Effective reporting culture for digital transformation. The third in our series on transforming organizational culture for digital transformation success explores how to improve existing complex reporting cultures and engage executives to make them more effective in digital transformation (DT, DX, digital transformation).
Traditional reporting culture needs to change
He called DX a business transformation process based on digital capabilities. And the fastest thing to try is to create a digital environment. At this time, the digital environment does not end with the introduction of digital tools, but must be transformed into actual work to build a company’s digital capability. Therefore, it is important to check all the data uploaded by executives and workers, make decisions based on it, and convince internal stakeholders. There are many examples of building a digital environment at the workplace level, but in this article, I’d like to talk a little bit about reporting to executives.
People in white-collar jobs in our country write tons of reports every day. In some cases, reporting to executives or management is quite frequent. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we work to report. This reporting culture can become quite complex and time-consuming to prepare and present, especially the higher up the organization you’re reporting to.
In startups, it’s not uncommon for founders and directors to discuss and make decisions based on actual development screens or operational metrics rather than separate reports, but as the organization grows and the complexity of the work increases, it’s not always easy to make decisions through meetings and discussions alone. And the larger the organization, the more executives want to cut to the chase, and this culture isn’t going away anytime soon.
Increase efficiency by improving your reporting culture
For example, Hyundai Card is famous for its CEO’s declaration of zero PPTs and the elimination of report-based reporting formats. While many media outlets introduce this as an innovation, it’s more about focusing on the business rather than improving the reporting culture, which means not wasting time thinking about the business by decorating the report. There are many foreign companies that emphasize storytelling over PowerPoint-centric reporting. At Amazon, there’s a culture of creating a one-page virtual press release and discussing it before launching a new service. It’s about focusing on how we’re going to do business, how our business is going to be beneficial from a customer perspective, and just creating that content.
A new approach to digital transformation leadership: leverage real-time dashboards and collaboration tools
In this context, executives and leaders responsible for DX need to think differently about their reporting and meeting culture. If you have a culture of regular reports, reduce the frequency and have a dashboard with real-time status and check in or receive reports on an occasional basis. In other words, put the digital tools you are using in the field directly on the screen and discuss them right away.
Typically, DXers are used to working in the IT industry and are more comfortable writing in a collaborative document like a wiki than in a separate document. If management follows suit, it can save a lot of time, from creating documents to scheduling reports to waiting on hold. If you’re already using collaboration and communication tools like Google Workspace, Slack, or Microsoft Teams to do most of your work, you can continue to use these channels.
If you’ve launched a mobile service or implemented an IT system, you probably have dashboards that your staff utilize. These dashboards are organized so that you can see at a glance the metrics that are important to your service or business. You can drill down to specific data and even current status if you need to. This could be something like server operations in the public cloud, or it could be revenue or key metrics for your core business. These dashboards can be used across all DX-related activities, collaborations with other organizations, and organizing data to pull out key metrics.
Accelerate DX execution with executive engagement
An executive might make the following request to the DX organization Create a dashboard that executives can access and view directly. You can even go a step further and put it on a monitor in the office to see the initiation of different changes in real time. It’s a great way to accelerate your DX efforts.
What to watch out for when adopting digital tools. The third installment of the Digital Transformation Process: Keys to Success guide explores key factors to consider when adopting digital tools for digital transformation (DX, DT, Industry 4.0, digital transformation). Topics covered include IT project management, budget planning, the challenges of SaaS adoption, security management, employee training, and the role of the executive team. Provides a practical guide to successfully introducing and utilizing digital tools.
Intrinsic considerations for adopting digital tools
We’ve talked about adopting digital tools as a first step to improving your employees’ digital capabilities. But does simply introducing digital tools instantly build digital skills? Not necessarily. In most cases, IT departments within organizations lead digital tool adoption projects. Traditionally, their primary goal is to deliver on time and at a given cost. As a result, it’s easy to lose sight of the post-implementation impact, adoption, and change management. But can IT be held accountable for these qualitative outcomes? It’s hard to say. It could be corporate strategy, corporate culture, or HR. But if it’s not an initiative of the IT department itself, but rather a request from the CEO or another organization? It’s just a mechanical project.
The importance of project management and cross-functional collaboration
To address these challenges, you need to take a different perspective. Treat digital tool adoption like any other IT project and don’t just look at it as a cost and schedule. The value it will bring to the company and how employees will use it must be explained and addressed within the project scope. This requires a process of employee buy-in as part of the project introduction. And if necessary, involve other departments outside of IT.
