An industrial SME receiving a letter about mandatory electronic invoicing, an ETI whose CISO alerts on the NIS2 directive, a manager discovering that their ERP cannot trace carbon emissions for CSRD reporting: in 2024, digital transformation no longer starts with a desire for innovation. It starts with a regulatory constraint that no one had budgeted for.
Electronic invoicing and NIS2: obligations that drive digital transformation
The reform of mandatory electronic invoicing acts as a revealer. Even before discussing tools, it requires mapping billing flows, verifying the reliability of data in the ERP, and identifying gaps in the chain. Many companies discover at this occasion that their foundational data is incomplete or inconsistent.
Related reading : The best online resources to boost your business growth
On the cybersecurity side, the NIS2 directive pushes SMEs and ETIs to structure a real protection program, sometimes for the first time. We are no longer talking about antivirus and firewalls: risks must be documented, teams trained, and recovery plans tested. For organizations that outsource their IT, this also means reviewing outsourcing contracts.
ESG obligations and carbon traceability complete the picture. CSRD reporting requires digitizing data that had previously circulated on spreadsheets or shared files without versioning. Resources like liaisonsnumeriques.fr help to better understand how these different obligations align with a digitalization project.
Recommended read : How to Boost Your Business Visibility Through Digital Marketing
The common point among these three areas: they address processes before tools. Buying software does not solve anything if upstream data flows are poorly defined.
IT budget and technology choices: where to focus investments
More than 60% of companies report increasing their IT investments, primarily to support their digital transformation and operational efficiency. Cloud adoption reaches 58% globally. These two figures reflect a clear trend: budgets are rising, but they are focused on three specific areas (cloud, data, artificial intelligence).
On the ground, it is observed that successful projects are rarely those aiming for a complete overhaul of the information system. They are more targeted initiatives:
- Migrating an aging ERP to a cloud version to ensure the reliability of billing data before the regulatory deadline
- Deploying a document management tool that centralizes compliance evidence (NIS2, CSRD) in a single repository
- Automating a specific business process (order entry, supplier follow-ups) with an AI module integrated into the existing tool, not a standalone generative AI project
A common pitfall is spreading the budget over too many SaaS solutions without connecting them. This leads to siloed data and no consolidated view. Three well-integrated tools are better than eight tools that do not communicate.
Digital skills of teams: the barrier that tools do not fix
You can deploy the best software on the market: if teams do not know how to use it daily, the project stagnates. The digital transformation of companies often stumbles over a lack of digital skills that does not appear in the scoping phases.
In practice, this manifests as employees bypassing the new tool to revert to their old spreadsheet, managers not consulting the dashboards set up, or data being entered inaccurately because no one explained why data entry quality matters.
Train on the use case, not on the software
Traditional training (two days in a classroom on the features of a tool) has a low adoption rate. What works better is to train each role on its own use case, with its own data, in its own context. An accountant does not need to know the HR module; they need to understand how their invoice validation process changes.
Feedback varies on this point depending on the size of the company. In an SME of twenty people, half a day of individual support is sometimes sufficient. In an ETI of three hundred employees, it is necessary to identify role models who relay training on a daily basis.
Managing digitalization with concrete indicators
Too many digital transformation projects are managed based on feelings. We hear “it’s going well” or “the teams are on board” without any measurement. To stay on course, it is essential to define indicators linked to business objectives, not to deployed functionalities.
- Rate of invoices processed without manual intervention (automation of the billing chain)
- Average time between receiving an order and its entry into the ERP (smoothness of the process)
- Number of security incidents reported and addressed within the NIS2 framework (cyber maturity)
- Share of ESG data collected automatically vs. manually entered (reliability of reporting)
A useful indicator measures a change in behavior or performance, not the number of activated licenses. If the dashboard does not trigger any decisions, it is measuring the wrong thing.
Quarterly review rather than annual
An annual steering committee comes too late to correct a drift. A short quarterly review (one hour, not half a day) is recommended, comparing indicators to the previous quarter and adjusting priorities. This rhythm allows for reallocating budget or training where it is needed, without waiting for the project to derail.
The digital transformation of a company in 2024 is less about choosing a technology than about the ability to align regulatory obligations, internal skills, and operational monitoring. Organizations that move forward are those that address these three dimensions in parallel, project by project, without waiting for a hypothetical “grand overall plan”.