Living in the tech implementation space, the most exciting moment in a “Digital Transformation” for me is near the beginning of any project or initiative.  It’s the moment someone who is integral to operations finally opens the 5″ binder that has been sitting on their desk untouched; and finding the information contained in the binder is fundamental to all company revenue.  Or it’s the moment the battle book comes out from the sales VP and the ensuing conversation shows – to the collective surprise of the rest of the participants – there is no standardized pricing, and no tracking of how prices get negotiated.  Or it’s that moment I find a clipboard and start asking about the origin, purpose, and destination of each form.

That’s the juicy part.

On factory tours, in “working sessions” and project kickoffs, or detailing the business logic for an implementation, this is the moment my work is no longer just “make it prettier and online” and the conversation starts driving an actual transformation – of the workplace experience and overarching business model – using “digital” technology.

The reason this moment is so exciting for me happens to also the answer to the question I’ve heard at more than one barbecue from an older neighbor – “And what exactly are you transforming?”

I think that’s a great question in retrospect.

What we are actually transforming is information.

• We take the information created purely for human consumption;
• We make it easy for “computers” to read it efficiently instead of humans;
• We use “computers” to present the information more quickly to more people.

It’s that simple. 

Pragmatically, that’s the process that takes the hard-to-maintain spreadsheets that become binders or clipboard papers and transforms them into intuitive digital interfaces (they are also “online and pretty”). By simplifying all of that socially complex and context-dependent information into a flat table a computer can understand, you become free to add all of the social and contextual perspective in multiple ways later (channel and audience specific) instead of just one way forever (in that binder).