If you’re planning a digitalisation program or exploring how to use your organisation’s data more effectively, here are 5 tips to help you get things moving.

1. Begin with business objectives: Ask yourself what tasks you want the data to perform. Then let the technical solution follow the business needs.
2. Democratise your data: It's of little use locked away in an analyst's database. Put it in the hands of front line staff and make it easy to use.
3. Rome wasn't built in a day: Approach any complex project in series of phases. Quick wins are a great way to get people enthusiastic about the power of data.
4. Think outside your organisation: Digitalisation can improve the data links between you, your customers and your suppliers.
5. It needn't be complex - or expensive!: If anyone tries to blind you with science remind them that digitalisation is just a trendy name for things that most companies are already engaged in.

Digital transformation has a huge range of applications so it's sometimes viewed as the panacea to all challenges and then runs the risk of becoming over complicated. You don't need a sledgehammer to crack a nut!  Focus on using digitalisation to automate manual processes and creating tools that deliver actionable insights directly into the hands of front-line users - and you'll get the results you want.

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