The Digital Journey – Getting out of the Gate
The high decibel noise about dire consequences if an organization does not digitize, can certainly drive a company towards the organizational equivalent of Prozac. We were no different in experiencing this shrilling compulsion.
So we sat down and tried to unravel this mystery called digitization. At least for us it was a mystery coming from the “brick and mortar” space. Mystery not in terms of understanding the tools but in terms of defining outcomes that we should expect and how to go about delivering these outcomes. A defining perspective in understanding this was in becoming familiar with the history of such disruptive business enablers.
Two pieces from history are, the now ubiquitous spreadsheets and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution. When these enablers were introduced and talked about, the same feeling of inadequacy as it is now, existed then.
All that is history now, but it is quite interesting how they became mainstream without resulting in the draconian consequences that were prophesized. The core and critically important reason why the threat died, was the uprising of a huge number of people trained and skilled in these mysteries. Sure, technologies got “boxed” enabling plug and play but the passengers learned to fly the plane as well.
So we believe that the solution for leveraging digitization will be skilling our people to fly the plane. As many as possible in as many planes as relevant. However, unlike the earlier disruptors mentioned which were sitting somewhat in isolation in different parts of the organization, this time around the disruption is across the company. And the disruption has the potential to turn the business up and down and sideways, both positively and negatively. So, skilling must be across the depth and breadth of the organization. While it has to be deliberate and purposeful, it should start with raising the basic Digital Quotient of the company.
The power and prevalence of computing and connectivity along with the huge advances in interconnectivity between systems, has made the disruption’s impact omnipresent. The ERP and spreadsheet integrated functions in an organization but data was still the function’s domain. The expertise and intelligence that could be derived from data was the sole proprietorship of the function that originated the data. With the possibilities of digitization, data ownership lines will get broken. Data has to be referenced across the company and intelligence gleaned. The lines dividing functions and their identity will fade.
This opens huge opportunities. Imagining it till you paint the complete picture can cause flat footedness and inaction. To move forward, besides skilling people, we had to identify the buckets of the ocean that we wanted to boil. We are driven by a purpose to be the choice of our stakeholders. So, the question we asked is, how can we improve the experience of stakeholders at every touch point with the company? This was still daunting since we have six stakeholders (customers, employees, distributors, suppliers, investors, and society). So, we further prioritized customer as the starting point to focus our digital efforts. Where and how do customers touch us, and we touch them? How can we transform their touch experiences with digital capabilities?
While we are driven by our purpose, we also believe that we need to make profits in order to fulfill our purpose. And this means the organization has to be agile and of high quality. And this boils down to speed and quality of decision making. Where are our decision inertia points? What can be do with digital technologies to remove or reduce the inertia?
Many companies have adopted digital as a goal. We consider it as a strategic means to the goal. And towards this we want to prioritize our strategic plays.
We have come some ways in this journey where we have become calmer and thus more coherent. We need to continue to hack our way through the grass but with clear definition of outcomes.
To incubate the execution of this agenda, we have assembled a team of digital ninjas cutting across the relevant functions and created a digital Dojo, with a leader experienced in what is possible. We hope to bring the problems in the prioritized areas to the Dojo to develop proofs of concepts and thus spark the enthusiasm across the organization.
Written by Jairam Varadaraj, Managing Director, Elgi Equipments Ltd.