Digital transformation at work. I’m all in!

I want to share with you our experience of going for an ‘all or nothing’ approach to digitally transforming our workplace. In for a penny, in for a pound. Full on.

Inspired by how consumer tech has revolutionised many aspects of our private lives, we opened the door of our company to let technology in so that we could innovate our work processes. The beauty about a digital way of doing things is that you’re not limited to simply automating manual processes. Digital technology affords you with an invaluable opportunity to go in and completely redesign processes- to ‘lighten’ them up, to eliminate certain steps, to make the mundane more exciting, to get everything connected and in sync… By taking the time to stand back and look at this opportunity, by taking the time to seize it, a company can reap in the productivity, time saving, and employee engagement rewards for many years to come. This is what drove us to sit down, to put on our ‘digital glasses’ so to speak, and to reanalyse, redefine and optimise the way we work.

We literally ‘virtualised’ everything: from encapsulating all our work into blocks, projects and tasks, to creating a virtual alias for each team member so that their time, workloads (and eventually their talents, personality, performance, as machine learning kicks in) could be managed and facilitated, to ‘leanifying’ and digitising every process (from purchases, travel and expense management, communication) and every interaction so that we could operate an automated, connected, integrated and digitally empowered workplace. You see, if everything is digitised, it is- by its very nature- quicker. Many things can happen automatically in the background with no need for human intervention (such as syncing and updating all data, time tracking, updating project resource status, etc.). If everything is digital, it's connectable, it's transferrable, it's storable, it's reusable, it can be mined, and the whole workplace can be in sync. So get everything online, and then do everything online over the one connected platform, and you'll experience how the more you use the platform the more it will do for you. Since we adopted a digital way of working, we are a more productive company that has slashed internal email use by 70%, that has reduced the use of siloed spreadsheets by over 75%, that has saved from 25% to 90% of time (depending on the process) in such activities as leave management, time tracking, managing purchases, processing expenses, and overall work planning and execution, etc. We call this ‘smartworking’.

But the thing about digital tools- and without stating the completely obvious here- you have to actually use them to get the benefit; and I mean use them properly, wholeheartedly, committedly…the ‘all duck or no dinner’ sort of way. Even for myself I have had to hang up the moleskin, dump out some paper comfort blankets and jump in at the digital deep end. I have experienced my own private episodes of cold turkey as I fought back the urge to step out of the ‘digital way’ for a few moments and sneak in a few handwritten lists, to pencil in a few appointments in my paper diary (just to be sure)…But to be honest, these episodes only occurred in the first couple of days of transition….it’s like moving into a new house; until you unpack all the boxes it’s hard to feel at home. But once the first benefit or digital reward kicks in (like quickly approving a leave request while on the go, or opening a work task ticket with the goals clearly described, a checklist available, all the necessary documentation attached, team members at the click of a mouse, and hell even a stopwatch to time you once you press go so that you never again have to record time manually!…), once you experience your first digital high (a nice one for me was when I submitted my travel expenses over my smartphone while still at the boarding gate for my return journey- it was enjoyable to do and I could be productive even standing in a queue- as the owner of my own business this is a nice feeling)... you are hooked!

The other week my co-founder asked me to list off the three most important benefits I got from digitally transforming how I work. And I will share with you what I told him:

1. I am more strategic (I have more time to be);
2. I have a whole new level of visibility and control (strategic visibility and control- not ‘policing’) over the company, the work of my team, and my own work (important for me as well is that I can analyse metrics about where I are spending my time and the impacts of this investment- it’s hard to do this working off of paper lists);
3. I am more engaged and connected with my company and the team (moving my work into the digital world, has not only benefitted me, it has had the knock-on effect of benefiting the team around me as my digital work/footprint seeps into their world creating more interactions between me and the staff, an opportunity that was missed when I locked myself away in my own paper world and silos).

The reality is that there have been so many benefits from digitally transforming how I work: time savings, increased productivity, instant access to data and information, visibility, control, engagement with the team… and it’s been personally satisfying and rewarding. Everything about the workplace is connected, integrated and in sync. These benefits can only be harnessed when we adopt a ‘connected-by-design’ philosophy to the use of digital tools for the workplace- it has to be ‘all-in’ and across the board for the true transformation to occur.

And very importantly, while technology is the vehicle for digital transformation, it’s the personal willingness to transform that is the fuel that makes transformation happen. And when it happens, it’s powerful. 

Oonagh Mc Nerney. CEO @Sapenta.

www.sapenta.com