Why digitalisation projects fail in trades businesses
The software is rarely to blame. Five patterns that digitalisation in a trades business regularly gets stuck on – and what helps.
A business buys a piece of software, pays for the set-up, trains for two days – and a year later the timesheets are back on paper. The program is still licensed, but nobody uses it except the office clerk, who has no choice.
You hear this story a lot. And it is almost never because the software was bad.
Pattern 1: Nobody is responsible
Digitalisation is introduced “on the side”. The boss decided it, the vendor set it up, and after that nobody is in charge any more. When a question comes up – why can the fitter not see the order, why is a line item missing – you ask three people and get no answer. After the third time nobody asks any more; they reach for the notepad.
Pattern 2: The old process is mapped one to one
The most common expensive mistake. The business recreates the existing paper workflow in the software – including the detours that only existed because people used to work on paper.
The result: the same effort as before, plus the software. The staff experience digitalisation as extra work, because that is exactly what it is.
Pattern 3: The data is poor, and nobody cleans up
Customer addresses created three times, item catalogues from 2014, prices that are no longer right. Everything gets migrated because “we need the history”.
Afterwards nobody finds anything, every search returns four hits, and trust in the system is gone within two weeks. Trust does not come back.
Pattern 4: Training happened at a screen, the work happens on the roof
Two days of training in the office, everyone nods. On site it is cold, the signal is weak, hands are dirty, and the app demands an input that does not work with gloves on.
Pattern 5: Everything at once
Order management, time tracking, materials, invoicing, customer portal – kick-off on the first of the month. The business has no capacity to relearn five processes at once while the orders keep running. Things topple one after another, and in the end everything is rolled back.
The common denominator
All five patterns share the same root: digitalisation was treated as a purchasing decision, not as a change in the business. The purchase is the smaller part. What counts is the time afterwards.
A rule of thumb that keeps proving itself: plan at least as much effort for the roll-out as the software costs in the first year – measured in working time. If you cannot commit that, postpone the start rather than doing it by halves.
And one more thing: ask your people before, not after. Not because it is polite, but because the fitters know exactly where the work jams. Whoever involves two of them in the selection later has two advocates instead of two critics – and that decides success more often than any feature list.
Frequently asked questions
Almost never because of the software. Five patterns repeat: there is no responsible person in the business, the old paper workflow is rebuilt one to one, the master data is a mess, training happens at a screen instead of on the job, and everything is changed at once.
A named person with a time budget – not full-time, but unambiguously in charge. Someone from the office is often a better choice than the tech-savvy apprentice, because they know the workflows. Without ownership every question fizzles out, and after the third one nobody touches the software any more.
No. Whoever switches order management, time tracking, materials and invoicing at the same time overloads the business while the orders keep running. Better one area, three months of operation, then the next – starting where the pain is great and the risk small.
As a rule of thumb, at least as much working time as the software costs in licences in the first year. If you cannot commit that, postpone the start rather than doing it by halves.