Everyone is talking about digital transformation. As a matter of fact, it looks like if you haven’t heard this term yet, then you already missed the train leading companies to a bright future. Digital transformation opens up a new world, so it’s normal to ask ourselves, what’s in this new world? And more important, how can you be ready for the post-digital transformation world?

But first, what is the digital transformation?

Digital transformation is understood as the reinvention of an organization or company using digital technology, the improving how it performs. We are talking about technologies that generate, store and process data.

This process, in countries like Chile, became an obligation for every company that bases its success in operational efficiency, because it allows you to automate processes that in the past where slow and imperfect. This transformation innovates the holistic use of resources, it is not only an option to support and improve traditional methods.

Digital transformation shows itself as the third part of technological developments — the First one being digital literacy and the second, digital implementation. This process is understood as a total social and global effect of digitalization.

The real benefit of digital transformation.

In these days digitalization of companies is an unavoidable need, and if you don’t respond to this requirement, it can have a negative effect on your business and, eventually, it will disappear. Being up to date in digital matters is the only way to face competitiveness in the new digital economy.

The digital transformation delivers a series of benefits, like increase of productivity, growth, and efficiency. That’s why it’s becoming the most important thing to develop in a strategic institutional plan.

According to the Spanish company BeServices, “benefits of the digital transformation of companies are so broad and so tangible that it should be a priority in the strategy of any small company that wants to survive in the competitive market”. The delay in changing can leave you “outside the market”. We have to understand that there are a series of benefits that a good digital transformation can deliver to companies, like:

It’s good to know that besides everything we just mentioned, there are sociological benefits that could be gestating a new paradigm in terms of processes, the experiences, and interests that human capital have inside a company. The equation is easy: if a random employee has X amount of time to process data and we automate that process, we have more time to other parts of the job and it relieves pressure. If you accelerate work, it translates in more efficient employees and this gives them a higher quality of life.

Digital transformation as an evolutionary leap.

20 years ago we used to talk about the real world and the digital world. This means that the digital process didn’t use more than a little part of the daily work and everything else was the real, physical world. That’s how digital world was conceived, as a way to help in specific tasks inside military intelligence offices. Little by little, the digitization of processes became more of a day-to-day thing. In a certain way there was a ubiquitous technology and, at this point, both worlds began to mix.

Because of what we just said, the behavior of society became more evident. Some of the most evident progress that 21st-century people have in their minds is buy something from thousands of miles away only with a click, communicate face- to- face instantly with a smartphone or even a car that drives itself.

Technology moves so fast that is hard to assimilate progress. As a matter of fact, the problems are less enduring and we are getting used to everything being simple, fast and effective. What are we winning? The answer is time because through history we have always looked for ways to reduce the time it takes to make stuff; less time in line, less time to travel distances, less time processing preparing food, less time doing laundry and, in recent years, less time to process information. But, why? Simply to evolve. Evolving is, in practical terms, optimizing processes, and that is digital transformation.

But speaking about evolution, the threat to human survival through time has always been itself as a species. The digital transformation of companies that have the power to change the world through consumption, have the challenge to create an ethical handling of the advancements of technology and create the first assignment of digital transformation:  make life easier through technology, because all of us are users, one way or another.

Creativity as the future

Technology and machines can’t equal creativity. If we have more time because of automatizations and simplification of various processes that the digital transformation offers,  creativity will rise;  As a matter of fact, the human being itself has not been able to understand the algorithm that defines how creativity works.

In companies, the creative culture is even implanted on the commercial strategy, because a lot is understanding that successful companies will be the ones that adapt creative innovation to their projects. We can see this in Google and Apple, big brands that are highly recognizable and respected because they stay current on their brand, operations, and services.

It’s a future that will bring speed to changes that affect companies; when process become as efficient as they can be, and everything that is made by a human could be made by technology, creativity will be a key ability that companies will have to enhance to develop their processes and results, just as they are doing today with the digital transformation.

As Paz Mardones (who works at the technology company Black Hat and member of the board of Chiletec) says:

This process implies an evaluation of what you need to digitize and what you don’t, focusing on people because it is a process of smart digital transformation and productivity, where the user is the final benefactor of the technological processes and the one who evaluates how “good” is a company is in digital matters.

Another aspect that digital transformation emphasizes is the optimization of resources; by this, you can look for smart behaviors inside the company. That’s how good digital behavior encapsulates the technological resources and the human ones, leading them to progress together.

Another important aspect that Paz spoke about, exclusively to ch1l3, is that sometimes the companies choose to implement new technologies and follow the “easy” way by analyzing the competition and trying to become the same without incorporating the correct process, which implies building something small based on a hypothesis. That’s precisely what the digital transformation is about; testing until you understand what people need and not necessarily being like the competition.

That’s why digital transformation is not a process that stagnates once you do it, on the contrary, it becomes dynamic behaviors with new technologies, and together we can go forward for what’s next: more free time and more happy people.