Leadership engagement is crucial for a successful digital transformation. Early buy-in creates a strong foundation and drives digitalization forward with shared goals.
In the Digitala Stambanan project, we have developed and tailored tools to assist companies in digital transformation, gathering them under The Travel Guide (Reseguiden) – a structured approach to industrial digitalization. One of the most essential insights is that securing leadership buy-in is the first step toward a successful digital transformation. Leadership plays a central role as decision-makers, role models, and guides for the rest of the organization.
Securing early leadership engagement builds a solid foundation for the digitalization effort. Initial workshops, where leadership actively participates, have proven crucial in establishing this buy-in. When leadership takes an active role, supports, and sets a good example, a culture is created where change and digitalization become a natural part of the organization. It becomes easier for employees to follow and adopt the new working methods that digitalization demands.
Engagement must also be driven from the ground up to achieve solid organizational buy-in. Creating a diverse working group with representatives from the company’s various departments who build knowledge and drive development forward can make the work more efficient. Regular communication within the group helps spread knowledge and create broader employee engagement.
A shared understanding of the current situation is a necessity
After leadership is engaged and supports the initiative, the next step is to create a shared understanding of the company’s current state. The entire organization must have the same perception of where it stands in its digital journey. During the project, it became evident that different parts of the company sometimes had different views on how far they had come in digitalization and where opportunities and challenges lay. Without a shared understanding of the current state, it becomes difficult to agree on the goal and move in the same direction.
Digitalization is a difficult concept, so it is essential to use a clear and structured method to map the current state. We chose to work with the Industry 4.0 Maturity Index from Acatech in Germany. This model captures both technical aspects and the company’s organization and culture, providing a complete picture of the company’s digital maturity.
Four areas that map the company’s digital maturity
The model from Acatech analyzes four critical areas that are crucial to understanding and measuring a company’s digital maturity:
Resources—Competence and information sharing.
Physical and human resources are the foundation for supporting digitalization. This includes ensuring that employees have the right digital competence and that there are structured communication channels for effective information sharing. It’s about creating traceable information flows through centralized systems and optimized interfaces for human-machine interaction.Information systems—Data management and integration.
Information systems are critical in collecting, processing, and sharing data to improve decision-making. This includes ensuring that different parts of the company are connected to share information efficiently between departments and business areas. This not only enhances information flow but also enables real-time, fact-based decisions.Organizational structure—Flexibility and collaboration
To succeed with a digital transformation, companies need a flexible and dynamic organizational structure. This means reorganizing quickly to meet new demands and collaborating internally and externally with partners and suppliers. The company can exploit new business opportunities and quickly adapt to market changes through dynamic workflows and collaboration across the value network.Culture—Willingness to change and share.
A successful digital transformation requires a company culture that embraces change and fosters innovation. A culture that supports social collaboration, where employees share knowledge and work across departmental boundaries, creates a platform for continuous development. A non-hierarchical work environment where everyone contributes is critical to driving digitalization forward.
Adaptation to Swedish conditions
We adapted the model to Swedish circumstances and supplemented it with process mappings to describe companies’ current situations more clearly. By visualizing the current state in this way, we helped companies understand where they stand in their digital transformation journey. This shared understanding is essential for the organization to unite around a shared vision and work toward the same goals.
Positive effects after the maturity assessment
After conducting the digital maturity assessment, companies gained concrete insights into their current level of digital maturity and identified areas for improvement and growth. For many companies, this assessment has been one of the most valuable parts of the project. Several companies have used the results as helpful information in their strategic work. In one particular case, the structure of the maturity assessment led to an increased understanding of digitalization projects within leadership. This has resulted in the company participating in more collaboration projects like Digitala Stambanan Produktion.
The same company has also chosen to raise its internal competence by training its staff in the Industry 4.0 Maturity Index and the method used to measure its digital maturity. Through this training, the company has strengthened its ability to work with digitalization and created a long-term foundation for continued development.
Now that companies have anchored the change work with leadership and throughout the organization and have a shared understanding of their current state, it is time to formulate a vision and identify opportunities and challenges. More about this in the following article.
After several years of successful collaboration, we look forward to sharing this knowledge. During the fall, we will publish articles highlighting the challenges of digitalization in the industry, how we see that companies can address and benefit from technological development, and what we have achieved through the project. We will also emphasize the strength of this innovation collaboration and share participants’ experiences and insights.
We hope these articles will inspire more companies to embrace the opportunities of digitalization and understand the importance of collaboration for a future competitive Swedish industry.
Keep an eye out for upcoming articles on our website!