Digitalization transforms ideas into enhanced efficiency, productivity, and satisfaction. From pinpointing improvement areas to implementing new technologies, this journey, while complex, is incredibly rewarding.
Commitment, collaboration, and continuous improvement are key. By following these guidelines, businesses can overcome challenges, drive innovation, and ensure a dynamic and efficient future in the digital age.
The First Step: Building a Digitalization Team
Congratulations! You have taken the first step, and that first step is usually the hardest one. A lot of commitment, will, and teamwork is needed to recognize potential business flows that can be digitalized.
The best journeys are when you trust and can rely on others to join you in the adventure. So, before you start analysing, pick a team with the proper knowledge and experience. The people you choose need to know what the main issue is, but you also need someone to counter the propositions. This is important because if you all agree on something, you can easily overlook certain things and focus on the wrong ones.
Starting Simple: A Beginner’s Guide to Digitalization
If you and your team are new to this, the best course of action is to pick an easier business process that can be digitalized, something like archiving documentation. This is because, without a technological background, you can easily get entangled on what, why, how you can do something, whether it is possible, etc., leading to stress, wasted time, and eventually giving up on the whole idea.
In these situations, your IT department can be of great help, or if you don’t have them, a great approach is to get outside help. You might be thinking that it is expensive, but in the long run, it’s quite cheaper! Why? Because you get years of knowledge and expertise that help to guide you in your journey versus lost time, wrongly identifying key points, additional costs, angry meetings with the vendor and eventually having an unusable software.
Advanced Strategies: Digitalization for Experienced Teams
You have done your fair share of processes, and you want to do something more advanced to shave off time used for processing documentation, reorganize teams so they can focus on something else, speed up cash flow, and generate more business opportunities.
You know what you want to do next, but now the issue lies in what technology to use and how to incorporate it. Do I use Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotic process automation (RPA), web or desktop applications? What OCR engine and why, or will some standard and easier approach suffice?
The best approach is to create a document that contains your business scenario with key points, then look for a vendor that can help you narrow down on the why, what, and how because, again, this is beneficial in the long run as it saves time, energy and lastly you get the best possible solution for your business process. Even if you have experienced technology and approach change, something that was great two years ago can be less productive now.
Additionally, never stop thinking about the old processes you already have; you can always find some way to improve them.
From Idea to Execution: Steps in Digitalization
An idea to improve a process is born
This idea creates a team that analyses what is needed. The team then presents their idea to management, and they see how the process can benefit that department and the whole organization.
A request is sent to a vendor for presentations and demos
A vendor is chosen, and the process of communication and planning begins. The specification is created and agreed upon. Vendors set up teams that start development; automated workflows are created, user modules are configured, etc. Your team setup test, preproduction, and production environments for a vendor to install its application.
The vendor setups the first demo, and your team is trained on the new application
Your team thoroughly tests the application, finds bugs, and suggests new changes. Then, changes are documented and applied, and bugs are fixed. The team tests again and confirms that everything is in working order.
The application is copied from the test environment to the preproduction, where it is tested once more. After passing the User Acceptance Test (UAT), the contract is signed, confirming that the vendor has delivered everything.
The application is copied from preproduction to production; desktop applications are installed on the users’ PCs
Users start to use the application; tasks that took a whole day now take 5-10 minutes and are exported to the Document Management System (DMS)
Production increases, worker satisfaction grows, customers are happier, cash flow improves
New ideas for improving other processes are born
Key steps in process digitalization
Identify
processes that can be improved
Create
a team of people that have in-depth knowledge of the issue – a more diverse team leads to fewer issues later
Counter
Don’t be afraid to counter with the question Why – this leads to better-defined process
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