Day #34: KPI and metrics

We keep being inspired by the course assignment! In order to evaluate business strategy and BRM policies, we quite often make use of KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. But the digital era and the progressive digitization and digitalization in our society make difficult to measure the return of investment (ROI). Old ROI metrics focused on efficiencies, but today they should talk about revenue and customer experience.

That is very well described in the article How to measure IT ROI in the digital era, from a website called The Enterprisers Project, a community helping IT leaders to solve problems.

Specific metrics are considered and split in three categories: strategic, operational and cost impact. Examples of the strategic impact metrics are the customer retention or the time to market for new services. Operational impact metrics might include increase in scale and operational efficiencies. Finally, cost impact metrics are related to business costs or total cost of ownership assets.

Besides, how many IT ROI metrics do you need? Answer below the picture!

a) One is enough
b) Two or three
c) Five to nine
d) Around 15
e) As much as possible

Image from getthematic.com

And the answer, according to Paul Proctor, analyst at Gartner, is.... c! 

Day #5: Digitalization and who controls our data

I read a piece of news in the Spanish newspaper informing about a fine that has been imposed to a Swedish school in Skellefteå for using facial recognition to control the students attendance. It was a test implemented during three weeks in one classroom, with 22 students who had given their consent to be monitored in such way. However, the school must face a fine of 200 000 kr because this project violates the GDPR. Consent is not enough in this situation, since those who own the data (students) are in a weaker or depending position with respect to those who control them now (the school board).

This situation brings up an interesting and polemic subject: what happens with our data and who controls them. It is not new, I would say that it is extremely recurrent. One of the latest times was when discussing the Russian app FaceApp, which aged our faces in a funny way to post in Instagram. It went viral during the summer, and the debate about privacy arose once more, since our facial information was being shared. 

But it is not just FaceApp, or any other suspicious up. It's everything. We share our data, our personal information everyday. We must accept conditions and grant permits every time we download a new app. In most cases they don't make sense, but that is the price we have to pay, and we pay it. We have become digital, but that has enormous implications for our privacy.

What can we do, if anything? I don't know, and I would like to know. It seems that the lost of privacy is one of the drawbacks of the progressive digitalization of our lives. Legislation such as the aforementioned GDPR certainly helps and it is needed, to protect us, customers. Or products, I should say. Because when we get something for free, it unfortunately means that we, i.e. our data, are the product. 

Image from EUGDPR - Information Portal (eugdpr.org)

Day #4: Digitization or digitalization?

From i-scoop.eu

There is no word in Spanish for "digitization", we use the term "digitalization" for both the immediate conversion of analog data into digital; and the deeper transformation of businesses and processes. That is why I have been struggling with these terms throughout the week. Apparently, even in specialised media there is some confusion between those two words, which only differ in two letters. So how can't I be confused, if I can't translate them to my mother tongue?

I found an article particularly interesting. It is a bit long, but it's worth reading: Digitization, digitalization and digital transformation: the differences.

Long story short, they establish a difference between:

• Digitization: "it’s simply converting and/or representing something non-digital (other examples include signals, health records, location data, identity cards, etc.) into a digital format which then can be used by a computing system for numerous possible reasons."

• Digitalization: "In business, digitalization most often refers to enabling, improving and/or transforming business operations and/or business functions and/or business models/processes and/or activities, by leveraging digital technologies and a broader use and context of digitized data, turned into actionable, knowledge, with a specific benefit in mind. It requires digitization of information but it means more and at the very center of it is data."

• Digital transformation: "Digital transformation, as we use it today, is broader than digitalization as a way to move to digital business."

It may sound confusing, and it is, according to the article, since "digitization" and "digitalization" may be interchangeable sometimes, and there is not an objective limit between "digitalization" and "digital transformation". But at least we have got some hints by now, and we can double check when we use these words...

Bonus track: I really liked the sentence from Charlene Li: “Transformation and disruption have something very interesting in similar: they’re both human issues, both human problems to be tackled, not technology problems”.