Digital transformation is the hottest buzzword in the business world right now. Every organization is rushing to build a digital transformation strategy and make it the next big thing, the one thing that’ll bring growth and sustainability in this ever-changing world. True enough, the world is changing and a strategy is needed, but everybody is keen on discussing the digital part, using sexy things like IoT, mobile, AI, big data and the like and miss the important thing: Transforming. It’s all about the “what” not the “how”. Read on and discover why you need to focus on the transformation part of a digital transformation initiative.
On a brilliant post published late last year, Geroge Westerman from the MIT Sloan School of Management, made a business world shattering statement: Companies don’t need a digital strategy. As odd and obtuse as it may seem, George Westerman couldn’t be more right. As we’ve repeatedly said in the past, technology is just a way to enable new ways, better ways of reaching our goals. Using the wrong technology or not understanding the technology you are about to invest in is just a vast waste of money and, most likely, the single fact that makes you lose ground to your competition.
Technology by itself doesn’t add value to a business and it never will. Only when you know what do with it, when you understand how it fits in your overall landscape and how it promotes your differentiation it will become valuable. Otherwise, you’ll be creating more problems than solutions. Think about IoT and cloud computing. True enough, obtaining real time data from your production environment or logistic facilities and making it available in a cloud-based system looks sexy. Looking at OEE graphs plotted in real time can be a blast but really, what value does it add to your business? The trick is on what you’re going to do with that data and how flexible your organization needs to be to actually improve your efficiency, reduce your raw material stocks and improve your maintenance capabilities. The focus then should be on what you want to achieve, rather than how you’ll be able to put a given technology in place.
So, why is transformation, rather than digital, so important?
First, because to improve you need to change. And change is the transformation of what you’re doing so you can do it better, at a lower cost and with better effectiveness. It’s therefore more important to know what you want to achieve, it’s more important to know what you intend to be doing in order to be better instead of thinking how to use augmented reality or any other sexy digital technology in your business. The question every organization must ask is not “how we’re going to put RFId tags in our pallets” but instead “what are we going to do to cut down cross docking time by 60% and achieve a 100% handling accuracy”. If you don’t have a business goal how are you going to establish return?
Second, because you need to select the right technology for a specific job. Using the wrong technology or using a not mature enough technology is the recipe for disaster. And to define the right technology, you must first clearly define what you want to accomplish, the process limitations where the technology will operate and the organizational landscape where the technology will be implemented. It’s rather obvious that this means that you need to focus on the transformation part of the underlying process to clearly understand what technologies will be best suited to deliver the intended results, not how you’ll change the process to use a predefined technology.
Finally, because sustainability comes from effectiveness, not sexy stuff. Technology is a way to achieve a better condition, one that could not be achieved if the technology didn’t exist. But this doesn’t mean that all new technologies need to be used right away and certainly it doesn’t mean that they will deliver the same level of benefits to everybody. You need to consider that, given your organization maturity level and the goals you want to achieve, you may need to move incrementally across multiple technology stages to assure change management. Or simply, given your operational constraints, you need a mix of technologies, some more advanced and other less appealing, in order to achieve a level of effectiveness that really drives your business.
It may look like we’re shunning innovation by saying that digital is not relevant. Actually, that’s the other way around. We’re saying that innovation is the most important thing. Innovation is all about transformation. You need to focus on that by focusing on transforming your processes, focusing on establishing higher levels of integration, efficiency, personalization and engagement so you become sustainable and better prepared to deal with continuous change. Technology comes in naturally as the facilitator for the much-needed transformation. By understanding what you want to achieve, you’ll be able to take full advantage of this brilliant, ever changing stream of digital breakthroughs that humanity will continue to put out.
At Processware our focus is precisely to help companies innovate by enabling them to focus on the process instead of the technology and then enabling them to use the right technology for each activity. We do this by providing an intelligent platform that enables process digitalization and transparent technology application and use in process activities, from mobile to IoT and to real time big data processing. You can check it out here.
