Digital transformation in the industrial sector is not purely a matter of swapping out on-premise servers for the cloud. It’s not just about replacing analog processes with digital technologies. It’s not about adding automation to every level of production. And it’s not about launching a product or technology that will transform an organization.
In fact, industrial digital transformation is as much about culture as it is about tech. It’s as much about the mindsets with which employees and leaders approach their work as it is about the products they sell.
For the last 20 years, we’ve been working side by side with Dickson as their team transformed the company from a powerhouse of analog environmental monitoring to a leader of industry 4.0. One reason Dickson’s digital transformation strategy has been and continues to be a success is that the entire team has embraced these five mindset shifts that have let it innovate on an ongoing basis:
Embrace data and analytics.
Embrace change.
Prioritize customer needs.
Be willing to collaborate.
Strive for continuous improvement.
In this piece, we’ll take a look at each of these mindset shifts, showing how they manifest at Dickson and offering tips on how other hopeful leaders of the Titanium Economy can embrace them to see similar results.
1. Embrace data and analytics
For digital native companies, data and analytics are often core to the operation: decision making is fueled by data, leaders from every department lean on insights from business intelligence platforms, and everyone is working toward optimization.
For industrial companies (in the manufacturing industry, supply chain, logistics, etc.), though, the digital transformation journey is an enormous undertaking. Because many of these companies were founded before desktop computers (never mind smartphones), they’ve had to work hard to transition their core operations to modern technology.
One struggle many industrial organizations share is finding ways to not just collect data and analytics but to use those metrics to power decision making at every level of the organization on an ongoing basis.
Let’s take a look at how Dickson embraced a data-driven mindset as part of its digital transformation and how other organizations can do the same.
How Dickson embraces data and analytics
In the early days of our engagement, Dickson’s sales team wanted more insight into how people were using the company’s brand-new website: what were they clicking, how long were they staying on pages, etc.
Today, we take for granted that websites can and do collect those kinds of metrics––and that organizations will use them to power business decisions. Not so back then.
We worked with the sales team to understand the behavior of website visitors and used that to track which campaigns were successful. We tied orders that came in to both web activity and legacy catalog campaigns.
Crucially, we helped the Dickson team interpret this data and understand how to use it as a source of business intelligence to fuel decision making––about, for example, when to ease off catalogs and ramp up the web presence.
Over time, as the use of data and analytics became more universal, we recognized that these metrics were not just back-end utilities that could power Dickson’s own decision making; they were also potential features we could incorporate into the products Dickson sold to customers.
DicksonOne, the company’s flagship product, is a platform that enables customers to gather real-time data from wifi-connected monitoring devices and receive automated alerts when conditions hit certain trigger points (say, when a humidity reading gets unacceptably high in a warehouse storing metals). Not only that: customers can get these alerts to their mobile device, so that access to data and analytics translates to constant peace of mind.
Data and analytics takeaways
Ask your team what they need to do their job better.
Translate needs to metrics.
Start measuring.
Build a data-to-insights toolset.
Empower decision makers with access to insights.
Make decisions based on data-driven insights.
Of course, this is all easier said than done. If you’re not sure how to, say, translate your team’s needs to specific metrics, consider working with an innovation consultant who has done this work before and can help you navigate the data analytics process.
2. Embrace change
One reason Dickson’s digital transformation has been successful in the last two decades is that the company has enthusiastically embraced change.
The classic fable about the oak and the reed helps explain why agile companies are better suited to survive periods of disruption: when the “winds of change” blow, large, rigid organizations are likely to blow over (or be seriously damaged), whereas flexible organizations (like reeds) bend in the wind but do not break.
So how can large, established industrial firms become more “reed-like” so they’re positioned to seize new opportunities? Let’s take a look at Dickson’s experience.
How Dickson embraces change
The Dickson of today is a very different organization than it was 20 years ago when we started working together. But it’s important to recognize that the company’s transformation has been gradual and ongoing––and those two things are key to its success.
Dickson’s team didn’t update one product and decide they were “done” with modernization. They recognized that their industry was entering an era of ongoing disruptions and that, if they wanted to be able to stay competitive and meet customers’ needs, they’d have to explore new ways of doing things.
Also important is that they started small, with the goal of solving a straightforward problem: understand what people were doing on their website.
That first change gave them access to a world of data and analytics that they then used to power ongoing changes and updates.
But not all ideas came from the data. Salespeople were consistently vocal about customer feedback, making product suggestions to integrated, cross-functional teams within the larger organization that included folks from TXI.
When our engagement started, a product like DicksonOne couldn’t have existed because the infrastructure needed to support it didn’t yet exist. But, because leaders and employees at every level continually accepted and embraced new technologies, Dickson’s current offerings cater to the needs of its customers today.
Takeaways for embracing change
Start small. No company is going to achieve, say, supply chain modernization in a year. Ongoing incremental changes are easier on people and organizations than huge drastic changes; a ubiquitous culture of accepting change can also greatly reduce the need for dramatic change.
Stay attuned to new technologies. The internet of things (IoT) and the industrial internet of things (IIoT) weren’t part of the conversation when we started with Dickson. But because Dickson embraced technology that paved the way for IIoT, the company was better positioned to embrace IIoT.
Listen to new ideas. Even if your company doesn’t yet use artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML), your customers no doubt have heard of these things. Your sales team may be fielding questions about them. The industrial firms that win in industry 4.0 will be those that see these questions (and any about new ideas) as a jumping off point to learn more.
Try new approaches. Traditional processes won't sustain modern operations. Paper charts (which old-school Dickson machines used) can’t achieve real-time internet connectivity. Not every experiment will work, but an organization set up to continuously experiment, learn, and move forward, will constantly be learning things that can lead to improvement.
Embrace experimentation. This applies to every part of the business: products, technology, pricing, business models, customer care, and beyond. Embracing change means practicing it constantly so that an organization doesn’t grow too large and rigid to adapt when conditions shift.
