Digital continuity, where to start ?
Digital Continuity is a natural evolution of the company’s internal infrastructure and processes, to allow information to flow more freely, but may require a revolution at your company to deliver. It is a transformation project that must be thought out in advance.
Start with the company strategy. For example, if a company wants to reduce cycle time by 40%, how can Digital Continuity help achieve this goal? Start there, and then work out what technologies will help you bring the information together in order to deliver it.
Once you have identified the future goals you want to achieve, map out the different platforms needed to achieve it and the blockers to information flows – what we call points of ‘digital discontinuity’.
This helps to identify early on what is (and isn’t) essential. For example, integrating a small local supplier of a non-critical part, whose IT systems are a bit out of date, into your digital system might not be worth the effort. But, where a dozen critical pieces come from four different countries, all speaking different languages, joined-up data tools to track and manage the supplies will be far more critical.
As with any transformation project, it is wise to quickly onboard as many relevant stakeholders as possible. To do this, we start with major systemic cross-cutting issues that impact a large number of people and identify quick win projects to validate value creation in a short time.
These quick win projects must be easily deployable, for example:
They focus on easily controlled and clear environments
They involve smaller teams and/or teams that already use collaborative practices
They benefit from the support of an internal leader, an identified innovator and/or one with recognized political weight and motivational leadership
One of the most effective approaches is a use-case incubation model, similar to the startup approach to managing a Proof of Concept (POC): test >> get feedback >> fail fast >> learn >> adapt >> deploy >>accelerate
In parallel, focus must be placed on internal cultural change. This must be supported by management, and deployed at different levels to overcome the organization’s natural resistance to change. This can include:
Collaboration and feedback, at all levels
Support for teams implementing the project, as deployment can be complex to grasp
A standard change process for middle management
Individual and/or team coaching to overcome the obstacles and concerns
A dedicated onboarding program for senior management to evolve the internal culture
The collaboration required by Digital Continuity should create a company culture which values trust and accountability, risk-taking and working in ecosystems. This requires a real analysis of skills and an adaptation of the training path - so that employees don’t feel like the expertise they’ve built up over their careers is no longer useful in the new environment of Digital Continuity you are building.
Author PIERRE-ANDRÉ VANDELLE, MBSE Offer Leader, Capgemini Engineering
