Make Every Moment Matter by Moving in “Digital Time”

Companies have invested massive amounts of money in digital transformation — an estimated USD $1.3 trillion to date. So why hasn’t society fully realized a return on that investment? Why is it that advances in technology haven’t made us faster, smarter or better? Time is still in short supply and productivity growth is stuck in the slow lane.

I think it’s because most organizations aren’t yet moving in what we at Nokia call “digital time” — using digital technologies in a faster, bolder and more intelligent way to keep pace in a world where everything must be immediate and highly intuitive. When speed matters and time is scarce, digital time allows people to make better use of each moment, maximizing productivity, revenue and the human experience.

Why so many digital transformations fail

Over the last couple years, I’ve talked with a lot of communication service providers (CSPs) and large enterprises around the world. Whether I’m in Singapore, Indonesia, India, Colombia, the United Kingdom or the United States, I’m hearing the same stories about technology investments that just aren’t delivering the expected ROI.

The reality is that most digital transformation projects, even those with really strong visions, fail when it comes to execution. Some move at a snail’s pace. There can be a lack of focus or alignment throughout the organization. In some cases, leaders are afraid to disrupt the revenue models that have served them so well in the past.

For those reasons and more, 70 percent of all transformations will fall short of their stated goals. Let that sink in: of all the money being invested in digital transformation, about USD $900 billion is being spent on projects that miss the mark. That’s huge, not just for business but for entire countries.

Enterprise-level projects, national implications

At the macro level, we’ve seen a steady decline in productivity growth rates, which are now at near-historic lows in many advanced economies. This matters because productivity growth is crucial to the ability to increase wages and living standards. It also helps raise the purchasing power of consumers needed to grow demand for goods and services.

While countries themselves can influence productivity through policies and programs, large enterprises and CSPs, due to the size of their workforce and supply chains, also have a significant impact on a nation’s productivity. And in my experience, the high-performing companies — the ones whose digital transformations are working — are doing a few things differently than the lower performers.

Lessons learned from digital leaders

Above all, the top companies move in digital time. By responding with critical mass, with speed and boldness, they’re seeing better results. They out-innovate their competitors. They disrupt more. They invest more in technology — and they do it faster, more aggressively and more intelligently. In a world where speed matters, that makes a huge difference.

Digital leaders also:

• Have a clear digital ambition and know exactly what they want to look like five years from now
• Launch smart pilot projects that give them the room to either succeed or fail quickly — then scale the most successful projects based on what they learn
• De-risk by making the proper investments in change programs, resources, commercial models and technology strategies

How Nokia is helping companies move in digital time

Digital time is about making every moment matter. To do that — and move productivity into the fast lane — you need to work more intelligently with technology. That’s where Nokia enters the picture.

Our goal is to intelligently connect people, machines and data. We want to help CSPs break down silos and integrate information across their business, network and operations. We believe machine learning and artificial intelligence can help them generate new insights and predict customer issues — and then act in the moment to enrich and monetize the customer experience. Moving in digital time is about bringing new services to market faster and automating “best next actions” to reduce outages, customer calls and handling times.

The way we see it, the main benefits to working in digital time are that it lets you:

• Maximize revenue growth by embracing innovation and transformation, making it possible to quickly unlock new services, markets and business models
• Maximize efficiency by making complex operations simple, allowing you to create and deliver the highest quality  services for your customers with agility and security 
• Maximize each moment in your customer relationships by putting the customer experience at the heart of your digital reinvention, shifting from a transaction-oriented business to one that’s about building relationships

At Nokia, we strive to make all our software products easy to use and optimized to help companies move in digital time. We do this because we’re tired of seeing digital transformation projects fail. It’s time we all get more out of our digital investments by not just transforming but completely reinventing our approach to the digital era. And it all starts by making every moment matter.