Among over-heard words in the society, “digital” and its associates play a leading role, especially since last decade. The associates include, but not limited to digitization, digitalization and digital transformation. However, many seems to be just using the words, sometimes incorrectly conveying a wrong meaning. In a different angle, that also shows the lack of awareness among individuals, organization, societies and nations about the real meaning and usage of these terms. Let’s look at closely what they really mean.
Digital
The word digital actually comes from a 15th century Latin word digitālis = digitus (“finger, toe”) + -alis (“-al”). It could be a coincidence that most of today’s digital services are consumed on touch screens, like smart phones, and that we actually use our fingers to do that. The conventional meaning of digital is something to do with digits in binary – 1s and 0s. Technically, binary can be used to represent a digital signal, data and many other things.
The general public identifies or experiences digital in many different ways; analog vs. digital television, printed magazines vs. digital magazines on a screen, recorded music on vinyl vs. digital music on CD/DVD/Blue Ray, analog meters vs. digital meters, analog watches vs. digital watches, analog cameras vs. digital cameras, and the list goes on.
However, in modern day context, digital has much broader meaning. It has shifted from representing and associating with technology, to become something to represent a novel experience resulted from a combination of new thinking, new technologies, new and improved processes. As a result many things have become digital today – digital economies, digital societies, digital health, digital education, digital entertainment, and even digital governments. Digital enables new ecosystems, makes new business models possible and opens up new ways to interact and engage with humans and devices, delivering the right experience.
You can check Knowledge Spark - Understanding "Digital" Correctly by ARC Tube for more info.
Another word associated with digital is data. It’s also said that the data is the new oil. This shows the importance of data and we often use the tem digital data to identify the data associated with digital.
If we want to move to “Digital” form where we are today, be as an individual, organization, business, economy, society or a nation, we need to look at it in 3 steps – Digitization, Digitalization and Digital Transformation. It is very important that we understand these steps clearly.
Digitization
Digitization starts with converting the existing data in different formats to a digital format or digital data - a format that a computer can understand and process. For an example, scanning and storing conventional documents in a digital format with proper identification could be the digitization applied in an organization. But, digitization can actually expand to many levels, delivering more meaningful information that may be used to drive better outcomes for stakeholders.
Digitalization
Once the data is digitized, the next step is the digitalization. Digitalization is the process that we need to adopt, to make use of the digitized data. For an example, an organization can use a computer to search for digitized document instead of finding it in a file inside a conventional record room. Instead of the process of storing and finding hard document, the new process is to use soft documents.
Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is the total effect of following digitization and practicing digitalization processes across an organization, business, economy, society or nation. However, people usually starts with Digital Optimization (DO), before getting into Digital Transformation (DT).
As the 1st step of DT journey, DO continues to do the same things, but in a different way. This may include increasing efficiency or maybe even reducing the cost by digitization and automating a processes. DO is of low risk.
DT however takes a completely different approach to what you do and how you do it. This may potentially even include disrupting your own business.
This diagram summarizes digitization, digitalization and digital transformation;
You can check Knowledge Spark - Digitization, Digitalization and Digital Transformation by ARC Tube for more info.
Author: Anuradha Udunuwara, ARC Tube | @AnuradhaU
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