Think Big

When planning a project such as the digitalisation of data in your company, you must take the bigger picture into account. It will influence the organisation of your company and all the stakeholders.

If you focus too much on the technical matters of choosing software, your employees might resist the changes, while the interest and support of the management might be reduced, and the expansion of your digitalisation might even grind to a halt, leading to undesirable results.  As such it is of the utmost importance to lay the groundwork for the project.

Start small

Deciding which project, i.e. form or paper forms, will first be transformed into a digital form is often left to chance or users (usually those are data users) that want a more modern way of working.

As practice shows, it is worth considering which processes must be digitalised and decide on one that:

  • gives fast and measurable results – those will convince the management to support digitalisation in other processes and to continue investing in the project;
  • is “infectious” – the results will be visible outside the closed group that manages the project.

Scale fast

The way you pitch and introduce the pilot process to other stakeholders of your organisation is important because they will be the other potential users of digitalisation.

Invite the stakeholders to join in the conversation when planning or implementing the pilot process. This way you will prepare them for all the necessary steps that they will have to carry out during the implementation of digitalisation.  

Spreading a culture of digital data gathering will be done faster and more effectively, and the people involved will have the chance to express their fears and doubts during the initial stages of the process.