Transitioning to digital management is often framed as a technology refresh, but in practice it is a sociotechnical transformation that alters decision rights, operational controls, accountability models, and the organization’s risk posture. Even when modern platforms are procured and deployed successfully, many organizations fail to realize expected gains in speed, transparency, and performance because constraints originate in governance, legacy architecture, data quality, capability gaps, and external dependencies rather than in software features. This article analyzes the most persistent challenges encountered during transitions to digital management and explains how these challenges reinforce one another through feedback effects such as fragmented ownership, “tool-first” implementation, and transformation fatigue. The discussion focuses on governance and strategic alignment, legacy systems and technical debt, data governance maturity, workforce skills and cultural adoption, cybersecurity and privacy requirements, third-party dependency and resilience expectations, and measurement difficulties that obscure value realization. The article concludes that successful digital management is less about digitizing existing routines and more about redesigning management as an operating model grounded in trusted data, explicit decision rights, and resilient digital operations.

Digital management, digital transformation, change management

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