Understanding and budgeting for subscription services
Adopting digital tools inherently requires an investment of money. Subscription services, primarily in the form of software as a service (SaaS), dominate. Google Workspace, Microsoft 365/Teams, and Slack are all examples of enterprise subscription services. For subscription services, it is common to pay a monthly fee. Therefore, unlike traditional SI projects, the cost is centered on operating expenses (OPEX) rather than capital expenditures (CAPEX). If you need to create a new budget for your project, you need to fully understand these differences and prepare a plan.
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The challenges of SaaS adoption and the impact of enterprise size
In the case of subscription services, it is difficult to customize them to suit your company because they are already standardized and used by companies. Until now, many companies have optimized their requirements in the form of SI to carry out IT projects. However, when using a SaaS subscription service, you have to use the service provider’s servers, let alone change the functionality. These differences make the whole process of adopting SaaS digital tools challenging. If your company is small and hasn’t yet established its own IT systems and infrastructure, you can get started without too much difficulty, but as soon as your company exceeds 100 employees, the complexity of stakeholders increases exponentially.
The importance of security and privacy
The first step is to integrate with your existing legacy systems for a seamless service. For example, automatically integrating a company’s organization chart and employee information. In most cases, the SaaS service provider does not do this directly, so the adopting company needs to integrate it separately according to the SaaS service’s specifications.
This kind of integration is easy. The hard part is security. If you’re a security-conscious company, you’ll have to go through a lot more trial and error. There are a variety of security issues that come with new tools, from document security to data leaks within the organization. Due to the nature of SaaS, these services don’t exist on your internal network, but on an external network. This means that all intellectual property created within the enterprise is stored in external storage.
This fundamental change in environment needs to be well explained and convinced to other stakeholders in the organization. While adequate security and internal controls are necessary, poor decision-making can prevent organizations from fully leveraging the benefits of SaaS and reduce the likelihood of project success. This means that the essence of DX can get lost in the shuffle of unreasonable requirements. So, whenever this happens, you should never forget to ask yourself, “Why do we want to introduce digital tools into our company?”.
Practical direction and employee training on leveraging digital tools
Adopting digital tools is all about changing the way you work. The changes that digital tools bring are bigger than you might think. Everything that was previously done in analog form or based on personal experience becomes digital and standardized. The centralization of all work processes within a company, making them available as corporate assets, is the hidden goal behind the adoption of digital tools.
As mentioned earlier, you need to provide your employees with guidelines for using digital tools in order to inspire change in their daily work. If your company’s culture is not accustomed to the digital environment, you should also consider training your employees. This shouldn’t be a one-time thing, but an ongoing process to ensure that working digitally is internalized.
Companies are already creating and distributing detailed workplace guidelines to employees even before they start a DX project, such as how emails should be formatted (subject line, content, etc.) or how files should be named when creating work files. If you’re using messengers, you might want to tell them how to distinguish between chats that need to be kept private and those that don’t, or that when editing documents in the cloud, they should always create and edit files in the cloud, not on their personal PCs. You can also include guidelines for forwarding files to links in the cloud rather than physically attaching them in emails or chat conversations.
Guidelines and training can also guide employees on how to create team spaces that align with the company’s organizational chart, how to operate channels when new project teams are created, and when to delete used online collaboration spaces at the end of a project. And while it would be great if all employees were proficient once trained, that’s not always the case, so it’s important to keep checking in with employees to see how well they’re utilizing digital tools, and to conduct internal assessments of utilization and retraining after a certain point, so that they can continue to build on their skills.
Leadership roles and strategic use of digital tools
More importantly, however, is the change in management and executives. The fastest way to spread digital tools is to start at the top. Of course, it’s harder for executives to adapt to an unfamiliar environment than it is for employees, but if you want to accelerate DX, their example is critical. For example, take meeting minutes directly in the cloud and share them with employees.
When creating slides for reports, I instruct them to communicate their opinions in the cloud, and I also check the reports written by workers and give them feedback with comments. Project schedules are also discussed in the project management tool, not in Excel tables or reports. Weekly reports are also discussed in the wiki or documentation in the collaboration space, not in a separate document. If executives or executives take the initiative to utilize digital tools, employees are bound to feel more nervous and try to use them themselves. That’s why we need to train executives separately.
The key is not to explain how to use the tools or what the guidelines are, but to focus on why they are using digital tools and what the business benefits are. It should be done in a way that resonates with them. It’s not about explaining that the times are changing and we should follow suit, it’s about convincing them that it’s a necessary step to get results. Explain how working in the cloud, giving and receiving feedback along the way, and having all information centrally managed will help improve productivity from a management perspective, not a functional or technology perspective.
