#Forbes technology council figleaf manual#
#Forbes technology council figleaf code#

NPD also dramatically reduced the cycle times of converting raw data into the formats we deliver to our clients so that they receive actionable information faster. Meetings with customers using one of our products, which provides point-of-sale tracking for the publishing market, have resulted in product enhancements and improved customer satisfaction. There usually is room for improvement, and digital technology should make it easy to modify a process. It’s important to meet with internal and external clients and colleagues and listen to their thoughts about how a digitalization project is going. Senior management is bound to be receptive to a good idea that can improve a process and provide benefits such as time and cost savings.Īs with most digital initiatives, version one is a considerable achievement, but it’s only the beginning. While a supportive culture is important, it’s equally important to refine and communicate the idea and its benefits on a single page to avoid the “too long didn’t read” problem and to have a simple document to socialize with a wider audience beyond a manager. We have an open-door culture at NPD where ideas are welcome at any time, rather than saved for formal meetings and reviews. It’s important to have a culture in which ideas can be communicated as they arise. Ideas are great, but they also need to gain traction and support to be realized. How do you sell and socialize digitalization projects?

#Forbes technology council figleaf manual#

The more there is repetitive manual work involved, and the more time that manual work requires, costs financially and contributes to frustration, boredom and inaccuracies, the more likely that the business process is a candidate for digitalization. It's not difficult to decide which business processes are good candidates for digitalization. It was so much easier for us to collaborate in this manner with business stakeholders who could use the visual tools to communicate their requirements and then have our technical team transform them into action in the same platform where we could also capture comments and requests for revisions.

#Forbes technology council figleaf code#

We did this many times at my company with results that included easier communication of application requirements and interface design all the way to converting those ideas into code and the executable application. Rather than sketching ideas or documenting requirements in one format that later will be coded on another platform, it’s possible with low-code and no-code tools to work in the same file that ultimately will become the application itself. The benefits not only include eliminating error-prone reconciliations and format conversions, but also include the transparency, immediacy, dynamic interaction and time savings of collaborating in real time rather than waiting for sequential edits.ĭigitalization can extend beyond document management to areas such as application development. In the previous example, co-authoring eliminates the time-consuming task of reconciling various versions of a digital file or manually converting digital information from an initial format to its final required format. The new process is not only more collaborative, but it is also more efficient.Įliminate manual steps in repetitive processes.īeyond these simple and fairly universal examples, the best places to look for digitalization opportunities are wherever you have routine or repetitive processes.

Although the old process involved digital content, it still required manual work to produce the next version. NPD leverages co-authoring tools, rather than creating documents, emailing them to colleagues for review, then reconciling their edits into a new version. In today’s hybrid work environment, we increasingly count on collaboration via the cloud to get our work done.