SUCCESSFULLY DIGITIZING OPS PT. 1: SOMETHING IN IT FOR EVERYONE
This is the beginning of a three-part series on digitizing operations. What do I mean by “digitizing operations?” Is this just scanning paperwork and utilizing PDFs? Or is it connecting APIs to handle all information requests through services? Yes and yes. Digitizing operations is simply:
Transitioning work from a physical or analog form to a digital form.
There are a lot of benefits to this transition, and yes, there are some risks. However, most of the time the benefits vastly outweigh the risks. You can see the benefits all around you, though some have become so commonplace that they are almost invisible. There is also risk in not moving to digital operations, and these risks are becoming heavier and heavier.
For example, look at Motorola. This was a golden company with massive growth and profits for almost 100 years. Motorola tanked themselves when they released a new analog telephonic technology in a world that had just moved digital. This titan of innovation, with an amazing legacy of inventions and performance, thought that they could influence the market to remain analog. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and Motorola ceased to exist as an independent company.
Hopefully you are not in a situation as dire as Motorola’s and you are simply wanting to gain competitive edges, or increase profit in your organization. This is great! Go digital before you get Motorola’d!
Here are some technologies that you probably use today that give you real benefits:
Cell phone connections used to be all analog. Now they are digital, resulting in better call quality and less dropped calls.
Food delivery orders used to all be on the phone. Now they are still on the phone, but you don’t have to verbalize it. No more, “Oh, did you get the extra onions on the pepperoni pizza?” Just tap and visualize.
How about something at work? We used to have to fly to another city for a meeting that may last for an hour or two. Now we can use any number of web conferencing tools.
I’m sure if you spent two minutes, you could think of a dozen areas of your life that have digitized. Now, since a lot of this technology is matured, or is an extension of a mature technology, it's a lot safer to bring this into our enterprises.
Regardless of the benefits, anytime we move from physical to digital there is resistance. Sometimes, a LOT of resistance. Before you undergo a transition, understand that this is going to happen. And that is okay! Anytime we are tinkering with a workflow that works well, we need to justify it to the people that it affects. This includes anyone who currently feeds the existing physical workflow, anyone who processes things inside it, and anyone who receives the output of the workflow.
Most technology adopters think of one person who will benefit from the technology, and thus get resistance from all of the others.
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A common situation is this. A manager named Judy, wants productivity reports, and requires her team members to input data about their activities into an app all day long. Then Judy can just run a report and justify her team’s time.
Who directly benefits from this? The manager, Judy. She doesn’t have to spend a lot of time gathering data on her team’s time. She can just hit a button and get a report.
However, the team members, who are responsible for Feeding the workflow, don’t receive a direct benefit. All day long they are forced to neurotically track all of their activities. Maybe in a year or two, if there are layoffs, Judy will be able to point to her reports and say, “See? My team is working! Don’t lay them off!” But will the team members think about layoffs 365 days a year? Hopefully not!
This digital workflow is flawed because it does not consider the motivations of key stakeholders. It requires more effort from Judy’s team, with no immediate benefit to them. It is not likely that they will continue to input data for more than a few days without a lot of prods, reminders, rewards and threats constantly coming from Judy.
Think about how digitization would improve the lives of the people on the front end of the process.
Let’s look at this situation from another angle. Tim works for Judy as an analyst. He doesn’t want to input all of his activities because he thinks that it takes too much of his time. Tim uses the Lightning sheet gen application for the majority of his day. He figured out that he can export an activity log that generally shows what he was working on. Every day, he exports this log as an Excel spreadsheet and emails it to Judy.
This doesn’t include all of the information that Judy requires. It also doesn’t load into her activity tracking application. This digitization benefits Tim, but doesn’t benefit Judy because she will have trouble Processing it.
Two outcomes are likely to come from this. One, Judy will do nothing with the data. Tim will keep sending it, and then one day will stop. The second most likely outcome is that Judy will consistently pester Tim until he stops and falls in line with the more tedious process of data entry. Both of these outcomes are wasteful.
