Bridging past and future: the digital transformation journey

Find your starting point

The first step is to decide how you’d best describe the state of your current business. Canon has identified three core stages of digital maturity: 

• Digitised: Digital processes are used sometimes, but usually only if required by customers or legislation.
• Automated: Some tasks are automated to save money or improve productivity. For example, software to automate document routing or workflows.
• Optimised: Automated processes are continuously enhanced with the help of feedback and analytics. 

Succeeding through collaboration

Applying the above strategies will enable you to implement digital transformation with confidence, but they won’t guarantee success. An often-overlooked cause of digital transformation failure is insufficient collaboration. Buy-in from customers, employees, suppliers, partners and other external stakeholders is critical.

That’s because digital transformation requires people to be willing to learn and adopt new technologies, processes, skills, and ultimately, a new workplace culture. Automation can be a scary concept, but the best way to get employees to overcome resistance to this change is to show them the real human benefits – reducing errors, saving time and money, and freeing workers from repetitive, admin-heavy tasks, so they can focus on more business-critical work.

For example, automating expense claim and annual leave requests in HR can make time for more productive activities, such as workforce planning and upskilling employees to meet new digital skills requirements. Building digital awareness and skills will continue to be an important challenge in the GCC region, where a 2017 study by Strategy & Middle East and LinkedIn concluded that digital transformation could create 1.3 million new jobs by 2025.