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How does your organization manage the money it spends on digital? One surprising finding of my research is that most do not distinguish between different types of digital investments, treating all in a similar way. This situation exists because, believe it or not, a lot of organizations lack any mechanisms to help them actively manage the evaluation, selection, monitoring, and adjustment of digital investments to achieve clearly defined business results while meeting clear risk and return expectations.

Also available in Portuguese: Mensurando impacto: Sustentabilidade empresarial 2.0.

Given all the attention that “digital” is getting at the moment, you would be forgiven for thinking that it is somehow new. In fact, the relentless drive to embrace digital technologies has been ongoing for many decades. What also seems to have been forgotten are the lessons from these earlier attempts to leverage IT (remember that IT is a digital technology). Unfortunately, the history of IT investments in most organizations is far from stellar: Research over the years suggests that the overall failure rate of IT projects is around 70%. We know that when IT projects fail, it is usually not because the technology didn’t work (although this can sometimes be the case), but because the changes required at an organizational and employee level weren’t managed effectively. Quite simply, adding technology does not automatically confer expected benefits; these benefits have to be unlocked and this can only happen through achieving organizational changes.