How’s that digitalisation going for you?
By: Russell Clark
Tags: Industry 4 0, Digitalisation, Humblebee Stories, Business Design, Service Design

It all started so well.

You were new in the job and had the ideas, the energy and the mandate to digitalize, industry 4.0-ize, innovatize and a dozen other ‘-izes’.

But here you are.

12–24 months later.

A backlog of legacy digital projects under construction. A list of 100 great ideas to build “in the future”… and you’ve managed to launch (on the market… to your customers) the grand total of f*ck all. Nada. Nowt. Nothing.

Now your team have no time to spare. You have no other resources, and you have no budget to employ the skill sets required to build modern, advanced technical products quickly.

But you made all those promises to your CEO, who made all those promises to his Board Members about how your company must and will prioritise innovation, digitalisation and industry 4.0.

In the words of Homer Simpson… “D’oh!”.

D’oh.

You’re not alone

For some reason you find yourself in a very common situation. Actually not for “some” reason, but for a whole host of reasons which are pretty easy to identify:

Digitalisation is tough.

The complexity of building products & services now is way beyond the digital projects of yesteryear (corporate web, intranet, marketing sites & campaigns).

The products & services you need to offer must be connected to your business-critical IT systems.

Your business-critical IT systems are holding you back & making your vision for united, modern digital products & services feel impossible.

Obviously digital-first service companies (read ‘new start-ups’) have digitalisation running through their company DNA. Big companies are just not lean in a similar way.

HOWEVER… a big company simply trying to PRETEND to be a start-up is ridiculous. Don’t fall into that trap. ( I might write about this separately later.)

I might write about this separately later.) Industry 4.0 is a nice idea… but…

…If you’re in an industrial or manufacturing context your reality is often more like industry 0.5 never mind 4.0.

Your bosses asked for digital transformation but have absolutely no idea what that involves.

Those same bosses can’t (or won’t) understand that user experience is the difference between success and failure.

Sounds dramatic? But yes, UX really is that important.

Your staff project teams do not include the absolute base members to plan, build and launch a successful, complex, digital product.

Incidentally, a good base team looks a bit like: UX / Service Designer, Business Designer, Interface Designer, Technical Designer . In beautiful harmony.

. In beautiful harmony. Never mind just your project teams, the above skillsets don’t exist at your company, full stop.

Your company tried to make an innovation lab/hub/garden with the purpose of digitally transforming. It’s dead now. It was a theatre your company decided it could not afford.

You lack a process to prioritise. Which projects should be parked, which should be justifiably prioritised (and finished first) from a business perspective.

You guessed it. We have a solution.

We can help you prioritise your project(s) of most critical importance.

We can roll into town like a task force, and help you finish “that” pain-in-the-ass project. :)

We can plug-in resources to collaborate with your team.

We can rollout a serverless architecture. This is like pressing reset on your company wide digitalisation efforts, levelling your infrastructure with a base level of modernity, whilst also respecting your “legacy” IT infrastructure. Highly recommend you speak to Mikael at Humblebee about this.

We can help sharpen the skills of your team regards digital product planning, designing, business & production.

We will leave our methods, tools & processes behind us for you and your team to re-use.

We can get started with a low-risk project.

We have a process that is tried and tested with companies like yours.

WE HELP YOU GET BEAUTIFUL, VALIDATED DIGITAL PRODUCTS TO MARKET. HERE’S HOW WE DO IT, AND HERE’S SOME RECENT WORK.