B U S I N E S S
I N N O V AT I O N
Human-shaped digitalisation Text Stephen Evans — Photo Marie de Decker — Illustration Gina Mueller
How to make sure your digital transformation journey results in innovation that works for your clients? Your colleagues know your company, its products and its clients and they are well placed to identify new opportunities and channel feedback.
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But how can you unlock your organisation’s latent innovation expertise?
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igital transformation can be seen as the combination of innovative ideas brought to life with technology and refined processes. These improve and create new products and services, or can drive more efficient systems and communication. Big changes such as the arrival of the internet, the smartphone and the tablet computer stand out, but it is how these tools are used that leads to new products and richer modes of interacting with clients, colleagues and partners. REVOLUTION BREWING More game-changing technologies and applications are on the way thanks to artificial intelligence and the next wave of automation. For example basic voice and text conversations with “chatbots” are often easier to use and offer a better user experience than talking with another person. Then there is robotic process automation, back office systems that improve the efficiency of business processes, and artificial intelligence is beginning to enhance the decisiontaking quality of automation technologies. These are early days but major steps forward should be expected. These are the macro innovations that will become central
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to our future personal and professional lives, but making these developments useful will require innumerable smaller modifications to deliver tangible value. This goes for digital and automation transformation as much as other process and product improvements. JEWEL HUNTING An organisation’s staff are its eyes and ears for innovation, but too often companies don’t have the structures to tap into these good
“There are four pillars to this process: inspiration, innovation, experimentation, and optimisation.” Marc Payal
Managing director, Fujitsu Luxembourg
ideas. It’s easy to fail to appreciate the value of our thoughts, with them needing to be developed before their real worth can be appreciated. Introducing a culture of innovation enables all employees to feed into the process. Often your colleagues will have a more detached view of your firm’s working practices and products, not least because they may have worked for a competitor and will often be your competitors’ customers. Small innovations driven by technology and a close understanding of the business can lead to substantial cost gains. For example, a Spanish waste disposal company made major savings by simply fitting a sensor to its rubbish skips. Staff knew exactly when skips became full, thus avoiding unnecessary trips to empty the rubbish. When planes are waiting by the terminal building the ground crew normally attaches an electricity supply cable to power on-board systems. This is more efficient than burning kerosene. Sometimes the ground crew forget, so installing an intelligent microphone to pick up engine noise and thus triggering an alarm results in significant long-term savings. Cameras fitted to wind turbines can check
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