In its dramatic nature, 2020 transformed the entire economic system and accelerated its transition into the future.
Indeed, in this pandemic year, technology has played a starring role, enabling companies and people (both those most predisposed to innovation and those somewhat more reluctant) to cope with unforeseen scenarios never before seen by our generations.
However, having passed the first "emergency" phase of the pandemic, in which technology graft and digitization were perceived more as a necessity than a real opportunity for growth, this "new normal," which we are entering, must be the moment in which we break out of this mindset (of emergency, precisely) and begin to plan a true three-hundred-and-sixty-degree digitization journey.
It is, moreover, fresh "news" that digital will be the guiding compass for the new Recovery Plan and, therefore, a driver of new resources for businesses.
Everything is a balance above madness, Vasco Rossi sang. And today it is even more so, at a time when we find ourselves having to build a new normal, a new balance where many things, necessarily, are bound to change.
The question, then, is: Will we really arrive at a new center of gravity from which to start again and rebuild our lives, our activities, our comfort zone?
Of course, we don't have the certain answer, but some tools convince us more than others and lead us to believe that the transition will be less unpredictable than it may seem: smart working, digital transformation, and data centricity.
At the center of attention of all social forces is, of course, work, in and of itself considered and in its dynamics in the lives of each of us.
Far be it from us to take sides for or against this new way of working; what is certain, is that we are witnessing a profound shift in the work paradigm, which from now on will necessarily be based on digital communication and collaboration tools, and on new tools for managing operational and decision-making processes remotely (think of all the APPs that are depopulating: Slack, Asana, Trello, GSuite, to name a few).
Digital technologies help us stay connected and communicate, and at a time where distance is a necessity, they help fill the void around us.
If, therefore, the majority of productivity (Italian, European, global) has been entrusted to smart working, then we must know how to seize theopportunity given by this pandemic crisis, to reinterpret, each in our own way and at any level (organizational, technological, cultural), not only the way we work, but also and above all our organizational arrangements, our internal and external communication, our relationships with our network (partners, customers, suppliers), in ways that are increasingly digital and "widespread" and increasingly less traditional.
Smart Working and Digital Company
And if smart working, in its most genuine and healthy sense, is to be the new model of work, hybrid and dynamic, straddling the physical and digital, the real and the virtual (a prime example will be the Digital Innovation Days this year, in its phygital edition), this process of transformation cannot fail to involve, more generally, all business processes.
Indeed, if work performance is moving toward such a strongly digital-linked mode, there is really no more propitious time than now to make a concrete transformation toward the digital company-which is not the company that has "simply" digitized its processes, freeing itself from paper and moving toward automation, but is above all the one that, in doing so, generates and enhances its data, putting it at the basis of all its decisions.
If, in fact, already in the pre-pandemic era a data-driven decision-making process was a source of competitive advantage because it was a distinctive element in the market, today, on the other hand, it represents a tool, if not the only one, certainly fundamental for surviving the crisis, remaining (and possibly anticipating its moves) in the market and guaranteeing a good level of service to one's customers and finding new prospects.
Putting data at the center of decision making, then, and being guided by it, mapping it and following it as it travels within business processes, allows one to analyze one's business process from start to finish, evaluating its performance not on the basis of predictions, opinions, interviews or sample research, but on real data, according to logic that some might call scientific.
This, in fact, could facilitate corrective interventions (we could say "predictive maintenance," such as data collected by sensors in Industry 4.0), give insights for the redesign of individual steps or tasks and, consequently, their optimization.
Process Mining
The goal of process mining (this is how this process of mapping and tracking data is defined) is not only to provide greater transparency on the execution of processes, but also to reduce their risks, ensure compliance with various sectoral regulations, identify areas that can be automated and, more generically, redesign processes in order to adapt them to the "new normal" that is the subject of our initial question, while achieving more quality, efficiency and more sustainable costs.
Therefore, a predictive, data-driven approach is essential for companies (but also for the public sector and freelancers).
This is if we consider, and we are heading toward the conclusion, the attitude of the markets, which are increasingly chaotic, uncertain and unpredictable, now also affected by pandemic disruption.
Achieving a high level of digital maturity is therefore, for all players present and entering the market, a need that can no longer be deferred, in order to move with new confidence even in a complex situation such as the current one.
Beatrice Pirovano
Brand Ambassador Digital Innovation Days.