{"id":5716,"date":"2019-12-10T07:19:56","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T12:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/?p=5716"},"modified":"2020-12-18T22:35:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-19T03:35:00","slug":"5-imperatives-for-developing-a-digital-factory-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/5-imperatives-for-developing-a-digital-factory-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Imperatives for Developing a Digital Factory Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Digitization helps boost revenue, enhance customer loyalty, and reduce costs.\u00a0 Top digital companies not only improve customer journeys, they consistently revisit and streamline them.\u00a0 A rigorous approach to Digital Transformation<\/a>, referred to as the \u201cDigital Factory,\u201d demands a collaborative culture, agility, and controlled risk-taking.<\/p>\n

A Digital Factory<\/a> integrates the capabilities, processes, and inputs to yield quality deliverables. \u00a0These deliverables are mostly journeys\u2014a string of interfaces to accomplish an activity; for instance, a new method to resolve issues with customers service or a new lending process. \u00a0The Digital Factory adopts new workflows to develop innovative products\u2014utilizing leading practices like Design Thinking<\/a>, Zero-based Process Reengineering, and Agile software development.<\/p>\n

The working of a Digital Factory is governed by guidelines and standard operating procedures that outline the required objectives, controls, processes, and decision-making authorities. \u00a0How well a business implements a Digital Factory approach can make the difference between small improvements and real Business Transformation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Digital Factory approach galvanizes the business, motivates the people, and encourages innovation.\u00a0 Such an environment attracts the best talent internally as well as externally, and delivers the required outcomes. \u00a0A Digital Factory assists in developing a new product or customer experience within a short time span and this impetus can then be channelized to scale up digitization across the organization over time.<\/p>\n

However, achieving this requires setting up a Digital Culture<\/a> that exemplifies the new working model, systems, and behaviors.\u00a0 Developing a culture that supports the Digital Factory approach necessitates implementing the following key imperatives:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Adopt the VC Mindset<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Get Creative to Attract Digital Talent<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Build Working Team Squads<\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. Create a Collaborative Workspace<\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. Foster an Agile Culture<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Now, let’s take a deeper dive into the first 3 initiatives.<\/p>\n

    Adopt the VC Mindset<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    Just like venture capitalists, a Digital Factory culture warrants setting up clear-cut goals and indicators, and making quick and robust judgments.\u00a0 Leading digital companies reserve a sizeable portion of their budget to establish a digital factory and dedicate separate office space for the unit. \u00a0For the Digital Factory to be successful, the investment decision to fund a product (e.g., a customer journey) should hinge on the effectiveness of the idea, a basic business case (not too detailed), and steady progress as per the approved project objectives.<\/p>\n

    Get Creative to Attract Digital Talent<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    To work effectively, a Digital Factory needs people with high-demand skills\u2014e.g., Customer-centric Design (CCD)<\/a>, mobile app design, agile development, and data analytics.\u00a0 People with these capabilities aren\u2019t easy to attract.\u00a0 To tackle this issue, organizations should develop a stable value proposition and exhibit a creative, agile, and entrepreneurial environment to the incumbents for them to prefer it over traditional firms. \u00a0Another way to do it is to hire \u201cinfluentials\u201d from the digital community to help source other key talent through their references.<\/p>\n

    Build Working Team Squads<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    A digital factory culture warrants deploying small squads of around 8 to 12 people to work on a project. \u00a0This dedicated, cross-disciplinary working team belongs to the digital factory but works with the business owners on a specific project.\u00a0 The squad comprises people with expertise in user experience design, software development, IT architecture, and scrum.\u00a0 The squad needs to have access to other teams in the company and can be complemented with professionals from other trades.<\/p>\n

    Digital Factory Management Practices<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    A Digital Factory approach and culture does not work on their own.\u00a0 Implementing such a culture calls for defining and executing certain management routines, systems, and practices to embed the culture deeply into the organizational DNA. \u00a0These management practices include:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Build with Purpose<\/strong><\/li>\n
    2. Invest to Drive Impact<\/strong><\/li>\n
    3. Develop a Change Plan to Integrate New Products<\/strong><\/li>\n
    4. Adopt KPIs for Digital Adoption<\/strong><\/li>\n
    5. Find Multi-disciplinary Leaders<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Interested in learning more about the management practices critical for embedding a Digital Factory approach into the company<\/a>?\u00a0 You can download an editable PowerPoint on Digital Factory<\/strong> here<\/u><\/a> on the Flevy documents marketplace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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      \u2013 Omar Hern\u00e1n Montes Parra, CEO at Quantum SFE<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Digitization helps boost revenue, enhance customer loyalty, and reduce costs.\u00a0 Top digital companies not only improve customer journeys, they consistently revisit and streamline them.\u00a0 A rigorous approach to Digital Transformation, referred to as the \u201cDigital Factory,\u201d demands a collaborative culture, agility, and controlled risk-taking. A Digital Factory integrates the capabilities, processes, and inputs to yield… 5 Imperatives for Developing a Digital Factory Culture<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":5718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[408,85],"tags":[222,228,674,1821,1681,1390,1820,1822,1806,2,824,1823],"class_list":["post-5716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-management-leadership","category-organization","tag-agile","tag-change-management","tag-collaboration","tag-collaborative-workspace","tag-customer-centricity","tag-digital-culture","tag-digital-factory","tag-digital-talent","tag-digitization","tag-innovation","tag-transformation","tag-vc-mindset"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5716"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7859,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716\/revisions\/7859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}