Digital Transformation: A lesson in Human Behaviour

A few years ago, when I joined a new role, I inherited a team of six employees working round-the-clock shifts to manually post hourly updates to CXOs. The task was straightforward, run an SQL query, fill a template, post in a group chat. Hour after hour, day after day. When they missed an update (like humans sometimes do), they’d face an escalation.

I got excited by spotting an obvious inefficiency. Like many technologists, my first instinct was to build an automated solution. A sleek, mobile-friendly dashboard with real-time updates. It was comprehensive, computationally efficient, had analytical deep-dive capabilities, was self-serve and… well, completely unused. The CXOs kept demanding their group chat updates, no matter how much I urged them to start using the mobile-friendly dashboards.

That’s when it hit me – I was solving the wrong problem!!!

Digital transformation isn’t just about implementing cutting-edge technology, it’s about understanding and adapting to human behaviour. Instead of forcing a new system, we decided to meet our users where they were.

We delivered the updates in the same group chat where the executives were used to getting them, except this time with AI-powered chatbots, not humans. This resulted in a significant reduction in manpower and data costs while freeing up the team for more strategic work, all without disrupting our stakeholders’ workflow.

This experience taught me that true innovation doesn’t always mean revolutionary change. Sometimes, it’s about understanding our audience’s habits and designing solutions that fit seamlessly into their existing world. In digital transformation, the winner isn’t always the one with the most advanced technology, but the one who best understands human nature.