Insights from Kalman Tiboldi’s (Chief Business Innovation Officer at TVH) webinar on how to prepare your organisation for digital transformation.

 

The 4^th Industrial Revolution is not coming. It has already arrived and has been around for several years now. Because the 3^rd Industrial Revolution brought about production automation through electronics and information technology, it would seem that what we have been witnessing is a simple and inconsequent evolution. Not quite.

From augmented reality and 3D printing to IoT, from artificial intelligence and cloud computing to big and fast data and from autonomous robots (not killer ones, hopefully) to nano and biotechnology and the increasing mobile penetration, the 4^th Industrial Revolution is actually an extensive fast-paced evolution impacting all walks of life and business and, therefore, a rightful new era. This new era with all these major technologies is no longer a glimpse of a distant and, for some, fictional future, but a world of opportunities and challenges.

In this world, the barrier between the physical and virtual worlds has disappeared and these have merged into one single ecosystem that is reshaping our life. As customer expectations evolve and as technology enables more, greater and faster innovation, businesses can no longer choose to ignore the need for digital transformation.  Those who refrain from going all in will, in a best case scenario, miss out on the opportunities and, in a worst and more likely scenario, be overtaken by competitors and become obsolete.

This transformation process will not be for those who expect to find an easy solution to fix all their problems in an academic book or in the words of a random guru. However enlightened these might be, this is a case where there is no sure-fire, one-size-fits-all solution. There is no certain set of outcome scenarios. The only thing that is certain in this new world is uncertainty. And this will require a brave new organisation to ensure it is ready to thrive in this continuously changing reality.

But how can an organisation prepare for this uncertainty?

First of all, organisations need to understand this brave new digital world and accept that their digital transformation will be a core shaking long-term process that will continuously challenge and impact the whole organisation. This means that digital transformation will be not just about IT or a one-off digital initiative, but a top-down organisational and cultural change.

Also, much like in a start-up company, accepting and managing this uncertainty as well as risk and failure is key to ensure the transformation happens with the least entropy as possible. Therefore, board members, owners, CEO and all senior leaders must be fully committed throughout the whole process and lead by example.

As overwhelming as it may feel and without a never-failing formula for success, learning from other digital transformation experiences is actually the best way to start. In the webinar organised by CIONET International, Kalman Tiboldi, Chief Business Innovation Officer at TVH, talked about how his organisation approached this challenge.

Kalman Tiboldi shared that at TVH, the digital transformation process has been accelerated in the past three years and is ongoing, but started more than ten years ago with the realization that IT could no longer be a fenced in department and the decision to truly integrate it with the business. This process has had some failures and successes, but as it has benefited from the full support of the owners, employees and all other stakeholders, the results have been extremely positive.

We will continue to publish more insights from Kalman Tiboldi’s webinar on how to prepare your organisation for digital transformation, but you can start exploring the ideas shared in the full webinar video:

 
 

	About Kalman Tiboldi
	Chief Business Innovation Officer at TVH, Kalman Tiboldi is a major driver of digital transformation in his organisation and was recently granted the award of best speaker of the 2016 events by CIONET Belgium.

	About TVH
	TVH is a Belgian family-owned company with a consolidated turnover of €1,33 billion and nearing 6000 employees worldwide. TVH the market leader in replacement parts and accessories for material handling and industrial vehicles, new and second-hand forklifts, new and second-hand aerial work platforms and internal handling equipment.