Guest Article – Is Culture important in Digital Transformation?
Article by Mr Mohan Nair,
Vice President – Global Business Development,
Avaali Solutions Private limited
Companies are increasingly discussing on cultural change in their digital transformation journey. Implementation of technological solutions are not new and dates back to1980 when there was a boom on personal computing in business. Although the cost of computing was high then, it quickly started getting cheaper whereby computerisation became a norm. Subsequently, increased acceptance of ERPs began in the 1990’s and today emerging technologies like RPA, Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning etc have started gaining traction. Change has been happening from the 1970s and 1980s and since then people are adapting to these changes at their own pace. Culturally, even at that time there was always a fear that people would lose their jobs due to computerisation. When you go back in time and see the discussions, it was all the same, and we continue to discuss it now.
In the magazine Business Week, August 8, 1983, an article titled “Computer Shock Hits the Office”, talks on the resistance people had with this change. It was quoted “The personal computer is sweeping into corporate offices on the wings of a popular revolt”. In its subsequent edition it was further published on the impact of such changes, and it stated, “even those managers who type only by the “hunt and peck” method are now using their desktop computers to do everything from analysing financial data to sending their e-mail electronically and also tapping into large corporate databases”.
This clearly shows that despite the resistance people embraced these changes.
Further, a study was conducted on the corporate use of personal computers way back in 1983 by a few research scholars. They observed that the Personal Computers (PC) users were very positive about the effects of it. Out of their selected samples, only 3% voiced negative consequences of the PC which would result in job losses.
Currently the same fears are repeating with the emergence of new technologies. Then why is culture becoming more important than earlier? There could be a couple of reasons
- Change in Area of focus – Emphasis of emerging technologies is now more, external customer focussing than internal process focussing. Computing and ERP was focussed on streamlining internal processes, but implementation could be at the pace the organisation decides. However, with new emerging technologies, focus is more on personalizing customer experience and building new business models. Here the implementation should be at a much faster pace than the competition.
- Reduced Cycle time of New technologies – Technologies are evolving rapidly. Understanding what suits the business, proper communication to employees & stakeholders and complete acceptance is critical, sometimes even for the survival of the organisation.
- More of Unstructured Data – Data no longer resides within the organisation. Most of the data required for business decisions resides outside the organisation. It becomes imperative to capture the data, analyse them in order to make this information useful for decision making. Organisations are not used to such abundance of data and may capture them but not utilise them effectively. This requires a data driven culture across the organisation.
- Change of Business models – Technologies are transforming business models at a faster pace. Sometimes changing slowly can put organisations out of business. Setting an organisation to adopt this change requires a different mindset and talent across the organisation.
Organisations are getting aware of the above and redefining their present culture. Culture is nothing, but a set of knowledge acquired over time on generally accepted practices within organisations. It evolves based on the decision’s organisations make in the business journey overtime. I wonder what would be the most important ingredient that is required to adopt to the changes, whether technology or otherwise?
The Culture of ‘strong acceptance to change’ would really help organisations to capitalise on the benefits of emerging technologies. This culture must be driven across the organisation. Driving this culture from the top builds trust which is the key driver for this change. When employees trust that such changes would not impact their daily life adversely, they are happy to try change. This will happen when Management clearly communicates, encourages and rewards people for the following:
- Drive Innovation across the organisation – When people tend to think out of the box, technology becomes an enabler to make these innovations successful.
- Try everything and fail early – Employees should be encouraged to try everything. Trying early and failing is much better than not trying at all.
- Define the new roles and train existing employees – Employees should be guided on their future roles and they should be trained to take up this new role over a period of time.
This requires the right investment not just in technology but also in building the right culture. Organisation should view the return on Investment not merely as a mathematical calculation but include the intrinsic value of building the right culture which is long lasting in the ever changing world of technology.