Thriving Despite Digital Transformation Barriers

Learning technologies do much more, such as provide tracking, manage and automate training programmes, evidence compliance, automate administration and bring together all face-to-face, offline and online data in one place to provide valuable insight.

Sources of Digital Disruption

Digital disruption can happen when a new or existing business makes a significant change and becomes the market leader.

Many organisations are now facing digital disruption from a variety of sources:

• The need to overcome their digital transformation barrier and embrace it to be competitive is a key objective, with some looking to adopt technology such as cobotics and drones
• Some have a digital skills gap to fill, so are considering how learning technologies can help upskill their team
• The impact of big data is another key topic and learning technologies can also help with this - e.g., using the companies employee data can show you when your HR policies are not being applied correctly
• Security is a big concern and discussion at the round table was around how quantum computing will protect data to stop it being tampered with. This will be a huge change for any IT infrastructure, but as current encryption algorithms become defunct, or no longer secure, it’s seen as something that needs done

Examples of Digital Disruption

Amazon was originally a disruptor for the book and music stores and continues to disrupt the retail market by attacking traditional retail business models.

Google’s business model is also a digital disruptor, with Google search engine and Chrome browser now the market leaders. And with the introduction of Android, Google has also disrupted the mobile phone market. In fact, Google Labs are bringing out new products and releasing code into the market to lead disruption.

Digital Disruption Trends

However, disruptors by no means need to be multinationals. Trends that disrupt the market can bring hosts of different companies into the limelight, while others fade. One disruptive trend that is gathering pace is Artificial Intelligence (AI) including Machine Language (ML). This is similar to the Internet disruption trend where the technology will just be part of our lives in the future, even though, at the moment, we don’t quite know how this will all pan out.

What is AI and ML?

Let’s start with ML. This is a programming method of creating algorithms, (mathematical processes) that capture large amounts of data from devices or other programs. AI covers the prediction models that are used on this large data set to determine possibilities or conclude a response, depending on what kind of data has been collected.

Digital Disruption in Action

One trend that uses AI, that you may have already encountered, is chat bots. These bots use speech or text recognition and are able to determine an appropriate response. If you have been in touch with a call centre recently, there’s a good chance your conversation partner may have been a bot. This is a definite disruptor, as call centre bots can deal with hundreds of calls at once, so customers don’t need to wait in a queue. And the staff working in these posts can often be upskilled and to analyse and work on resolutions.

Increasing production capacity

As production processes become more and more autonomous, the stage is set for AI to contribute to increasing production capacity. Robots and cobots have previously relied on fuzzy logic, a fore runner of AI, to predict their movements in 3D space. Now though, new robots are being developed that use AI techniques.

Providing actionable insight

The trend in learning technologies is toward systems that can provide insights from the data they collect. As everybody is so busy, it is easy, especially when working in small teams, to postpone staff reviews or meetings about performance and training.  So, most organisations struggle with collecting data for line management reporting.

This is where learning technologies come to the rescue. New generation learning systems, like eCom’s eNetEnterprise, allow capture and management of employee activities, making it easy to arrange and provide feedback whilst collecting data in the background.  This then feeds into the data sets used to give the line manager the insight they need to help them in their job, so a win-win solution.

Here are some examples of Learning Technologies in action

• A mobile app supporting competency tracking for Aviagen
• Environmental guidance course built and delivered using learning technologies
• Delivering training and assessment on a secure platform for IWCF

How could disruption affect me?

In the future, if it can be predicted, use of digital will only increase. Talk to us about what disruption could mean for your organisation, ask us how learning technologies can help and how you can overcome the barriers to digital transformation.