Starting digitalization. 1. Drawing the information map of your business.

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When embarking on their own digitalization journey, many start directly with the use of digital tools. And then the business processes and workflows have to adjust to these tools.

But it is actually better to start exactly the opposite way - with a careful look at the business processes and workflows.

Let them lead the digitalization process.

Every business, from large to small, has its own “work technology” that was created even before the business started operating.

Whether the owners realized it themselves or not, whether they used those exact terms or not, standing at the origins of their own creation, they definitely carried out this work in one form or another.

Founders and specialists (often being the same persons) made decisions in the heat of work on how the executive body would be organized, how it would be managed, what positions there would be, and how they would interact.

Only some of them called this process with the correct scientific term: “organizational structure concept and management functions.”

Technologists developed the concept of working technologies, while economists described profit acquisition schemes, marketers “packaged” products, and created sales funnels, and so on.

But if descriptive documents were created for all of this, many of these documents and knowledge may now simply be gathering dust on shelves.

And only the transformed conclusions and resulting consequences out of all that are being productively used for practical needs. Essentially, these are norms and connections for real activities that are in the heads of personnel with expert status and those who follow the job instructions.

When a business is functioning, it almost acts like a living organism by implementing these concepts through the so-called “operational production maps.”

Regardless of whether these operational maps are described as a direct, concrete sequence of tasks or are written as instructions, guidelines, and business communication, they still exist and work.

In addition, in the minds of the active specialists, there is a plethora of theoretical knowledge that enabled them to hold their positions. These specialists also transform this in-depth knowledge into summarizing rules and instructions for application in each specific standard or non-standard work situation.

This entire “information stockpile” can and should be inventoried for the goals of deep digitalization.

To create a concept/project for digitalization, it is recommended to first nominate the work processes with the relevant accompanying information.

Start by identifying processes that flow independently of others but can also interact with each other. Then pinpoint those processes that influence all other processes. In other words, describe the connections.

Now we have an anchor for the information repository and the information trail of the operational activities of the business.

This is largely our “digitalization” expert view from the outside, as we often look at business from the highest level of abstraction.

The role of the experts within the enterprise is actually very enviable. They can lean back in their chairs and tell us about everything that hinders them in their work and triggers emotions.

Use the information map of your enterprise! It is your valuable resource in the age of technology.

This map will allow you to easily manage the IT and make it serve your business goals, not the other way around.

Relevant questions on this topic:

Why is it important to ask people about their emotions in the workplace? Maybe it's better to hire personnel who love their job?

Emotions are an important part of thinking, they guide us to problems. If a person experiences emotions related to the work, it means they care. Ask such people, and you will be surprised at how much they have already thought about possible improvements.

In my company, a lot of different software has been purchased. Before buying them, digitalization consultants were involved. However, we still do a lot of work in Excel spreadsheets. What did we do wrong?

You also input data manually into this various software using hands of the employees and their time. Yet, it's all the same production process.

You also choose and move data manually back and forth if you need to put something together.

Did we guess everything correct? :)

Choosing ready-made software is an interpretation of isolated “island-solutions” for your needs.

Ready-made software once started as a solution for a specific case or need.

To reuse this solution for a variety of different companies, it is usually developed based on functions and settings. Often, little attention is paid to the meaning and important factors of the corresponding work processes.

Even rarer is the consideration that work processes are not static, but permanently change over time. Isolated IT solutions are often not interconnected to support your work processes in a comprehensive manner.

The more complexly an organization is structured, the less likely it is that ready-made software will fully satisfy your needs.

Without big data, there is no way to the future for anyone. Does this mean that all small and medium-sized enterprises are doomed?

Not at all.

Firstly, big data is not all that rosy yet.

Secondly, training your own GPT is also not mandatory.

The data you can collect from your own processes is not a dump of diverse and meaningless pieces of information. They should not require you to make a great effort to use them.

This process data is the information that will truly help you with efficiency, management, and flexible, rapid business solutions.

Technologies related to strong AI and the automation of expert decisions are suitable for organizing meaningful data. Not necessarily neural networks and large language models.