Business-driven or technology-driven digitisation: which is the best approach?

How can digital become a continuous learning system that boosts business? 

In increasingly service-centric business models, where the relationship between the organisation and the customer (including the internal customer, the employee) is an integral part of the offering, what is the role of digital transformation in the evolution of companies?

In the model for assessing the maturity of a "service organisation" created by KPMG in 1998 (and taken over by USM), we have a value delivery scale that has a "technology-driven" approach as its starting point and a "business-driven" approach as its end point.

The difference is substantial: it is better to drive technology (business-driven) or be guided by technology (technology driven) in the provision of value?  

Let us take as an example a user who buys a smartphone: if it finds new functionalities that it did not have in its previous phone, it learns them by being guided by the technology. He matures his level of competence,induced by an external technological stimulus. But how many features remain in limbo because they are not really necessary?

In my experience, I have seen that the technological approach is going mainstream in companies. Many companies are innovating for fear of falling behind and losing competitiveness. They look at what works in the market and replicate it, in a veritable race for the latest technology, in the hope that is an effective formula for them as well.

The point is that companies do not choose what is right for them and their people: there are unique processes, consolidated and refined over years of history, which are adapted and adjusted to Technological pre-processing. But a pre-machined product can never be a learning system.

Digital as a learning system

Companies digitise their processes but do not take an important aspect into account. The main advantage of a digital chain is related to the possibility of collecting data. If we limit ourselves to using generic systems, we will never have a vision of where we want to be.

We need to know what to measure and how to measure it: from digitised processes we can identify trends, bottlenecks, insights to innovate their products and services. In a word improving business. And this is the business-driven approach: know their processes and value them through technology.

To stay on the subject of examples, think of a bank's mobile app, to that innovation that has made it possible to change the bank's model of service delivery initially based on the proximity branch, drastically reducing costs and increasing the perception of service quality and convenience for all its users. This app did not come about because it was "already available on the market", on the shelf, but because the bank asked itself what it had to do to make this change; the bank started from the need and only then went for the technology.

Before making own's processes agile, however, there are management and control aspects that should not be overlooked. In a universe where everything has to be connected - sensors, systems, data - to enable the workforce to work remotely and gather information, the management of IT assets and workstations cannot be uncertain.

Digitalisation is ineffective without management and control

We have reached a point where every single business unit develops digital transformation projects in full autonomy of expenditure. Increasingly, budgets are showing expenditure items dedicated to the purchase and provision of IT assets and services, whether physical or virtual, to innovate the company.

In the face of large investments, the ability to monitor what has been purchased is lacking: is appropriate for use? Does it conform to its contracted use? Do we know of its existence and condition in order to take appropriate preventive and protective measures? Do we always have a holistic view of all our company's development initiatives?

Several companies complain that they do not have enough budget to allocate to innovation projects, without considering that, statistics in hand, 30 per cent expenditure on software licences could be optimised for unused or excessive subscription plans. Or that in their migration to the cloud or use of subscription services they are paying more than they should. Or even worse, they suffer economic losses from exploited vulnerabilities of untraced applications.

All these situations have an impact on digital transformation projects: waste and unplanned costs block resources that could be invested in smarter ways and operations can be threatened at any time by unplanned interruptions due to security risks.

Innovation also goes through agile working

In addition to assets managed directly by the company, we also have a multitude of personal devices of employees accessing company resources. Employees want to be able to work flexibly remotely, using whatever device is convenient for them, be it the smartphone, tablet, laptop etc...And they want to find everything they need to work with. The same configurations, the same applications...

Digital transformation also applies to the modern workplace: you need configured, functioning and secure workstations to access digital tools and services. But the entry of BYOD devices has added complexity, and IT teams are unable to scale.

The use of remote collaboration tools is not enough to enable agile working: access policies, security measures, inventory and critical monitoring tools, secure connectivity tools, systems for timely remote assistance are needed. These are all elements that it is unthinkable to manage manually, intervening on each individual device.

WEGG's strategy 

How do we achieve 360° support for digital transformation?

Our strategy is based on three points:

• We create the environment for innovation, through the management and control of IT spending [IT ASSET MANAGEMENT]

We ensure full visibility of your IT assets (HW, SW, Cloud) to be able to detect waste, non-compliant situations and optimization opportunities. This allows us to always have resources to invest in digital transformation projects and be fully aware of the vulnerabilities that can threaten our environment.

• We enable people to operate anywhere, safely. [WORK FROM ANYWHERE]

We enable uniform, centralized and secure remote management of workstations. We create the conditions for agile working, facilitating access to company resources and ensuring that there are no malfunctions or blocks to productivity.

•  We transform business functions into digital services for internal users and customers [DIGITAL SERVICE EXPERIENCE]

If the above conditions have been met, we can enhance the company's processes and services through technology, making them accessible to people from wherever they connect. The advantage is to be able to complete, with the support of automation, activities and requests in the simplest and most efficient way and at the same time measure and improve KPIs at any time with the identification of bottlenecks and the real-time evaluation of perceived quality.

The value of our consultancy lies precisely in the ability to prepare companies for digital transformation and make them business-driven with a digitalization of processes that allows a continuous learning system.

*Article by  Francesco Clabot, CTO of WEGG and lecturer in IT Service Management at the University of Padua.