Although there is hardly an industrial company that is not involved in Industry 4.0 and therefore digitalization, many have only pursued isolated solutions to date. This involves measures in production, quality assurance, sales or logistics, but not the entire organization. The fact that this important topic is only a top priority in less than half of all companies, with the IT department taking the lead instead, also shows that many have not yet recognized its importance. This is because infrastructural and technical change is already relatively easy to achieve today. However, if a company wants to achieve a truly native digital transformation of the organization as well as value chains and processes, the implementation of digital processes and organizational change is a much greater challenge. This also means a change in mindset, which is absolutely essential for sustainable success, but is one of the most difficult to implement. This involves a far-reaching intervention in working methods and requirement profiles. For most companies, this change will encompass cultural and human aspects as well as technical and organizational changes. The reason for this is that many companies still live to a large extent in analog process worlds and structures. Although many are convinced that they are already using digital tools, these are often only used to handle processes that are actually still analog. If, for example, digital work is carried out on projects in development, but not every element is networked with all available information and employees only make changes one after the other in mutual exchange and not simultaneously in real time, then this is still an analog process and not an intelligent networking of the database.

In this respect, the challenge is to transform them holistically in order to realize the hoped-for benefits of digitalization. Setting specific priorities and achieving a balance between investment, technical innovation, organizational transformation and increased customer benefits is a considerable hurdle for many companies. The involvement of employees and the design of digital workflows and processes, including the necessary expert knowledge, are of paramount importance.

Management must build up digital expertise

Against this backdrop, employee management must change completely. While managers in traditional, hierarchical companies often still see themselves as masterminds, supervisors and framework setters, a different self-image is required in digital companies. Here, it is much more important for managers to act as co-learners, motivators, moderators, atmosphere creators and networkers. Specifications and controls lose their justification in such an environment. This also applies to the knowledge advantage that is often still reserved for the management team today. In digitally active companies, such structures dissolve. Here, all employees involved should have access to all relevant information.

Managers therefore have to let go more and more and trust their employees, their expertise and their commitment. This goes hand in hand with greater personal responsibility for each team member. These opportunities that open up to employees in digitally transformed companies also require them to adopt a different mindset and be prepared to actively and entrepreneurially contribute to the new environment and take on more responsibility.

The task of company management is to help their employees to develop digital skills in a targeted manner. This can be done with training courses or workshops, for example. The aim here is, among other things, to shape the willingness to take responsibility for results or cross-departmental collaboration. It is also important to counteract any uncertainties among the workforce and make the opportunities attractive for each individual. Possibilities for this include, for example, opening up individual career paths, incentivizing learning agility and willingness to change, free combination options between monetary and non-monetary compensation or a redefinition of the term work-life balance.

The path to digital transformation

It is important to formulate a concrete vision for a company's successful move towards holistic native digitalization: Where should it go, what should be achieved and what shortcomings need to be addressed? The next step is to reflect the digital maturity level of the organization. Where does the company stand and what measures need to be taken to lay the foundations for a digital transformation? It is also important to first optimize and then digitalize the existing processes and data structures. After all, improvements can only be achieved if these are truly digital. Providing digital support for what are essentially still analog structures will not bring the desired level of success.

It also makes sense not to set goals that are too ambitious right away and to first define a manageable pilot project that can be expected to produce positive results as quickly as possible. In this way, companies can ensure the feasibility and acceptance of a digital solution. And finally, the amount of change required during implementation should not be underestimated. The employees affected by the change need to be involved and taken on board, which is a much greater challenge than the technical implementation.

Companies that succeed in meeting the high demands of a leadership and culture changed by the digital transformation, in training and motivating employees and taking them along on the path to comprehensive digitalization, will ultimately achieve the desired sustainability of the improvement and be able to realize considerable potential. It is undisputed that these are considerable in terms of increasing efficiency and generating higher sales on the basis of an expanded value chain.

Dr. Clemens Eckert, Partner at Maexpartners / ag