8-minute video
Ask anyone who’s been through it and they’ll tell you: digital transformation is not something you can check off your to-do list.
The most successful manufacturing companies are those that are committed to continual improvement, and that goes for modernization efforts as well.
In this short video, we talk through how to create a culture that encourages progress, problem-solving, and innovation.
This episode continues our series of discussions around the 10 Best Practices for Digital Transformation.
Have a question you’d like answered?
Let us know in the comments below, and we’ll talk through it on a future episode!
What's the ROI? Just six months after implementing their digital transformation efforts, luxury textile manufacturer Matouk saw a 233% return on their investments.
Transcript: Digital Transformation Is Not a One-Time Event.
Jessica: Hi and thanks for joining us for our conversations around our 10 best practices for managing a digital transformation project. I'm Jessica Vodden, a team member here at Mountain Point, and I'm joined by Andrew Rieser, our president and co-founder. Hey Andrew.
Andrew: Hi Jess.
Jessica: Hello. So, today we're gonna build on a conversation that we started in the last episode. We were talking last time about communication and the importance of developing feedback loops and helping team members to really be empowered to solve problems and continue to innovate, and I think that ties in really nicely to our 10th best practice, which is to facilitate an environment of continuous improvements. So, one of the things that we stress is that digital transformation is not a single event, it's an ongoing cultural, technological, organizational shift. So, Andrew, tell us a little bit about how to sort of embrace that idea and how to get your team on board with continually refining your process and your operations.
Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think throughout this series you'll probably hear a lot of reoccurring themes, and continuous improvement and agility I think is definitely one of them. When we talk about all these different things, whether it be people-related, process-related, technology-related, or data-related, I think the theme of continuous improvement applies across the board. From a people standpoint in a lot of these transformation initiatives that we're talking about, sometimes there's new roles that are created, sometimes people are being asked to do things that they've never done before, so I think managers and leaders need to recognize and allow more freedom and leeway as the organization's evolving to not only fill these new roles that may have previously never existed but also to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the various team members and put them in positions to succeed or to grow their careers. From a process standpoint, I think that process improvement is something that every organization looks into. I think that being agile and continuously improving is tackling this industry in a different way, specially from a manufacturing standpoint. So in a manufacturer's world, process improvement always occurs on the shop floor through things like Six Sigma and lean and always identifying ways to improve the quality and eliminate waste. However, I think that those rarely extend beyond the shop floor. So, when you look in different areas of a manufacturer's business, that same kind of discipline of continuous improvement on your processes typically gets put on the back burner and not really addressed. So I think that's definitely an area that can be highlighted and looked into. And then from a technology standpoint, I think what we highlighted in a previous discussion with softwares and service and cloud computing, just how everything's becoming so much easier. The levels of abstraction, of what used to require developers and programmers to do, now business analysts and everyday users can now put processes flows in place, can tweak even integrations. So, a lot of the integration tools that we're using now are very user-friendly and we empower the business and the users that monitor these integrations to be able to make changes and tweaks to it without having to create a project around that or a developer to go in to make these changes. So just knowing that the business is gonna evolve and change and now that these new tools are empowering that change to happen more rapidly and more frequently is definitely in place once we talk about this continuous improvement. And then the last is around data. So, monitoring your KPIs, using reports on dashboards, and using all the different things that the data is now able to visualized and really talking about that. So no more are we having stand-ups or huddles around asking everybody in the room how things are going, but now all these manufacturers are having their production meetings and manufacturing meetings and business meetings, they're all data-driven, looking around dashboards. So the sales team is talking about the pipeline and the forecast and production is anticipating what's coming in based off of that, and all that is very much data-driven and also allows through these tools the ability to tweak and modify and evolve these dashboards as new data points and data streams come into play.
Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about the change management piece because I think that that's something we've hit on across the board in these conversations as well. And I think change is happening much more rapidly in our organizations than it has in the past, and it should be if we're gonna be competitive and kinda keep up with the times, but I think there's also the danger of change fatigue or you just get somebody on board or maybe they just start to realize there's a new concept or a new process in play and then it's already been changed or updated. So, how do you manage level at that speed?
Andrew: Again, I don't think there's a one-size-fits all. I think that the business in an organization can only move as fast as the people that are in it day and day are willing to evolve and change. So, to your point about change fatigue, a lot of these manufacturers that we're currently working with, some of them are experiencing that and some of them recognize and acknowledge that, but they know they need to keep powering through it because that's gonna be best for the business and that's what's gonna help them stay competitive and keep growing. So I think it's, again, kind of picking and choosing the battles and making sure that your communication plan and that the messaging around change is out there, but more importantly getting buy-in from the users. So if the users aren't brought into the change, the fatigue is gonna definitely set in and you're gonna create more hurdles than what you're expecting. But if everybody's on the same page and everybody has that mentality of the change is good when it's addressing the right things, then I think everybody's on board. So I think that is attributed back to picking the right projects to work on, to not bitting off more than you can chew, but also setting a solid roadmap and vision that lets folk know why things are evolving and changing and making sure that that aligns back to that roadmap so that they continue to understand how that sits into the bigger picture.
Jessica: Yeah, I think the why is really important. And I know one of the things that I always try to stress as a communications person is really stressing the benefit. So making sure your team is aware of the problems that you're trying to solve, of the big wins that you are able, or even the small wins that you're able to accomplish as a result of these initiatives. And also just making them feel like they have a voice and are able to help make the company better as part of this process I think can go a long way toward fending off some of that fatigue or that fear of change that a lot of folks have. Well, Andrew, as always thank you so much for talking with me. This is the last of our 10 steps to managing a digital transformation project. I hope that those of you listening have got as much out of it as we have in kind of talking through it. I think we're gonna do one more overarching discussion in our next episode and that'll be a wrap on this series. So, if you have any questions or issues you'd like for us to address, please reach out and let us know. Andrew, as always, nice to talk to you.
Andrew: Thank you, Jess.
What's the ROI? Just six months after implementing their digital transformation efforts, luxury textile manufacturer Matouk saw a 233% return on their investments.