Business process digitization investments continue to grow every year. Organizations allocate significant budgets to ERP, CRM, workflow, automation, and AI solutions. Yet, a critical question remains: ‘Why aren’t we accelerating enough?’ The most common yet overlooked answer is the digital competency gap.
From a 2026 perspective, the primary barrier to digital transformation is not technology itself, but the failure to establish the right human, process, and competency framework to leverage it effectively.
What Are Digital Skills?
Digital proficiency are not merely the ability to use digital tools; it is the capacity to align these tools with business objectives to create sustainable value.
Digital competency encompasses:
Analyzing and optimizing processes
Selecting the right digital tools for specific problems
Identifying opportunities for automation and integration
Data-driven decision-making
Building a common language between business units and IT
Therefore, digital competency is not the responsibility of a single role or department; it is a strategic capability that must be adopted across the entire organization.
Why Does a Lack of Digital Competency Slow Down Digital Transformation?
A lack of digital competency often has an indirect yet profound impact on digital transformation processes. The most common effects are as follows:
Tech Investments Fail to Deliver Value
Governance is missing: There is no designated management.
Skill gaps: Process owners lack system proficiency.
Ambiguous scenarios: Use cases are poorly defined.
Consequently, you have the technology, but you lack the tangible business results.
Digital Transformation Projects Drag On Indefinitely
Digital competency gaps cause critical bottlenecks, including:
Poor prioritization
Endless revision cycles
Uncontrolled scope expansion
Ultimately, this makes it impossible to meet planned deadlines.
Increased User Resistance
A lack of digital competency causes employees to:
Struggle with system complexity
Return to traditional workflows
See digital tools as a burden rather than a benefit
Consequently, this weakens organizational agility and stalls transformation progress.
Most Common Digital Competency Gaps
In 2026, transformation is hindered more by skill shortages than by tech deficiencies. These gaps most often appear when organizations fail to understand the methodology behind digitalizing their workflows.
Lack of Process Ownership
In many organizations, while digital business processes are understood operationally, they cannot be digitally modeled. A process owner can explain “how things are done,” yet fails to transform this into a measurable, traceable, and automation-ready workflow.
Example: > The flow of an application process might be known, but since the steps are not clearly defined in a digital environment, delays and manual follow-ups become inevitable.
Misalignment Between Business and IT
Business units and IT departments often speak different languages. In the absence of a shared workflow model, requirements are often lost in translation, leading to endless feedback loops.
Example: When the business side asks to speed up approvals, IT may simply develop a new screen. Without a comprehensive process overhaul, the underlying inefficiency is never truly fixed.
Low Data Literacy
Organizations often have an abundance of reports, yet these reports fail to effectively guide decision-making processes. It remains unclear which process the data should improve or which specific action it should trigger.
Example: The total number of applications is reported, but there is no analysis of where bottlenecks occur or at which step the process gets stalled.
The Gap in Automation Awareness
Manual execution of repetitive and rule-based workflows persists, often shielded by long-standing organizational habits.
Example: Redundant data entry across different platforms or manual email-based approval cycles are frequently overlooked as potential candidates for automation.
Lack of Low-Code / No-Code Competency
To accelerate digital transformation, processes must be digitalized rapidly. Low-code approaches enable business units to visually model their workflows and implement incremental improvements.
In organizations lacking this competency, even the simplest process change gets stuck in long development backlogs. As a result, agility is lost, and transformation slows down.
Example: A minor rule change in a leave or request process can take weeks to implement through traditional IT cycles, whereas in a low-code environment, such changes can be tested and deployed almost instantly.
The Correlation Between Digital Competency and Budget & Resource Constraints
In digital transformation, budget limitations are typically a result rather than a root cause.
Without the necessary skills:
ROI remains unclear.
Strategic rationale for investment fails to persuade.
The ability to design “quick wins” is lost.
This leads to the perception that digital projects are high-cost, high-risk endeavors. In contrast, increasing digital maturity makes these investments both transparent and scalable.
2026 Perspective: How Has Digital Competency Evolved?
Today, digital competency no longer refer to technical knowledge alone.
Emerging priority areas in digital competency include:
Process modeling and optimization
Designing automation scenarios
Establishing AI-driven decision points
Rapid development with low-code / no-code platforms
Architecting integrated system environments
In short, the goal is not for everyone to become a software developer; it is for everyone to be capable of digitalizing their own processes.
How to Bridge the Digital Competency Gap?
Digital competency is a long-term transformation, but it can be accelerated with the right approach:
- Start Small, Scale Fast Begin with the processes that generate the highest time and cost burdens.
- Make Processes Visible Digitalization cannot accelerate until there is absolute clarity on who does what, and how.
- Prioritize Competency Over Tools The question “Who will manage this system?” must be answered at the very beginning.
- Build a Learning Organization Model Every digital step should be treated as an opportunity for learning and organizational development.
- Simplify the Technology Instead of complex systems, focus on adoptable solutions that encourage user engagement.
Digital Competency Is the Engine of Digital Transformation
The primary reason digital transformation slows down is rarely technology or budget. The real issue is digital competency.
Organizations with advanced digital competency:
Make decisions faster
Achieve transformation at a lower cost
Generate sustainable value from technology
SPIDYA Software offers an approach that makes processes visible, fosters the development of digital competency, and accelerates the digital transformation journey. With the right platform, the right competency, and the right strategy, digital transformation reaches its true potential.
