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The future for companies that don’t embrace digital transformation and digitization (the digital technology used to enable digital transformation) looks increasingly challenging.

To ensure that your organization can leverage these new solutions, you need to understand what exactly digital transformation is, to then embrace it.

I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Ever since the fictional ‘sentient computer’ HAL 9000 went rogue in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, people have been uneasy about the idea of machines being able to think for themselves.

Recent business thinking has come around to the more enlightened view that machines that are exclusively programmed by humans will have inherent limitations in their ability to mine data for insights and predictions. That’s where machine learning comes in – the ability of computers to perform tasks without explicit instructions.

Digitization is one of the most important business trends of recent years, but how exactly can digital transformation improve your business?

If you’ve been running a business anywhere in the world over the last few years, you’ll have undoubtedly heard multiple references to digital transformation. You may already have begun to digitize aspects of your enterprise.

We are living in the dawn of a new era. Whether you call it Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), or Smart Manufacturing, there’s no denying that manufacturing is evolving at a pace never seen before.

With the dawn comes illumination, but not necessarily clarity. The breakneck speed with which companies are figuring out how to collect (and find value in) massive amounts of data, and integrate digital technologies such as industrial robotics, 3D printing, machine learning, OCR, cloud computing, augmented reality, and sensors, can make the Industry 4.0 revolution seem intimidating and enigmatic.

A question on many lips these days is: how can Digital Transformation (DX) solve my manufacturing challenges?

Manufacturers are under competitive pressure to deliver better goods at lower costs. They want to reduce costs and streamline processes in their supply chains and factories. At the same time, customers are asking for more unique features in the products they buy. Customization versus standard products are often difficult trade-offs with implications in design processes, production costs, and schedules.

I recently had the experience of upgrading my Samsung phone to the S9+. Now for all the iPhone fans out there, this is not your cue to stop reading, this story has relevance to you too.

Upgrading a phone is always a contradictory emotional experience, on the one hand, you are excited to experience all the new features and capabilities, but on the other, you’re also a bit nervous as the transition may not be as seamless as it is supposed to be. Nonetheless, we soldier ahead.

As I noted in Part 1 of this blog, financial workers have always been at the forefront of data collection, structure and management. That doesn’t mean, however, that our careers are impervious to obsolescence. Industry 4.0 is a technological revolution, and this is no time to rest on our pre-transformation laurels. Everyone in the finance ecosystem needs to be on top of incoming technologies, and understand, as best as one can, their long-term implications.

With all the current discussions about Industry 4.0 and the digitalization of industrial value chains, it seems to me that people sometimes forget to mention my own field of endeavour: finance. I suppose that's not surprising. Finance, alas, may not be the sexiest component of the evolving Industry 4.0 value chain. When the awards are handed out, it's the men and women implementing automation to the shop floor, introducing AI-backed chat bots into enterprise-wide collaborative networks, or applying predictive analytics for enormous savings in inventory and logistics, who go home with the ribbons, the accolades, the admiration and the Internet articles.

Organizations today operate in a dynamic continuum where the rules of competition and operation are constantly evolving. No industry is immune to the effects of their organizational ecology to properly understand the mechanisms of different manufacturing industries. We cannot just compare the resiliency and responses of segments of the same industry.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has always been key to helping businesses make better-informed business decisions, but thanks to a year of digital advancements, the software’s ability to dramatically impact decision-making has advanced considerably.