Mining industry’s digital transformation seminar in Vuokatti, Finland, offered interesting talks about digitalization, new technologies, information silos and ecosystems. Participants reflected on opportunities new technologies bring and what obstacles businesses have on their way to digital transformation.
Consensus was found in the themes of data integration, need of a data platform and the importance of cooperation. We believe that participants left the seminar with plenty of new ideas and thoughts on how to develop businesses and the whole industry forward together.
With digitalization things can be made and shared easier and with more clever tools than ever before. The development of new technologies brings year after year increasingly great opportunities to develop and model operations and gather various information. For example, Big Data, IoT and Industry 4.0 bring almost unlimited possibilities, but the question is how do you really utilize them in businesses? Digital transformation means that businesses can use the information from their operations to develop efficiency, innovate and gain competitive advantage. It means utilizing the possibilities of new technologies and the data from all areas of operations, machines, systems and processes. Transition from digitalization to digital transformation means, however, going through company’s strategy, culture, operations and paradigms. In the middle of the hype of new technologies companies must find the ways to efficiently utilize these technologies. In the worst-case scenario huge amounts of data are formed and without efficient data management it gets lost in silos and doesn’t bring transparency or the ‘big picture’ of the operations.