An interesting article from IoT Agenda explores why digital investment in increasingly capable devices/ things/ solutions are empowering businesses to transform their processes and workflows but not yet showing up in real productivity gains
One theory is ‘the metrics used are suspect’ – however, the author sides with another
The rapid evolution in transformative technologies (e.g. Cloud, IoT, Big Data analytics) is resulting in too much change and complexity for the users – it’s the ‘rough edge of digital transformation’ – it’s preventing them from doing what they want and need to do – it has become ‘a barrier to productivity’, not an enabler
Education example – Universities are investing in on-line education to reach more students or interact more effectively with on-site students – however, teachers lack confidence and are uncomfortable with their technical ability – they feel burdened with having to learn the intricacies of all the technology required – for example, how to:
- Support/ troubleshoot lecture capture solutions
- Operate audio and video hardware
- Monitor social engagement
- Manage the movement of digital content into and out of learning management systems
Healthcare example – Digitisation of patient records is seen as a way to improve healthcare with consistent records following patients across different providers – but clinicians complain of interfacing too much with their computers and not enough with patients when the opposite was the goal – the result is doctors are now seeing fewer patients per day than they did before digitisation of the records
Both these examples smack of the perennial problem with software development and, nowadays, apps – too many are designed by geeks without reference to or testing by their ultimate customers, the users, before being launched