Today's trends clearly mark the future development of companies through the transformation of digitalization. Regardless of the specific business industry, process automation and the use of technology are emerging as key components for future competitiveness and development. Digitalization challenges the search for ways to replace more and more everyday tasks and processes with automated systems and tools. It is clear that this helps to reduce costs in the long run, improve efficiency and look again for new opportunities for improvement.
For those who find the digital transformation something elusive and abstract for the time being, this should be taken very seriously in the context of the company's future potential. Today, digitization is no longer and should not be just an "IT administrator's toy or sandbox". Business process automation is becoming a continuous driver of a company's transformation culture. I definitely encourage you to start with one or a few daily processes that require changes for the full development of the company.
In my opinion, the basic things to start with are: to clearly define the tasks of the overall process, to define rationally measurable criteria based on a standardized approach with repeatability. Proper process transparency helps to see deviations, errors, necessary improvements in real time, and to enable it all in a real environment where everyday dynamics take place.
Today's most popular examples of transformation: data center infrastructure automation, production warehouse automation, sales demand flow organization, billing automation, customer satisfaction and communication organization, work resource planning as well as total data collection, visualization and interpretation.
Many data analysis techniques are automated in both mechanical processes and intelligent algorithms, which help to automate repetitive processes and evaluate previously difficult-to-collect data in an overview.
Nowadays, digitalization has become very important for large manufacturing companies. Large-scale machine-to-machine communication (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) are integrated solutions that provide full automation, improve communication, self-control. More and more medium-sized companies are moving towards the continuous automation of production and industrial methods using modern smart technologies. This is the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0).
Certainly, in the context of a global pandemic, the teleworking function of companies is worth mentioning. Many small and medium-sized enterprises are still not fully prepared to operate remotely. Others use their own infrastructure (servers) only and go without any cloud services. Others, on the other hand, rely entirely on outsourcing and fully deploy their systems and data in public clouds. However, it is clear that both approaches have their weaknesses in terms of effective data management and security. An elegant solution is a hybrid cloud. It combines the benefits of both methods for data storage, backup, team collaboration and, most importantly, data security.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that when thinking about the transformation of digitalization, a team that needs competence and motivation to move focused on the result to be achieved will always be crucial.
Author: Uldis Semeiks, CEO of Datakom