By Howard Cohen, contributing writer 
What started when computer screens began replacing paper — the application of digital technology to enhance and replace traditional methods for doing nearly everything — is gaining another burst of momentum with the advent of cloud services and IoT. But the changes that are happening are more than the introduction of new devices and services. Digital transformation is altering the very way that industry needs to think.
Consider: Have you been to a bookstore lately?
If so, is it the same bookstore that you’ve been going to for years or one you found because your favorite one closed recently? Bookstores have been disappearing at a rate exceeding that of most any other retail operation. Whole chains have disappeared.
Why?
The bookstore market has been significantly disrupted by a digital transformation of their entire industry. Customers actually prefer obtaining books online from a website where they can readily consult reviews from other readers, determine if they want the book, and purchase it without ever leaving the comfort of their easy chair. They then read it on the same device they bought it on. Ultimate convenience.
Digital transformation
Not the subject of an upcoming science-fiction movie, and not even a sudden dramatic change, digital transformation has been taking place at many companies in many sectors for many years now.
These companies have chosen digital transformation because it is a gradual process in which small, incremental change is the rule. No disruption of operations or cash flow. And once the change is implemented, the very next step is to learn from it — see how it changes things and how that change may affect what comes next.
This is not to say that these companies didn’t start with a plan — quite the contrary. At the beginning, they consulted with everyone, asking what they wanted to see changed and improved. What did they need to be doing better? Was it something that could be improved with digital technologies? How valuable was that change? How many people in the company, and how many customers, did it affect?
During this planning process, the planners recognized that no plan should be cast in stone because that inflexibility may lead to a great deal of work with insufficient results. By considering the learnings from each phase, they would be able to improve upon the original plan as they proceeded. The result of this iterative approach of implementing, then learning, then implementing more assured that they would end up with a far more complete set of solutions to the challenges they originally set out to achieve.
No operational disruption, but disruptive thinking nonetheless
While one of the core objectives of digital transformation is to achieve radical improvement without disruption of operations or cash flow, it is disruptive thinking nonetheless. It requires the willingness to shift strategic gears — shift your paradigm from the traditional “ready, aim, fire” to a process that is more “ready, aim, fire, aim, fire, aim, fire, and so on.”
The other thing that is disruptive about this way of thinking is that it has no real end point. Another objective is constant improvement, constant refinement, and constant acceleration toward successful outcomes.
When the final result of every phase of a project is to obtain better understanding of how to create improvement, there may never be a final phase. In fact, many digital transformers no longer refer to what they’re doing as a “project.” Instead, it becomes an ongoing, continuing process in which the results from the latest implementation are observed, informing new plans that are then implemented, and the loop begins again and again.
The change is the challenge
Digital transformation is not, by definition, difficult, though many perceive it to be so. Because each step is iterative and limited in scope, each is fairly easy to implement.
What is difficult is to get the people involved in the digital transformation process to change their thinking from monolithic to modular. From marathon to sprints. From “Hail Mary” to short yardage. From sticking to the plan from beginning to end to modifying the plan at every step along the way.
This is a very different way of thinking and a very different way of approaching process improvement. We still begin with the end in mind, as leadership guru and author Stephen Covey (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) suggests, but we recognize right from the outset that the “end” is uncertain, and that’s a good thing.
Embracing this change is the challenge in successfully enjoying all of the immense benefits available from digital transformation. This requires executive sponsorship from the top of the company that flows down through every level of the corporate hierarchy.
Immense benefits
Digital transformation is meant to enable your people to do what they do better, faster, and more effectively, with highly facilitated collaboration and communication capabilities that stay out of the way, allowing your teams to stay focused on the work, not the tools they use to do it. In the end, it’s not about bigger, better, faster technology. It’s about people enjoying their work much more, especially as they achieve far more satisfying and productive results.
To learn more about how digital transformation is affecting the electronics industry, check out these stories from around the AspenCore network:
7 Steps to Move Manufacturers to Industry 4.0 — Every function and activity in manufacturing has data behind it that should be leveraged to improve processes across the organization that will help it achieve smart factory status.
Welcome to the Age of Continuous Innovation — Modern applications now are comprised of pre-fab code snippets representing atomized functions delivered as microservices packaged within containers.
Digital Transformation: Major Gains with Minimal Pain — Simple-to-implement digital transformation methods that should be considered by supply chain executives to increase operational efficiency and ROI.
Amazon’s Whole Foods Acquisition Underlines Digital Transformation & Disruption in Retail — Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods is likely to significantly disrupt the retail sector, with implications to brands, retailers, and supply chain leaders. What role will packaging play in the retail industry’s future? What do retailers need to know to stay ahead in this crucial area of online and in-store retail? Here’s how we see it.
Measuring the Current State of Digital Transformation & Supply Chain — Survey says: Digital transformation efforts within organization drive supply chain restructuring activities.
Supply Chain Visibility: Digitizing Transforms Shipping Industry — For transportation companies and enterprise supply chain executives, developing and executing a digital transformation process requires the resolve to modernize decades-old processes. The entire supply chain, including visibility, will be affected by digital transformation.
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