Digitalization With Purpose

I recently attended a few conferences on data and digitalization and I believe the term IR 4.0 has been loosely thrown around along with AI and “Digital Transformation”. As all these are surface definition, we have to acknowledge the fact that most companies have already been getting themselves equipped for these changes for the last 10 years. 

You may argue that the SME’s may be behind in this as they might be still using Excel, but is there an ROI if they were to move to the whole “digitalization” of processes. I do think we are missing out on a big factor when pitching on “digitalization” which is, the return of investment. We need to first analyse and conduct a feasibility study if these SME’s are going to be reaping the benefits if they start to implement digital transformation in their companies. Hence this is where I found the gap and believe it’s something worth the investment to help companies identify their return of investment when going “digital”, or if it’s even needed to go “digital”.

Most companies are in possession of so much data that they are not even aware of the “assets” they possess to make better decisions on business structures and organization development. Data analytics and empowering companies with business intelligence can help companies innovate better by showing the interdependencies between humans, institutions, entities, and processes. Organizations can use these to understand better on how making changes in one process/department will effect another process/department.

So how can companies start with data analytics? Is there a massive investment needed to acquire these intelligence? On the contradictory of what some consulting companies may advise, organizations can start small with low investment to be able to start making sense of their data. There are many tools out there which can help with the cleaning and processing of the data such as Trifacta, Alteryx and for visualization, tools such as Power BI and Tableau are pretty much user friendly and easy to navigate. These are lower investment technology tools that can still gain organizations good insights. BI and Analytics don’t have to be as expensive as it sounds and that is exactly what we are trying to work with organizations to understand.

When it comes to “digitalization”, most companies are already doing much in this space without realising it. Hence, all they need is sometimes is guidance in the right direction to be able to utilise what they currently have and how to make sense of what they are currently doing and be able to utilise it to make data driven decisions.

As with analytics, RPA is a new jargon in the current market as well. Although it may sound too complex and “scary” in terms of investment, in actual fact, it is not as complicated as it sounds. When organizations realise the value of automation and how to relate to it, it becomes less complicated and more intriguing. RPA is basically just a matter of implementing some basic software bots that can automate hours of work to just minutes and also lessen the erroneous data inputs done by humans. This allows cleaner output of data which you can rely on when making decisions.

I have come across many companies buying new gadgets or implementing new applications for the sake of being “digital, when by doing so, they are not solving any of their current problems. I understand the governments push to move companies into the transformation stage to be on par with other nations but this does not mean at any cost and with no purpose. Hence, let’s look into moving digital with a purpose rather than for the namesake of jumping on the IR 4.0 bandwagon.

In the last few years we have managed to help many companies comprehend the real benefits of going digital or being a data driven organization and I look forward with working with many more in the coming year. So to summarize, forget jargons, you are already half way there, all you need is better understanding and we can help show you how.

With that said, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and looking forward to a meaningful digitalization society in 2020.