Using Digital Transformation to Take Your Company to the Next Level
Authority Magazine recently featured a thoughtful Q&A on "How to Use Digital Transformation to Take Your Company to the Next Level" with Guidewheel's CEO. Sharing an excerpt, along with the link to the full version here:
Question: Has integrating Digital Transformation been a challenging process for some companies? What are the challenges? How do you help resolve them?
Answer: In our experience, the primary challenge with Digital Transformation is the human aspect of change management. This human aspect is critical to get right. Two common failure modes are an all-or-nothing approach, and not engaging the team:
First, companies that approach Digital Transformation projects as all-or-nothing (what some call a “big bang!” approach) are much more likely to fail. These kinds of projects are tempting, as they are new and shiny. However, it may take so long to choose, roll out, and customize the “perfect” system that by the time it’s live, the team is frustrated, key experts have left, or technology may have even advanced to the point that the original system is already antiquated. Or they may roll out so many bells and whistles that it’s hard for the team to prioritize what matters or actually use the system. Instead of a “big bang” approach, we see a “crawl, walk, run” approach be much more effective in practice.
Another common failure mode is not engaging the team. Whether it’s choosing a technology that only a few experts will be able to understand and use, or rolling a new system out to the team with a stick rather than a carrot, not engaging the team can quickly backfire. We recommend looking for technology and partners that make it easy for the full team to engage constructively.
Question: Based on your experience and success, what are “Five Ways a Company Can Use Digital Transformation To Take It To The Next Level”?
Answer: I’ll focus my answer on the manufacturers we work with every day. Five ways a manufacturing company can use Digital Transformation to take it to the next level are:
Take advantage of big changes in technology that have now made game-changing tools broadly accessible. Advancements in cloud computing power, sensors, machine learning, and intuitive software design mean that functionality that used to cost a lot — real time visibility on the factory floor, for example, or automatic alerts to prevent breakdowns — has recently become much more accessible and affordable as well as more powerful. If there are categories of tools that were previously out of reach, odds are that it’s worth revisiting.
Shift from lagging to leading indicators. Areas where you are currently managing with lagging indicators — whether it’s data in the ERP that was manually entered at end of shift, or even a P&L at the end of the month — are great candidates for high-impact Digital Transformation. For example, many manufacturers are increasingly using technology to systematically track and manage leading indicators of production and machine health instead of waiting for them to show up in bottom-line impact or catastrophic breakdowns.
Show value fast. Showing fast value is key to start the positive flywheel and drive momentum, excitement, and even more results. For example with Guidewheel, we typically recommend customers put a real time Scoreboard on the factory floor right away because the impact from the team being able to see live metrics can be so fast — for example, one customer reported a nearly immediate 13% increase in production within three weeks just from the Scoreboard! This also provides the foundation for a positive flywheel of even more engagement and results.
Start with low-lift, high return areas. Digital transformation will be most successful when that flywheel starts, and you’ll be most likely to start the flywheel if you make sure the initial lift required is low and the impact is high. In the Guidewheel flywheel, for example, we usually recommend starting by tackling downtime with low-lift features like real time Alerts or the Scoreboard. This builds the foundation to then take additional steps, such as identifying and attacking top reasons for downtime, that can bring high additional value but also require more work. In our experience, companies are most successful when they pave the way with low-lift, high-return areas before tackling bigger projects.
Crawl, walk, run. I cannot emphasize this point from the previous question enough. If you try to do everything at once, you often end up doing nothing. Instead of asking the team to start doing ten different new things, have them start by focusing on doing one thing well — and you’ll be much more likely to be successful.
Question: In your opinion, how can companies best create a “culture of innovation” in order to create new competitive advantages?
Answer: One of our core values at Guidewheel is Growth Mindset. To encourage a culture of innovation, we encourage a mix of continuous improvement to improve core value props and process, as well as tests and “strategic bets” for areas where there could be step-change impact. We believe creating the most powerful culture of innovation possible means having that core value and those processes in place across all teams.
Link to the full article here, and many thanks to Authority Magazine for the feature and thoughtful questions.