The Under-discussed Human Aspect of "Digital Transformation"

"Digital transformation" has become a hot trend in the non-IT business world in the past few years. As a slew of software firms come to maturity peddling productivity-enhancing programs for more legacy firms, the legacy firms have come to grips with a renewed sense of crisis that they need to adopt more IT in their day-to-day operations just to keep up with tech firms that can achieve so much value with relatively few employees. The idea of using the tech firms' own products to help retool the likes of manufacturers and traditional brick-and-mortar service operators is becoming not just mainstream but urgent as they adapt to the work-from-home world of COVID-19.

Yet, there is often a misconception of "digital transformation" as merely bringing in more technology and automation to the daily work of those legacy firms while keeping the people and the processes intact. Unfortunately, reality is a bit more complicated. While computers and software can certainly help to make existing work less labor-intensive, their true transformational value can only be unlocked when people, operational processes, and even output are redesigned around the core functionalities of the software so that the productivity-enhancing features of the software are fully leveraged.

Changing any business practices for a legacy establishment is difficult, especially for their thousands of employees who have been accustomed to executing the same processes over the course of years and decades. Seeing the emergence of new technology, their first instinct would be to incorporate them into existing processes, while minimizing changes to those processes. The result is often the use of technology, but not in ways that the technology is intended. In many such cases, processes are merely supplemented with tech, but the processes themselves have not been transformed by technology.

A couple of examples from Japan aptly illustrate how technology is used without digital transformation. Recent news reports talked about the introduction of ultraviolet machines to disinfect physical books in libraries, of coronavirus and other disease-inducing agents, in less than a minute, while others note that robots who been invented that allow faster stamping of personal seals (Hanko) on paper documents. These examples show how technology is being used without a "digital mentality." When e-books and e-signatures are becoming ever-more prevalent and convenient with new software, the insistence of sticking with paper books and Hanko on paper forms shows the unwillingness of librarians and businesspeople to think outside their traditional way of work.

The book disinfecting machines and Hanko-stamping robots also begs the question of, given the plethora of technology available, which IT products are truly transformational while which are just fluff that superficially seems to bring processes into the 21st century, but in reality does little in terms of productivity enhancement. After all, books that are disinfected in a machine can be reinfected quickly after passing through the hands of many readers, negating the very purpose of disinfection as a measure to boost confidence among library-goers that they will not be infected by indulging in their reading hobbies. A few machines installed in the libraries, rather than widely available and used everywhere a book can go to can lead to little increase in such confidence.

However, it is also necessary to admit that no everyone can see the irony of using technology to process paper books and paper forms. To instill a "digital mentality" among older workers is not difficult just because they are not familiar with computers and software. Many of these older workers are also, as a result of decades of service, in the position of power and status within their respective organizations, giving them the ultimate power to decide whether or not and what IT products their organizations will adopt. As their incentives are, first and foremost, not make themselves obsolete after adopting new technology, they may be hesitant to digitally overhaul processes and service offerings even if they understand their values.

In a world of conservative decision-makers, non-productive IT fluff, and plenty of ways to be seen as digitally transformed without the substance, it begs the question of how exactly can organizations and their employees be pushed to truly think outside the box to undertake IT-based improvements. While top brasses in traditional companies are unsettled by the bigger, longer-term picture of their top industry positions being eroded and usurped by up-and-coming IT starlets, the frontline workers, even when they see the same trends, rarely share the top brasses' sense of urgency. The average worker's performance is measured by doing what they do now well, not actively changing entire processes that go beyond the scope of their work.

Instead of vainly and vaguely pushing workers to think about how they can change digitally transform their work in a way that they do not see any personal incentives, it makes better sense for companies to set up entirely separate teams, incorporating workers from multiple departments within the organization, to undertake a pan-organizational look at how work is done and output generated. Only by taking workers out of their daily grind and to the same page as the top brasses seeing tech competition and opportunities from leveraging new tech trends, can digital transformation go beyond headline-grabbing but head-scratching news of new machines to speed up outdated processes.