shared business outcomes. Embracing a product-based operating model is key to becoming an outcome-driven organization, accompanied by the development of a clear product taxonomy to organize products and serve as a management tool.

Another key aspect here is upskilling product managers, empowering them to redefine success by shifting from a project to a product mindset. This mindset allows you to embrace a fail-fast approach, where everyone has the right amount of autonomy to make the best decisions to solve problems, whether it involves building, buying, partnering, or even discontinuing a product line.

By implementing a robust value tracking system, adopting an outcome-driven operating model, and upskilling product managers, organizations can unlock the true value of their digital transformation efforts.

We’ve just scratched the surface here. If you want to avoid the other traps and set your organization up for success with your digital transformation, download our eBook for even more tips and tricks.