Strategy first, technology second

Many organizations begin their digital transformation by buying a system first and then looking for a use. The usual result is software nobody uses, or several systems that cannot be connected. Strategic digital planning reverses the order: set the strategy first, then pick the technology that helps reach it. This article sums the idea up as a six-step framework and shows how I applied it in two real projects.

A six-step framework for digital strategy

The framework has two phases: designing the strategy, then turning it into a plan that can be carried out.

Step	Question to answer
1. Assess the environment	How is the work done today, where is the data, who waits on whom?
2. Set a digital vision	Which decisions improve once good data exists?
3. Design the new business model	What new value appears?
4. Choose strategy and tactics	Where do we stand, and which few tactics do we use?
5. Turn into plans and projects	Which projects show results quickly, which lay long-term foundations?
6. Adapt the management	How must decisions and teamwork change?

After the six steps, measure, review and start the next round, because the environment keeps changing.

Example 1: a hydroponic farm at home

Baan Rak Phak is a small family farm where I am the owner, the user and the developer at once, which makes the effect of each step easy to see.

Step	What was actually done
1. Assess the environment	Care relied on walking the plot and habit; there was no history of data
2. Vision	Look after the plot from measured values instead of habit
3. New value	See problems before the crop is harmed, and offer a model for small growers
4. Strategy	Collect data automatically, let AI support decisions, keep working offline
5. Projects	Sensor boards, a mobile app, weather-aware watering rules, leaf-image AI, an edge host at home
6. Adapt management	Decide from measured values, and review every time the system has a problem

Observation. Every piece has a reason in the strategy. The edge host exists because of "keep working offline", and when the home internet really dropped, data collection continued. Another time, the board in the plot hung after the router reconnected. I took the incident back through step six and changed the firmware so the board restarts itself after ten minutes offline. The plan has to be reviewed round after round; it cannot be written once and left.

Example 2: a factory moving from paper to mobile-app recording

This example comes from my own factory work. Company details are confidential, so only the principles are described.

Step	What was actually done
1. Assess the environment	Forms were written by hand at the machine, then collected for someone else to type in; data was a day late and could be wrong twice
2. Vision	Data is recorded once, at the source, by the person doing the work
3. New value	Decision makers see production status right away instead of waiting for a report
4. Strategy	Move recording from paper into a mobile app at the point of work
5. Projects	Replace one form at a time, starting with the one that causes the most trouble
6. Adapt management	Meetings move from asking what happened to deciding what to do

Observation. People gave up paper because the app was easier to fill in than paper. I ran machines, repaired them and worked in QC and production control before I wrote code, so I knew which forms get filled in with dirty hands and which fields nobody really fills.

Recommendations

1. Do step one on the floor, not in a meeting room. Counting the forms that are typed in twice gives better evidence than an opinion survey.
2. Write the vision as better decisions, not as a list of technologies; technology changes faster than strategy.
3. Every project must trace back to a tactic. Projects that cannot should be dropped.
4. Always include a quick win. People on the floor believe in change when their own work gets easier.
5. Make it easier than the old way, and make it keep working through real problems such as weak signal, power cuts and lost connections.
6. Make people on the floor co-designers, and bring every small failure back into the next round.

This article is my own summary and interpretation from practice. It does not copy text from the reference.

References

เทพศักดิ์ บุญยรัตพันธุ์. (2022). Strategic planning for organizational digital transformation [in Thai]. In Strategic Digital Technology Management. Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University Press. ISBN 978-616-16-2818-5