What Is Digital Transformation, Really?
Most people hear “digital transformation” and think it’s some big company buzzword. Cloud migrations, AI dashboards, teams of consultants in pristine suits, gantt charts, and a wall of post-it™ notes. But what is the point of it? What was so wrong with analog anyway?
The core principle is taking the “manual” out of labor. There is also an undercurrent of scale and a few cost/benefit questions. The focus is on delivering more efficiency, ultimately leading to more productivity. Does the internet offer a tool we have never had before in recorded history? Is there value to having knowledge on demand? Do you, as a single user, have access to more information, more quickly than ever, right now?
And yes, it absolutely applies to smaller companies. In fact, small firms often see faster wins because changes are visible immediately. A bakery that starts taking online orders increases its catchment area immediately, a plumbing business can schedule a job and factor in materials, while sourcing them in real-time. A small factory putting IoT sensors on their machines, can know immediately when something is badly wrong (and address it).
The key isn’t size. It’s whether you’re willing to rethink old processes, to bring in tools that make life easier. We’ve written a lot about how the key sectors for IoT have been logistics, agriculture and manufacturing. But why these industries? Because they have many repetitive tasks which benefit from being simplified and automated. Henry Ford did not invent the production line because he was bored. He wanted to streamline the process. In streamlining the production of cars, you add other layers, like quality management, just-in-time manufacturing, yearly model changes and a choice of colors.
For a normal person, it’s as simple as moving from a filing cabinet to shared drives, or from phoning every supplier to tracking orders online. It’s not about being flashy. It’s about saving time, cutting mistakes, freeing people to do work that matters.
Let’s take a simple example. If I move a desktop phone, from a physical device on a wooden desktop where I have to manually press buttons, to an interactive tool on a virtual desktop, better functionality can be delivered, in terms of automating sequences, pre-configuring dialling patterns, adding information about the person I am calling, offer a historical context for a call, allow me to upload documents, record audio for playback and upskilling, and deliver user authentication/security checks.
All this can be done from anywhere in the world, even mobile devices. This is why a “call center” costs very little to set up and manage, can be deployed from anywhere in the world, and is hugely cost-effective for bulk customers. It has created a global industry in remote working, a starter job for almost any backpacker, and a totally unexpected boom for anger management counsellors.
Is the “communication” itself any better? Well, that is a deeply layered topic for a different discussion.
