Digitalization is turning business processes from physical or manual activities into automated or digitalized processes. However, digitalization cannot generate value without the element of People and Process that facilitate the flow of information from creation, usage and archive-destroy
Digitalizing a management system requires a significant transformation in a company’s approach to work. Changing processes and behaviors is never easy, but imbibing certain principles can set the right context for the necessary transformation
In the Oil and Gas sector as in other industries, embracing technology is not the major challenge, human behavior is a significant factor in the success or failure of projects. The need to improve operations with new digital technologies while maintaining focus on the core business and how to engage employees and stakeholders into applying digital technology in ways that delivers real value and operational excellence to simplify complex processes at reduced cost is key
The following measures would suffice to ensure organization-wide support for digitalization
- Changes to the operating model and culture are the hardest parts of a digital transformation, therefore, companies should embed new modes of thinking and incorporate analytics into their decision-making models
- Building asset systems is not easy and takes time due to meta-data extraction from several legacy systems, therefore, Data managers need to invest ample time in data systems deployment to meet the needs of the users
- Senior executives need to own and support flexible and adaptive digital systems, drive initiatives with dedicated funding, have line of sight and systematic plans to create winning ways of working, acquire new capabilities to enhance skills while changing the company’s culture.
- Constant and timely employee engagements and training to communicate the deployment of new technologies, activities and processes. Video and virtual communication has proven to be an effective medium for communicating complex ideas about ongoing change. Effective access management and control, information classification and distribution of corporate content must be put in place as a safeguard to reduce risk of unauthorized access of resources.
References
Berman, S.J., 2012. Digital transformation: opportunities to create new business models. Strategy & Leadership, 40(2), pp.16-24.
Brennen, J.S. and Kreiss, D., 2016. Digitalization. The international encyclopedia of communication theory and philosophy, pp.1-11.
David Vlok (2017) Human Behavior-A Challenge to Digitization- https://imagenevp.com/blog/human-behaviour-challenge-digitization/
Information Systems 