‘Necessity is the mother of invention’. Practicality is a driver of necessity. The earliest concept of the modern day monetary system, metal coins, can be traced back to 600 BC, the Lydian Empire. Coins reigned supreme until the 11th century when the Song dynasty invented paper money ….. paper revolutionized the way that people could carry around their wealth without weighing them down! Ease and convenience are powerful USP’s (unique selling points).
Digitization, 1 and 0’s, paperless money is now starting to dominate our daily lives. The proportion of cashless transactions increases every year with over 70% of Asian and European payment transactions now going paperless. Whilst there may be cultural acceptance differences across the countries, the ease and convenience of ‘tapping’ your card or phone is now a digital cultural norm.
Foundational to the digitization enablement is the change in underlying process and platforms needed to support each ‘revolution‘ step. This is complex and often requires a mindset change. Under the digital transformation ‘call to action’, we refer to this as ‘digitalization’, or the ‘digitalization journey’. Digitalization involves the adaption and re-engineering of processes to balance user outcome benefits with business policies and procedures to ensure secure, consistent and robust controls. User adoption is improved by making the process easy and convenient.
What is the next tech wave?
The news is awash with the recent Microsoft investment in ChatGPT. Personally I believe we are still in that hype phase; and have yet to fully realize the benefit potential of using a ‘super charged’ chatbot to make the process easier and more convenient for the user. I articulate the challenges of AI in my last article, “The Age of AI: What’s Procurement’s fate?“.
As we close out 2022 and fast-forward 2023, my ongoing outlook is that we remain constrained by the complexity of the process being addressed and whether the user themselves are able to accept a new operational/ cultural narrative. The art of ‘digitalization’ remains, as ever, critical to success.
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