Digital Transformation: A Journey

Learn what industry leaders have to say about their experiences with ‘real’ transformation

“If anybody tries to sell you Digital Transformation, run! Because Digital Transformation cannot be bought, it has to be earned.”

-Tony Saldanha | President, P&G

As said by one of the industry leaders and practitioners, Digital Transformation is more of a journey than just a process. It could be defined as the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business. It fundamentally changes how you operate and deliver value to customers. It’s also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, and get comfortable with failure. Today, Digital Transformation is a buzzword for software organizing companies. Throw it in, and you are likely to increase your sales by a considerable percentage.

Amid the 4th Industrial Revolution, digital transformation is taking different forms for different businesses. Where some organizations could leverage it for better returns and faster processes in others, it could focus on customer experience.

Irrespective of the objectives it focuses on, there are 5 stages of digital transformation. These stages could be used to chart the digital evolution phase your company has reached — and plot the course for what needs to happen next.

Go Big Or Start Small?

Today, every organization wants to bring their A-game in the journey of digital transformation. But most of them are stuck with the same question time in and time out: Should we start with a Big Bang or just take small steps to success? Here is what some of the industry leaders have to say about this roadblock:

A senior professional of AI at GE, says that “any initiative should be directly linked to the outcome”. He further briefs about how they implement digitization in areas that needed it the most. GE is a large manufacturing company and its 2 biggest challenges include Cash & Inventory Management. Any technology or automation that could streamline and accelerate their cash flow and improve their inventory management could be the answer to their question.

Tony Saldanha, president of P&G and an industry pioneer in AI, tells to “do things in parallel”. In order to find the right solution, organizations should create a portfolio of tasks that are safe and things that are high risk and high return. Doing so helps to identify areas that require basic automation. Moreover, it also allows you to have “a crazy little bet on AI as well”.

Hence, any digital & AI transformation should be directly aligned to making your processes better and enhancing the customer experience.

Success Starts With A Failure!

“If there is no failure, you won’t succeed”, says Tony Saldanha, when talking about what failures in their projects taught them. Failure in business is a valuable learning experience that can’t be duplicated in any other way. It might come as a surprise if it were to be said that a staggering 70% of the digital transformations fail.

GE is a large company with multiple mundane everyday tasks. They introduced robots as personal assistants that would do a majority of these tasks allowing the employees to focus on projects that mattered. But this particular digital initiative failed when the employees got insecure about losing their jobs due to the bots. It taught them that any automation that is leveraged should not only help them speed-track their processes but should also complement the employees.

Similarly, failure in implementing the real transformation helped multiple organizations pave their way to a better future with Humans+ AI.

Ethics in AI

Be it anywhere across the globe, there are certain sets of rules and regulations by which organizations and their employees abide. Similar is the case with Automation in industries. Multiple governments have set certain guidelines when implementing AI in organizations. Here are some of the examples:

The USA government implies that organizations should implement AI that is fair, safe & for the people’s good. On the other hand, according to a report by the EV commission, any AI leveraged should invest in technology as well as the economy.

Digital Transformation, when implemented successfully, could not only benefit the organization but also help boost its employees’ workflow.