Succeeding in digital transformation: Challenges, skills, and strategic solutions

The strategic imperative of digital transformation

Digital transformation encompasses technology adoption that shifts business processes and services to digital formats. This transformation includes data migration to data centers or cloud infrastructure, technological tool implementation, and connected collaborative system deployment.

Organizations worldwide increasingly prioritize digital transformation optimization as technological innovation drives market evolution. As a FinTech established in Algeria since 2009, Kepler Technologies observes emerging digital trends, cloud adoption acceleration, business process digitization, and mobile-first solution implementation—particularly within banking and insurance sectors.

Statista projects global enterprise IT spending will reach $5.7 trillion in 2025, representing 9% growth from 2024. Despite fluctuations between 2021 and 2023, overall investment trends demonstrate steady increases. This reflects growing cross-sector requirements to digitize processes while emphasizing the importance of centralizing and digitizing corporate data.

Global IT expenditure estimates from 2005 to 2025

Five years after a pandemic that transformed every meeting to Zoom and other communication platforms, we continue discussing digital transformation to understand its strategic importance and adopt proven practices that prevent counterproductive implementation approaches.

Why digital transformation drives business success

Mr. Igors Astapciks, Forbes Technology Council member, defines six principles explaining why companies require digital transformation:

1. Enhanced business efficiency: Digital transformation enables task automation and accelerated execution cycles. This improves employee satisfaction by allowing focus on higher-value work, generating quality results and superior customer satisfaction. A concrete example: CREDOC processing digitalization at Société Générale Algérie, implemented with Kepler Technologies support. This highly regulated process, previously manual and complex, now completes within 48 hours.
2. Substantial cost reduction: Minimizing manual work and transitioning to digital data storage reduces errors, lowers hardware costs, and increases overall productivity while eliminating operational inefficiencies.
3. Competitive market advantage: Digital transformation provides comprehensive business operations visibility and consumer behavior analysis. This enables product and service improvements, enhances customer satisfaction, and strengthens market positioning against competitors.
4. Security and reliability enhancement: Organizations configure access permissions, implement tracking systems, deploy multi-factor authentication, and monitor entire network infrastructures. Additionally, data digitalization ensures secure recovery from reliable systems during critical situations.
5. Agility and market adaptability: Technology requires agile approaches to respond rapidly to market shifts, emerging trends, and operational risks. Kepler Technologies practices this internally, maximizing team productivity through digital tools and agile methodologies.
6. Meeting evolving customer expectations: Organizations must establish comprehensive digital presence rather than simply unlocking potential. Businesses must deliver multichannel experiences that maintain transparency and customer proximity throughout all interactions.

The measurable impact of digital transformation

The banking sector demonstrates the clearest digital transformation examples. A Harvard Business Review report compares companies that embraced digital transformation against those that resisted, revealing clear financial impact evidence. Results prove striking: digital leaders created significantly more shareholder value than laggards. Between 2018 and 2022, market leaders achieved average annual total shareholder returns of 8.1% compared to 4.9% for laggards (McKinsey data from 80 global banks). The performance gap widens in online sales: leaders grew from 40% to 70%, while laggards increased only from 8% to 17%.

In Africa, the African Union’s 2020 – 2030 strategy emphasizes digital financial services requirements to support intra-African trade and operationalize the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). This confirms digital importance across both private and public sectors.

In Algeria, Data Reportal recorded 33.49 million internet users in January 2024. According to El-Watan, over 13 million electronic payment transactions occurred via the “Baridi Mob” app during the first half of 2023. These figures underscore Africa’s expanding market and untapped digital potential across banking, insurance, and additional sectors.

Statistics of internet use in Algeria in 2024

Practical solutions for strategic digitalization success

Organizations must adopt solutions tailored to specific operational requirements—including agile project management, business process digitization, and connected collaboration tools. These solutions significantly improve productivity and customer satisfaction metrics.

Among the most effective tools:

• Professional SMS delivers powerful, targeted communication directly with consumers. Both private companies and public institutions adopt this approach to strengthen customer relationships while ensuring secure, seamless communication channels.
• ITSM tools centralize IT services, streamlining management processes and accelerating incident resolution across organizational infrastructures.
• Agile project management software proves essential for managing complex IT projects efficiently while maintaining quality standards and delivery timelines.