And if you can explain how it helps manage the risk of employee transition and turnover, you’ll get a lot of buy-in. If you can explain how you’re sending files back and forth via physical email, but you can’t find the email, and you have to call back and ask them to send you the file, and even after the final report is created, it’s “final,” “final,” “final,” “final,” and so on, you’re going to get a lot of buy-in.
Don’t forget that digital tools are the first step in improving your employees’ digital capabilities, so don’t just focus on introducing them, but also on how to use them, what they can do for you, and getting buy-in from your employees, including management, is a critical approach to your DX journey.
Digital transformation starts with the adoption of digital tools. In this second installment of Digital Transformation Process: A Key Guide to Success, we explore the historical evolution of digital tools and their impact, changes in the post-COVID-19 workplace, and the impact of the proliferation of remote work on digital transformation (DX, DT, Industry 4.0). Learn how small changes that start with the adoption of digital tools can lead to big workplace efficiencies.
Historical changes in digital tools and their impact
There are many factors that have influenced the productivity of office workers over the years. If we had to pick one tool that has had the biggest impact, especially in the last 30 years, we’d have to say digital tools.
Let’s go back to the late 1980s and early 1990s. As PCs began to be utilized in corporate offices, documentation that had been done by hand or on typewriters went digital. Then came Microsoft’s Excel and PowerPoint, which not only changed productivity but also changed the way we work. We spent less time looking for information. Calculation errors were reduced as numbers were managed in Excel.
How communication has changed since the 2000s
The 2000s brought the internet. The change in communication represented by email was revolutionary: before, people used to communicate via landline phones or, if necessary, by mailing paper documents back and forth. But now, email is at the center of it all. Today, we are constantly sending and receiving emails.
The rise of mobile and workplace productivity
The proliferation of mobile environments in the 2010s also brought about a major shift. The shift from wired internet on desktops and laptops to mobile devices on smartphones has led to another boost in productivity. For example, email communication, which was once limited to wired environments, is now possible anytime, anywhere in the mobile era. There was a time when BlackBerry was the dominant smartphone in North America before iPhones and Android phones took over the market. The BlackBerry’s core feature was real-time messaging. Many office workers flocked to BlackBerrys because of their ability to communicate in real time. Now, mobile-based messengers, cloud services, and more have evolved the workplace.
COVID-19 and rapid changes in the workplace
The COVID-19 pandemic that swept the globe in 2020 changed the way we work even more rapidly. Conference calls and video conferencing, which were once only possible with expensive, dedicated equipment like Polycom and Cisco, have given way to mobile services like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet that are accessible to everyone. At the same time, telecommuting and remote work have become accepted as part of the workplace.
The rise of remote work and the importance of digital tools
We’ve been hearing a lot of talk lately from tech companies about increasing the amount of telecommuting and remote work. This is because they’ve found that employee satisfaction is high and productivity hasn’t dropped significantly, regardless of COVID-19. These changes are, in turn, driving the use of digital tools. Chat and video conferencing for communication, traditional email and calendar sharing, and cloud-optimized file sharing, document creation, and collaborative editing.
In addition, digital tools such as task management and project management tools for to-do and work management are not just being used internally, but also by partners and collaborators outside the company, and it has become difficult to work together without them. We started using Google Workspace (formerly known as G Suite) and Microsoft 365 as collaboration tools, and we started using Teams and Slack for communication.
Are these changes just a complement to remote work? They may have been triggered by remote work, but the end result is a fundamental shift in the way we work. Until now, we’ve been using digital tools on a case-by-case basis in the name of personal know-how. But after COVID-19, digitizing work became a company-wide task. Projects that used to be managed like a diary in Excel have become much more convenient and intuitive with the use of ‘project management tools’. This change has not only affected IT companies, but all companies regardless of industry.
Digital Transformation: Start Small, Make a Big Difference
DX doesn’t have to be intimidating. Just by digitizing the way you’ve been working, you can increase your productivity. Simply adopting many of the tools mentioned above can make a big difference. When a new employee joins your team, should they start by going through an orientation and being handed a bundle of shared documents by the youngest person in the department, or should they learn about the conversations, deliverables, and decisions that have gone into a project from the top down in a digital workspace like Slack?
If you’re comparing apples to apples, the answer is already clear. DX starts with changing the way people work. Changing tools changes the way they work, and everything they do leaves behind data. Another way to look at it is that it’s about increasing business continuity. As a result, you can take on bigger challenges like changing your business model. In this way, DX is about starting small, expanding items like a game journey, and dreaming of ultimate change.
