With generative AI and other artificial intelligence tools abundant and affordable, companies of all sizes are allowing — and often urging — their employees to apply them. Management wants employees to do more with less, go to market faster, create new products and procedures, and otherwise digitally transform as quickly as possible. While digital transformation projects are being implemented, they’re not necessarily successful. The technology is sound, but the people trying to use it are struggling.
In her work leading workforce upskilling initiatives for large-scale enterprise resource planning (ERP) and digital transformation projects, author Priyanka Dave has found that “systems rarely fail because the technology doesn’t work. They fail because the organization hasn’t taken steps to change its infrastructure and processes to accommodate the new system.”
In an article in CIO magazine, Dave says failure isn’t due to lack of motivation or effort. It’s due to failing to create an infrastructure designed to support the new technology and all of the related process changes associated with it. “While a new system can be configured, tested and deployed in 12-18 months, building genuine capability that supports people in making complex decisions — successfully and confidently handling exceptions and maintaining controls under pressure — takes [much] longer,” says Dave.
“As I’ve examined the success of training transfer in technology implementations, I’ve found that only 10-20% of the skills learned in formal training programs actually translate into sustained on-the-job performance,” says Dave. This is because the training efforts often “treat capability building as an isolated instructional event instead of a systemic performance requirement.”
Building workforce capability
“Capability isn’t simply knowing which buttons to click,” she adds. “It’s being able to troubleshoot when data doesn’t reconcile. It’s understanding how actions in the system cascade through downstream processes. It’s recognizing when something that’s technically possible in the system violates a business control. It’s making judgment calls when the system presents options that the training scenarios never covered.”
Building workforce capability for digital transformation isn’t a training problem, it’s a governance problem, Dave contends. Leading organizations treat upskilling employees as an architectural and operational concern, on par with data migration and integration testing, she says.
Dave has lots of specific advice for IT and OT managers tasked with digital transformation. “The uncomfortable truth about digital transformation is that the technology is often the easy part,” she explains. “Modern platforms are remarkably capable. What’s hard is transforming the humans, who must operate those platforms under the messy, ambiguous, high-stakes conditions of real business operations.”
Whether your digital transformation efforts succeed or “becomes another statistic in the long list of implementations that were ‘technically successful’ but operationally disastrous depends on whether your people are ready to operate the new system reliably, at scale and under real business pressure,” says Dave. Build genuine capability, and digital transformation success will follow.
Support for digital transformation
Automation.com Monthly regularly provides automation professionals with support for digital transformation, and this February 2026 issue is no exception. While we still serve up the automation technology and OT cybersecurity trends you look for annually, in between we bring you stories of digital transformation how-to and why-now.
So don’t miss any Automation.com Monthly content in 2026. We’re publishing seven online issues, and although the magazine no longer offers a downloadable PDF, the archive is always accessible, and the search function is excellent. Bookmark the archive to always find your issues.
Register by creating “My ISA Account” one time and then log in each time you visit the site to gain access to every issue. You can also subscribe to be notified via email when the latest issue drops.
And if you’re interested in sharing your own digital transformation lessons, strategies or successes, reach out. New contributions are always welcome.