Think about how digitization would improve the lives of the people in the middle of the process.
Now let’s say that in a year from now the market crashes and the company is in too much debt. Now there are layoffs! All of the sudden Judy is the hero! She has taken all of this time to justify every minute of her team’s time! However, the HR exec in charge of managing the layoffs requires each manager to fill in a one-page form on the value of the team. It doesn’t include any room for the data Judy spent years collecting, and she has to try to fit it all into a Comment box, which has a 256 character limit.
No one took into account how HR would receive information. She could have drafted an email to HR that said something like this:
“In the event of a lay-off in the distant future, how would you like to receive information about my team? Is there a form, or a web page that you will use? Will you be able to process an Excel spreadsheet with some calculations in it?”
Think about how your digitization changes can improve the lives of the people at the end of the process.
Also, keep in mind that as the team constantly inputs data about their activities, they are actually losing productivity. They are losing it in two ways. The first is simply the time it takes to input the data. The second is the loss of Flow. As the Software Engineers on my team say, “It takes time to get into the groove, but once you’re in it, magic happens.” This magic productivity of “being in the groove” doesn’t happen when a person’s attention is constantly being pulled away.
What is the answer to these myriad of problems? Simple. Add benefit in for everyone. That sounds like a big job, but it just requires a little bit of thought, conversations, and design on the front end.
How do we do this with the user who is Feeding our process? First, find out what takes a lot of their time and speed it up with your new tech. Second, find out what they continuously have to edit or revise, and try to make it easier to do so.
How do we do this with the Receiver of our deliverables? The best place to start is to simply find out their preferred method of receiving our output. Is it a CSV that is emailed to them? Is it a PDF that is uploaded to an FTP site? Is it a file geodatabase that is dropped onto a Sharepoint folder?
The second thing to figure out is how they process your deliverable. If there are complications, a lot of steps or a lot of post-processing, this is your opportunity! Find out how to make the deliverable fit even better into their process! Most people will accept data as a CSV, but there is usually some loading or processing of the CSV. Can you write an API (or have a programmer write one) that streams data directly to them?
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When Blue Sky builds tools, we always try to keep these things in mind. How do we make the user’s job easier (this usually means getting things done faster)? How do we add more value to the deliverable? Consider these two things with any digitization project.
Most companies who use our tools are delivering a product to their customer. Let’s say a Mapping group is creating alignment sheets for a new fiber optic line. If they are manually creating these drawings, even in a platform like AutoCAD or Arc, there’s a lot of tedious effort for the Mapper. Also, the deliverable at the end is not always consumable by the Telecom Operator in the best way. A set of PDFs or DWG won’t load into a GIS!
When we deploy an automated alignment sheet tool, like Skyline or Lightning, the first thing we do is make the Mapper’s job easier. It’s faster, and edits are done much easier. That motivates the Mapper to actually use the application.
The second thing we do is make sure the deliverable to the Mapper’s customer is more valuable. We do this by organizing all of the data into a portable database. So now everything that is on the Mapper’s alignment sheets is organized into a database. When the Mapper sends the sheets, she also sends the database. Now the Telecom GIS Manager can load the data into his ArcServer and immediately use the data.
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What are you in the process of digitizing or automating? Have you had similar problems? Do you have advice for others? Connect with me on LinkedIn, and send me your questions!
I encourage you to bravely go forth and digitize/automate your companies and lives! The benefits are vast, the work is fun and in today’s environment it is critical.
If you need help streamlining your work, drop me a line on LinkedIn. Blue Sky works with hundreds of companies who deal with linear infrastructure construction and management. These are industries such as pipeline, telecom, railroad and power. I also know a ton of technologists from different industries and would love to connect you with someone who can help!
Jacob Ramirez
President
Blue Sky Evolution
LinkedIn
