The Path to Digital Transformation

Before looking at the how-to of transforming your business, we first need to
understand how we got from paper and pencil record-keeping to world-changing businesses built on the backs of digital technologies.

Digitization is the journey from analog to digital.

Businesses used to keep records on paper. Whether handwritten in ledgers or typed into documents, business data was analog. If you wanted to gather or share
information, you dealt with physical documents.

Then, computers went mainstream and most businesses started converting all of those ink-on-paper records to digital computer files. This is called digitization.

Finding and sharing information became much easier once it had been digitized, but the ways in which businesses used their new digital records largely mimicked the old analog methods.

Digitalization is using digital data to simplify how work is accomplished.

The process of using digitized information to make established ways of working simpler and more efficient is called digitalization.

Digitalization isn’t about changing how you do business or creating new types of businesses. It’s faster and better now that your data is instantly accessible and not trapped in a file cabinet somewhere in a dusty archive.
Think of customer service, whether in retail, field ops, or a call center.

Digitalization changed service forever by making customer records easily and quickly retrievable via
computer.

As digital technology evolved, people started generating ideas for using business technology in new ways, and not just to do the old things faster.
This is when the idea of digital transformation began to take shape.