What’s surprising is that GE isn’t the only company to suspend its digital transition. Lego recently announced its Digital Designer would no longer be updated and supported, sending shock waves through the LEGO community. And this echoes a growing trend, with more big players opting to follow the same path toward a de-digitalisation of sorts.

It’s not the first time this has happened. There are numerous historical examples of market leaders choosing to halt certain digital initiatives. In 2014, Nike halved the size of its digital device initiative, suspending tracking of Nike + Fuelband activity and other investments. Self-declared super luxury British fashion brand, Burberry, followed suit. It had instigated its own reinvention through digital media – live-streaming its runway shows and redesigning its flagship stores with cutting-edge tech – before seeing its efforts flail. After an initial lift driven, most likely, by the novelty factor, performance began to dip. Household automotive brand Ford poured investment into its enterprise digital strategy, only to see its stock price lag as a knock-on effect of pricing and quality problems in other parts of its operation.

These companies each spent millions on reshaping their brand for digital and introducing new innovative products – receiving massive media and investor attention for doing so. Then, despite their efforts, performance was blighted and shareholders found themselves up in arms. Procter & Gamble’s once-CEO, Bob MacDonald, was asked to resign, as was Ford's CEO Mark Fields. And the leaders championing the enterprise digital strategy at Lego and Burberry have ended up taking on smaller roles within their organisations. So, where did they go wrong?

Three digital transformation lessons learnt the hard way

The aforementioned examples teach us three key lessons and, in doing so, tell us how to avoid the same pitfalls. Keeping the following in mind could mean the difference between success and failure in your next digital endeavor.

1. Developing your digital capabilities isn’t a guaranteed solution to your problems

There are so many factors at play within a business that can impact its success, to at least the same extent as its digital capabilities. For example, the profitability or desirability of its products. Thus, no business leader should consider digital technology – or any other major technological innovation – as the key to salvation. No matter how high-tech your organisation, if customers don’t want or need your services or products, you’ll struggle to keep your place in the market.

2. Digital transformation can’t happen overnight

A common mistake is thinking that you can just adopt digital technologies and connect a ready-made system to your organisation that will instantly make it more efficient and profitable. In reality, digital transformations are multifaceted and dispersed – and not purely related to technologies.

Digital transformation is the gradual process of changing the way you do business. It requires a constant investment in skills, projects, infrastructure and, often, in cleansing existing IT systems. It takes a combination of people, machines and business processes, and you should constantly monitor the situation and be ready to intervene if there’s an issue.

3. You need to be flexible with your enterprise digital strategy

It’s crucial to be able to customise your digital investments depending on the readiness of your industry, the needs of your customers and what your competitors are doing. A good example of this is P&G. When it made its digital push in 2012 and 2013, it was already way ahead of most other companies on that front. Then, when MacDonald left, it seems their digital initiative slowed.

P&G now knows that it's able to gain even more ground over its competitors if it drives investment into digital technologies. Today, there are only two instances whereby its digital initiative isn’t implemented; if it doesn’t fit into the overall business strategy, or if it’s difficult to evaluate. This sort of digital management is a savvy strategy when it comes to seeing off another corporate attacker.

Regardless of your company’s position as it stands, the challenge of a new business model can become a powerful impetus for developing and restoring an organisation. The problem many business leaders face in trying to kick-start their brands is that, often, they focus purely on new initiatives. In doing so, they neglect legacy systems and processes which, with some fine-tuning, could reinvigorate operations and drive efficiency and profits.