The crisis of digitalization - Why we all need to change our mindset!
In many consulting situations - especially when I talk to C-level management about digitalization - I experience disillusionment. Not disillusionment about digitalization per se. It is clear to everyone that digitalization will make a significant contribution to the development and future success of companies.
The disillusionment is rather the realization that companies are increasingly unable to develop further with traditional approaches. Well, you may be familiar with this - the sales people from the vendors of ERP, CRM, PLM, CPQ, MOM... come to companies, show fancy demos with the aim of selling quickly. After the sale, the customer then realizes that what they have been shown does not work at all in their company.
I am increasingly seeing this traditional sales approach come under pressure. Many companies are less and less willing to let the providers' sales teams into meetings. They don't want to buy or rent more software. They simply want a solution for their individual problem.
Why is that? You can see it in my picture. In the 1990s, the software development of companies was in its infancy. The first PPS and ERP systems were being implemented. There was a huge green field where everyone could develop.
With the passing of the years, a proliferation has developed. Almost every area in companies is covered with software (image below 2024). Companies cannot tolerate any other system in areas that are already covered. Many would now say, yes, this is an interface problem. That is also wrong!
The occupied fields do not have to be brought together technically (this is always easy), but rather information-semantically, so that the overall system functions better and requires less and less help from humans, who act as a living semantic interface by semantically adapting the data.
From my perspective, this changes both the sale of software and the consulting approach. I believe that in the foreseeable future, it will only be possible to sell industrial software (whether on prem, subscription or cloud) if the vendors can show how a holistic solution can look methodically and technically for the specific customer case and this is demonstrated in a detailed, realistic PoC long before the deal is closed.
This also changes the consulting approach for companies. The focus will be on the consultants' ability to methodically design a holistic information architecture and implement it in existing and, in some cases, newly added systems. The focus will shift from process to information architecture.
What do you think? We at RIM developed methods back in 2012 to do just that. We would be happy to show you, how we proceed and how this can be implemented. 🤝
#Digitalization #MindsetChange #Innovation #Technology #Consulting #CLevel #ERP #CRM #SoftwareSolutions #BusinessSuccess
