“Going Digital” ?

It is funny how this extremely sophisticated and time-taking transformation from usual processes and procedures into their computer based or digital alternatives has become such an easy target for most of the IT companies and professionals to title their form digitization. There is and there cannot be anything like a 10 min guide to digital transformation or a 10 day digital transformation course. These quick fixes can only be true for digitisation of forms or worksheets etc. A digital transformation is a different ball game altogether. Manual procedures do not naturally have a life now as the world is going digital. Therefore it is a natural requirement for workflows to be coherent with digitisation.

However, it is a time taking process. Just like planting a seed and expecting the fruit.

1. Clearly Defined Goals and Objectives

This blog post is to shun the idea of quick fixes and thoughtless random automation that is often thought of associated with the notion of the term Digital Transformation, however, in true letter and spirit, digital transformation is a complete overhaul of workflows and a completely new lifestyle inside out. A company needs to rethink from top to bottom and re-organise from bottom up. This post is an anecdote for those who want to do it correctly and an antidote for those who are stuck somewhere on the road!

THE BIG GUYS NEED TO BE IN FIRST !

The top tier , the management buy in has to be in first. If the management is not convinced for a digital transformation of their company’s processes, dont even think of doing this suicide yourself. You will end up doing it in real ! But if you are lucky and your management is already convinced that this needs to be done and they are banking on you to get it done then this post will guide you to do it!

Put the gun on the side and move on ! 😀

Read on the tips , they will be handy. Later, we will look at an

example business process and an example life cycle of digital transformation that it will take from planting a seed to becoming a tree in digital world!

As Steven Covey said in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People:

“Begin with the End in Mind “

You would need to think about the strategic outcomes of what you are doing, before taking the leap so you do everything in the right direction. So, clearly mark some objectives that you need to attain with this digitisation initiatice. these objectives must be long term and based on the Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Time-bound approach

An example of this can be the sales process upgrading to its digital alternatives with marketing automation principles and the marketing executives establish the following SMART objective related to sales and business development

“By the end of the year 20XX, the sales percentage of the product X of company Y will be increased by A% with an allowable variance of +- 5”

2. Select an Organisational Unit to Slice n Dice

You cannot just start from a random end of a company and start digitization one fine day. You have to select an organisational unit, study its hierarchy and then plan for its slice n dice to digital transformation journey. Do it schematically, not randomly, otherwise it will only lead to chaos. Everything needs planning. Start from the top, visualise the organisational chart, discuss with the management about the approach they would like. There are two approached followed for this

One is top down, you start from the top tier and move to the bottom tiers as policies are driven from the top and followed by the bottom tier

Another and my personal favorite is bottom up, you start collecting data from the bottom tier who is actually doing stuff and facing problems with the policies in place and want improvements, they suggest an improved process and improvements are fed upwards hence giving rise to an improved policy.

Whatever the appraoch of BPR, the resultant process is replaced by its automated counterpart.

3. Involve Relevant Stakeholders

You must have heard of the responsibility matrices of RACI and RASCI, well these buzzwords are not made for no reason. Every organisation has people who are directly or indirectly related to certain activities. This relationship is either responsibility, or assignment, or consultation or information. Whatever that is, define it and involve them in the process re engineering activities so all of them can give their due inputs at the right time.

4. Decipher the Process Data, Rack and Bin It

The data that you will be collecting as a result of the above will be of many sorts and categories. Some processes related to management, some related to the operations and projects, some linear and some non linear. Whatever the process wise category of the process, try to visualise the bins/categories and list all of them down. Then, rack and bin your process metadata appropriately. I have doen that multople times using excel spreadsheets and a process naming convention so each can be uniquely identified. This metadata will reveal interesting insights that you would not have seen before. For example, you would be able to see that the more problems in an area, the less you have process insight into. Or may be there is still something that is not visualised to be put into process language and candidate for automation/digital transformation.

5. Develop Process Automation Plans on the base of Categories

Based on your categories , group the processes as per the process bins and title the process action plans accordingly with candidate improvements. You can group process re-engineering and automation efforts in one go and do them step by step. They can go hand in hand. Whichever is suitable to your needs. For example for a project management process, the re-engineered practice suggests the visualisation of resource usage over the time period of the project. At the same time, the project manager decides that the gantt chart tool of MS Office Project tool will be used for the purpose. Hence a re-engineered process is automated in one go, completing the process action plan. Of course you will need a process champion for each of the process bin to take care of the improvements.

6.Check the Effectiveness of the Process Action Plans

The process action plans either for re-engineered practices or automation techniques, need to be monitored for effective implementation and usability. You will need to keep an eye on this using feed-backs and surveys. Do this interactively and don’t make it in the form of annoying pop ups with questions as it tends to irritate the process user. Think of creative ways of knowing the user’s point of view about the processes and their digital way of life.

The Risks in Digital Transformation

Another problem identifiable from the metadata can be that areas revealing less processes ( but more work ) are suspected to be hiding their work details because they are afraid of their jobs being replaced by the fearful DIGITAL GIANT.

We, the Digital Transformation Promoters need to clarify that this notion needs to be CHANGED.

DIGITAL transformation isn’t a harbinger of UNEMPLOYMENT for people. People will still be working in their same position but on a far more upscaled and intellectual level than before, and a far more facilitated fashion than before. Whatever is repeatable and patterned, will be replaced by machines, and what needs human intervention, will still be done by humans. Nobody is eliminating the HUMAN factor from the EQUATION. The truth is Digital Transformation has no beauty without the Human factor.

With the advent of digital devices the nature of work has changed and so is the human work routine. Getting the human part right will result in the digital part being in the right place too! The rule of thumb is patience as even with it being digital, the fruits will be seen once the plant grows into a tree !