Digital Transformation- Beyond the Hype

Digital transformation is emerging as a driver of sweeping change in the world around us. I can almost sense your reaction to this sentence:

“fantastic another digital transformation article, I never see any of these!”

The fact is that the term digital transformation has come almost to mean whatever people want it to mean. It’s shorthand for so many things its almost useless as a term, apart from it being hot right now and if you call whatever your latest initiative “digital transformation” then you’ve got more chance of making it happen (admit it).

So what does it actually mean? Well, Wikipedia isn’t actually a lot of use here:

Digital transformation is the change associated with the application of digital technology in all aspects of human society.

Super useful. The thing though is that digital transformation means different things to different companies so that makes it a bit harder to nail a definition. My favourite definition is this:

“Digital transformation closes the gap between what digital customers already expect and what analogue businesses actually deliver.”

Which to me at least it means; how can you integrate digital technology to your business to change how you deliver value to your customers.

It’s still fairly nebulous I’ll concede. Think about it though, the way your customers are used to interacting with technology has changed and business needs to change with it. The point being that you should be looking at how technology can improve how you deliver what you do better.

Its actually not really even just about technology, it needs a change in culture, leadership and thinking to make it happen.

Like most hype though there is some substance behind it and much like cloud computing and big data, once its gone through the trough of disillusionment then what comes out of the other end will be real and useful.

For the sectors that Kraken work in though the term digital transformation is right up there on people’s agenda’s, engineering is finally starting to cotton onto the fact that there’s gold in them there hills when it comes to their digital data.

A slightly less well know fact, is the part of the world we’re from is home to a disproportionate number of companies who are trying to digitally transform traditional heavy industries.

I was recently lucky enough to present to the CFIHOS face to face meeting in Holland, the attendee list reads like a who’s-who of engineering operators (Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Total, BP, Sellafield, Eastman and more). What was truly incredible was that 10% of the membership were from or had bases in Teesside, from Billion pound software giants to awesome startups.

The North East of England is an area of traditional heavy industry, Oil and Gas, mining, process, chemical and pharma etc, so perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that there’s digital transformation happening right on our doorstep.

So, we thought we’d kill two birds with one stone, we’ll be presenting at the Innovate Tees Valley Digital Transformation event on the 17th of October. We’ll be there along with some amazing companies such as Aveva, Datum360, Digatex, Opentree, Kraken IM, Teesside University and more.

So if you’re from the North East of England or if you’re curious about what digital transformation is or you work in the engineering sector then book your free ticket and come and learn some more!

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/digital-transformation-registration-37694430055?aff=eac2