Embracing Digital Transformation

Digital transformation, akin to other long-term initiatives, is fraught with twists and turns than one might anticipate. Over the last few years, we at Jaaji Technologies have had the privilege of being part of multi-year digital projects for our clients across various sectors. This journey has taught us invaluable lessons about the intricacies and dynamism inherent in digital transformation.

Quick wins are important – It is important not only for your team but also for your digital partner. Break down the project into logical milestones and celebrate them, even if they are small. The idea is to rally the entire team towards the North star while acknowledging the progress every month and course correcting as needed.

Stakeholder buy-in – Very often, the digital initiatives are launched by a central team (from IT or Digital or business), but they lack the support of key business users who throw in a lot of chinks and challenges even before the take off. We have had projects which got delayed by almost one year, because the end users didn’t show real intent and commitment

The Eternal IT-OT Tussle – “IT team doesn’t understand the problems of operations or maintenance teams” and “OT teams don’t have any clue of the latest technologies in the market” are some common complaints often heard. We encourage our clients to have representation from both sides and drive ownership of the IT-OT integration at both ends. This is not a easy problem to solve and needs commitment and self-less drive to ensure reliable system architecture while ensuring cyber security guidelines.

Talent – Experience of handling IT or ERP Projects is helpful but not sufficient to drive Digital transformation projects in the manufacturing space. The Technologies are different, the team culture is different, the objectives are different and hence ability to have an end to end picture and break down the journey into logical phases can help. Given the not so long history of Digital transformation, talent is scarce in the market and it is important to identify the right talent to lead these programs.

Data Reliability – Contextualizing data and defining the healthy ranges is a critical first step before real analysis is taken up by the end users.  Else, analysis can lead to wrong conclusions and wrong decisions. Also, statistical interpretation of various measures, causative relationships, confidence intervals need to be understood well before any decisions are taken. Also, there is a tendency to talk “predictive” and “machine learning” before discovering the value of the existing data through descriptive and prescriptive analytics. This is a progressive journey and we urge our clients to be patient and pursue it in phases.

Senior Management Sponsorship – Digital projects are smaller as compared to other Capex projects and hence don’t get the right attention or review from the senior management. The middle managers drive this, but are unable to rally the rest of the teams (from multiple departments) and hence the progress is far slower than planned

Benefit Measurement – Benefits from Digital solutions are a mix of Soft and Hard value (in measurable rupees). So the leaders need to have a balance of “Leap of Faith” and “Baselining of data” to measure the value.

For example, the “Time to analyze and take decision” can be cut down by ~80 to 90% by deploying digital solutions. The real value is not in “Time to decide” but in the “Cost of Avoidance” or “Cost of failure” which can be very high for critical manufacturing processes. Ability to avoid an equipment failure or a disastrous environmental impact has more value compared to the number of hours saved or number of personnel redeployed. It is like missing the woods for the trees. Quantification is important and desirable, but Leap of Faith takes you miles ahead.

Organizational dynamics – Cultural and team dynamics play a major role in driving consensus and pushing ahead on the project. Very often, we as external party get pulled in multiple directions by the internal dynamics and it becomes a challenge to manage these and still push the project ahead. The senior leadership has to bring in the right governance and direct the project while addressing the internal challenges.