Additional tools including plugins and mobile applications enhance existing IT systems through customized features that address specific business requirements while driving productivity and sustainable growth.

Digital transformation represents an ongoing journey requiring continuous adaptation. Maintaining current technology knowledge and updating systems remains vital for sustained success. By partnering with experienced professionals who provide strategic guidance and customized solutions, companies ensure smooth transitions toward successful digital futures.

Essential skills and challenges for digital transformation success

Industry reports and Kepler Technologies’ extensive experience reach one shared conclusion: digital transformation remains inevitable. The critical question becomes: what essential skills enable digitalization and market leadership?

• Strategic planning: Clear, focused action plans for digitizing business processes while maintaining operational excellence and customer satisfaction.
• Talent development: Talent drives digital transformation success. Companies require skilled digital professionals and engineers to deliver effective solutions. Attracting exceptional talent and providing growth opportunities fosters innovation and customer satisfaction.
• Operational model integration: Limiting digitalization to IT represents a significant strategic error. Business processes encompass administration, human resources, finance, and engineering functions. Successful transformation requires operational systems connecting all company functions seamlessly.
• Relevant technology implementation: Connected environments with modern software enable comprehensive business digital growth across all departments and operational areas.
• Data management excellence: Data represents the new competitive advantage. Digitalization must provide anytime, anywhere data access enabling teams to innovate at every organizational level. Frequent updates ensure data reliability and strategic decision-making accuracy.
• Adoption and scaling strategies: Change management and user onboarding ensure digital solutions achieve adoption and scalability through simplicity and reusability across business operations.

Among these prerequisites, two components stand out as central to digital transformation: talent and operational model development. According to McKinsey research, these elements create the greatest difference between market leaders and laggards.

Kepler Technologies validates this approach with 64 team members in 2024, 10 maintaining Atlassian certifications, and ongoing training through e-learning platforms like Udemy. Our people and their expertise enable us to build innovative solutions while ensuring client satisfaction.

Building long-term teams that continuously innovate requires providing career development paths, creating healthy collaborative environments, and enabling continuous improvement, all vital for accelerating digital transformation initiatives.

Regarding operational models, success involves aligning CEO vision with department manager perspectives toward digitalization. This extends beyond single departments—requiring action plans that connect all company functions through tailored platforms. Consulting with experts to analyze business processes and identify optimal solutions represents a key step ensuring smooth digital transitions.

Common digital transformation implementation challenges

Emerging digital technologies rapidly transform customer behavior, business models, competitive landscapes, and new industry player emergence. During transformation acceleration, common challenges may slow progress. According to McKinsey Digital, these challenges appear frequently within banking sectors:

• Technical costs and complexity: Companies often underestimate true transformation costs by misjudging change complexity or process digitalization requirements, leading to budget overruns and delayed implementations.
• Slow change implementation pace: Banks maintaining traditional operating models and slower Agile adoption lag behind market leaders. In 2021, new service deployment cycles in traditional banks required 4 to 6 months, compared to 2 to 4 weeks in FinTech organizations.
• Impact measurement difficulties: Organizations struggle to quantify and define appropriate transformation measurements. Connecting business strategy with digital transformation and revenue growth proves complex yet essential, particularly regarding customer satisfaction metrics.
• Talent shortage challenges: As mentioned previously, talent drives transformation success. Without qualified professionals, transformation initiatives fail. Banks typically do not represent preferred destinations for top technology talent—necessitating outsourcing or staff delegation to ensure successful project execution.

In a constantly evolving environment, opportunities for discovery and innovation continue expanding. David Rogers, author of The Digital Transformation Roadmap, explained in a Forbes interview that every business must innovate uniquely. Testing new customer experiences and developing modern operational models remains essential, regardless of business size or industry sector.

The greatest challenge businesses face today involves adaptation. Companies must adapt rapidly to evolving technologies and changing customer requirements. By collaborating with experts and adopting strategic approaches, they transform processes while maintaining competitiveness in rapidly changing markets.