{"id":12209,"date":"2018-05-04T11:00:46","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T19:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2018\/05\/04\/news-5978\/"},"modified":"2018-05-04T11:00:46","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T19:00:46","slug":"news-5978","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2018\/05\/04\/news-5978\/","title":{"rendered":"Roadblocks to watch out for on the path to Digital Transformation (Part 1?)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Fabio Mielli| Date: Fri, 04 May 2018 13:08:41 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

The digital transformation, digitization, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality…these technologies are no longer hidden secrets……So then why do some digital initiatives fail?\u00a0 In this blog I\u2019ll try to identify some of the reasons (along with some data of course) I believe digital initiatives don\u2019t take off, or get off the ground but then quickly come crashing back to earth.<\/p>\n

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Why do some digital initiatives fail?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

1. Lack of a digital strategy<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen companies invest in many different digital technologies to address specific needs or applications, but their actions weren\u2019t necessarily part of a bigger strategic vision around digital.\u00a0 And \u201cno strategy\u201d usually equals \u201cno success.\u201d\u00a0 (By the way, you\u2019ll notice that a number of the issues I am going to mention come back to this one, a lack of strategy.\u00a0 It\u2019s probably the single biggest reason for failure.)<\/p>\n

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\u201cNo strategy\u201d usually equals \u201cno success.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

2. Cool technology but no problem? \u00a0(Or, let\u2019s find a business problem to solve)<\/p>\n

How many times have you purchased a gadget or an app simply because it seemed cool, but in the end you didn\u2019t find any practical use for it?\u00a0 This is not that different in the industrial world where we also test cool technologies without identifying any specific problem beforehand.\u00a0 A related and almost even bigger mistake is to then chase a problem just to validate the technology we acquired.\u00a0 You can waste a lot of time and resources doing that.<\/p>\n

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Did your company buy some cool technology without any specific problem to solve?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

3. Unclear or difficult to measure ROI<\/p>\n

Some technologies are hard to measure their ROI because they are related to cost avoidance.\u00a0 Example: technologies that help avoid tailings dams breaches or safety issues but which don\u2019t necessarily deliver any measurable improvement in productivity. How do you measure something that doesn\u2019t happen?<\/p>\n

4. Lack of skills<\/p>\n

This is somehow linked to #1, the lack of a guiding strategy. Without a strategy, how can you know kind of skills your employees should have. Cyber security? UX?\u00a0 Big data?\u00a0 Project management? On top of that, there are lots of soft skills required to execute a digital strategy (entrepreneurship…… Unconventional thinking…..team working….)<\/p>\n

5. DIY and F (do-it-yourself and fail)<\/p>\n

During my many years of automation experience I\u2019ve seen a good number of failures when systems were developed by users themselves even when there were plenty of good off-the-shelf solutions available.\u00a0 They are eventually dropped due to poor performance, technology obsolescence, or simply because they were so customized that they were impossible to maintain or improve.\u00a0 And guess what?\u00a0 By the time that happens your developers have moved on to other opportunities and no one else even knows what is \u201cunder the hood.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Some DIY projects are so customized that they are impossible to maintain…and quickly become obsolete<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

6. Wrong partner<\/p>\n

OK, so you\u2019ve made the right decision and decided not go it alone and you want to work with a specialized partner, but you still need to be careful about choosing the right one.<\/p>\n

Digital fever is flooding the market with pseudo-digital specialists and we often see suppliers who push users to apply highly overengineered solutions or simply wrong solutions.\u00a0 A classic example that comes to mind is an asset health monitoring solution that uses a complex \u201cpredictive machine learning analytics behemoth\u201d when a simple but effective condition monitoring application would be sufficient.<\/p>\n

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We often see suppliers who push users to apply highly overengineered solutions\u2026to solve just a simple problem<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

7. To scale or not to scale?<\/p>\n

Some applications and initiatives that do meet with a level of success in a particular area are relegated to failure simply because they never get the exposure they deserve, and so they are never replicated to other areas where they could foster innovation throughout the rest of the organization. Unfortunately, they will die alone like so many other pet projects.\u00a0 Again, it comes back to a lack of strategy.\u00a0 If incubation is part of the strategy then there needs to be a defined path forward that can take small successes and turn them into big ones.<\/p>\n

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To scale or not to scale?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

So those are my observations.\u00a0 Digitization is not a panacea for success, but there are things you can do if you want to avoid some of the common pitfalls.\u00a0 And if you want to see some of the proven digital solutions Schneider Electric can help you leverage under our EcoStruxure\"\u2122\" platform, click here to explore\u201d<\/p>\n

Mining<\/a><\/p>\n

Cement<\/a><\/p>\n

Metals<\/a><\/p>\n

PS –\u00a0 \u00a0Why Part 1? Because I would appreciate your help and feedback to share the reasons why you think digital projects could fail.\u00a0 Let\u2019s work together for parts 2, 3, 4…<\/p>\n

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The post Roadblocks to watch out for on the path to Digital Transformation (Part 1?)<\/a> appeared first on Schneider Electric Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/blog.schneider-electric.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Fabio Mielli| Date: Fri, 04 May 2018 13:08:41 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

The digital transformation, digitization, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality…these technologies are no longer hidden secrets……So then why do some digital initiatives fail?\u00a0 In this blog… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Roadblocks to watch out for on the path to Digital Transformation (Part 1?)<\/a> appeared first on Schneider Electric Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[12389,12388],"tags":[14966,4500,18312,12540,12512,6269,12508,12438,12444],"class_list":["post-12209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scadaics","category-schneider","tag-augmented-reality","tag-cybersecurity","tag-digital-strategy","tag-digital-transformation","tag-iiot","tag-internet-of-things","tag-machine-and-process-management","tag-miningmetalsminerals","tag-virtual-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}