In a recent survey, we gathered insights from business and IT executives, managers, and team members across a wide range of industries to determine their top challenges, opportunities, and priorities ahead. What we found is that productivity has risen to the top of the priority list for both business and IT, and companies have already started down the road of digital business transformation to help their people work smarter and faster.

This is an encouraging sign that midsize businesses not only recognize that the threat of disruption is real, but also that business transformation starts by transforming how your workforce gets things done.

However, despite the consensus among business leaders that productivity is paramount, The Bureau of Labor Statistics states that overall productivity has only grown 1-2% per year during the tech boom. If technology is getting better, and companies are actively investing in new technology, then why do organizations still struggle to see greater productivity gains on their investment?

Transforming Your Workforce to Achieve Greater Productivity

In our experience, a lack of productivity gains is rarely a problem with the technology itself. Often, the issue stems from a people or a process problem that must be addressed first. True transformation requires an immersive strategy across multiple layers of business and technology.

At BDO Digital, we’ve created a framework around these layers and given it a name: “The 4 Ps of Workforce Transformation.” These four Ps include:

• Productivity: Get more done with less
• People: Enable your people to adapt and embrace continual change
• Platform: Anywhere, any device access to information with Modern IT Management
• Protection: Safeguard information wherever work is done

Limiting the objective of digital business transformation to just one “P” would miss the real opportunity to build strength and endurance in a marketplace where competitive advantage is fleeting. Without an immersive strategy, many organizations will struggle to achieve their business goals in the coming years – a statement that is supported by a recent IDC report FutureScape: Worldwide CIO Agenda Predictions, which asserts that 70% of siloed digital transformation initiatives will ultimately fail in 2018.