According to Dave Dorsett, principal software architect at Astrix, an information technology consulting firm, choosing the most effective strategy for a digital transformation effort can be a difficult and confusing process for the majority of businesses.
‘There is no single method that can take you from the paper-based processes, siloed technologies, and inconsistent data sets of the present to the digitally transformed laboratory of the future.’ The reality is that everyone’s journey to digitization will be different, depending on your business’s particular set of circumstances. However, all successful digital transformation initiatives are founded on three pillars: technology, processes, and people. He continues by giving the example of a stool with three legs. All three legs must be present and solid for the stool to provide support and its intended function for long-term use. People are the most crucial “leg” (or pillar) for supporting and maintaining your digital transformation strategy. In order to foster the significant change that will take place in your organization and foster a culture of innovation, having the right leadership in place is absolutely necessary. Your organization’s employees must not only accept the changes that will continue to drive your digital transformation strategy, but they must also carry out the effort itself. The most important piece of equipment for digital transformation is the process, the second pillar. Dorsett maintains that achieving practical process analysis to support digital transformation requires focusing on the objective rather than the procedure itself. “The elimination of the manual entry of data and the automation of what people are doing repeatedly are basic operational process improvement opportunities that are likely to be found across the organization.” Take the time to find out what people are doing before and after these practices are eliminated before beginning the direct elimination process. Developing a roadmap of your “as is” and “to be” future-state scientific processes and then mapping out the data from end to end is the key to creating a truly transformative environment. Technology is the third and final pillar of a successful strategy for digital transformation. The tendency to concentrate on the operational systems within the laboratory, such as LIMS, ELN, CDS, and SDMS, to name just a few, is perhaps one of the aspects of digital transformation programs that is frequently misunderstood. ‘The goal is to address the data created and consumed by the organisation, not to implement systems per se,’ Dorsett stresses. ‘It is not a ‘buy and deploy it’ project: no vendor sells what is required to operate as a data-driven organisation.’
Dorsett goes on to say that data accessibility is “everything!” The flow of R&D data throughout all aspects of your operations is the key to becoming “analytics-ready.” The flow and accessibility of data are hampered by siloed technologies and manual procedures. In addition, there are cultural (data governance) and technical (semantic tooling) requirements for achieving seamless R&D data flow.