1. Digitalization – Don't Buy It, Do It

Digitalization is not about buying new systems and apps or doing a few projects. Rather, it’s about changing the culture, behavior, and thinking patterns of the whole organization. At the center of this change is how teams and individuals, from executives to individual contributors, discover new ways of leveraging technology.

A successful transformation starts by bringing together a small team of people with clear customer insights, deep business knowledge, and expertise in technology. A positive cycle can start with the help of these experts: new ways of working, an experimentation culture and the ability to attract more people that can add to the change. Yes, you need strong support from the top, but the change happens at all levels of the organization, with the most important change in how you discover and build solutions at the team level.

And with AI, the importance of having capable teams that can discover and build solutions that work for your specific situation increases further.

2. Crazy Ambition

Customers want everything faster, cheaper and better. This suits the S Group well, as the whole purpose of the group is to produce more benefits to its customer-owners.

Digitalization is one of the best ways improve business in the 2020s. We understood this and wanted to start our change journey with small steps. At first, there was only a small team with big ambitions. With success more people and teams in the S Group wanted to join and invest in the change, and soon there were many of us that knew how to build with technology.

Our ambition led us down the path of becoming a leading technology player in our industry, and we are now also among the top technology actors in Finland, e.g., one of the most attractive employers for tech talent.

3. Ideas Are Cheap – Execution Matters

Everyone has ideas, but success stems from experimentation, learning and improvements while you build actual products and services. Every significant technology innovation consists of thousands of smaller and larger design trade-offs that are discovered and resolved during the build phase. The ability to strike the right balance in these trade-offs separates the winners from the rest.

Most new ideas are bad, and no one knows in advance which ideas are the best. Otherwise, it would not be innovation at all. Therefore, a team that can quickly and cheaply experiment with ideas, will also quickly find out what works and what doesn't, i.e., innovate.

4. Technology Can Be a Source of Competitive Advantage

Even a traditional company can realize that the use of technology can be a meaningful way to differentiate and build a competitive advantage. It can even become a cornerstone of the strategy. Many studies show that companies that are forerunners in the use of technology perform up to six times better financially than less advanced companies.

At S Group, technology is today at the core of our strategy: "Bricks to Bytes and Bytes to Bricks". Yes, we move to more digital solutions like e-commerce (from bricks to bytes), but increasingly we also digitally enhance or even automate every process (bringing bytes to bricks) regardless of the sales channel.

And today, new technologies such as AI show that there is so much more potential. Those who use these new technologies will be able to build significant competitive advantages over other players, i.e., better customer journeys, more efficient processes, and even new business.

Thank you for reading this far! I’d love to hear your thoughts over at LinkedIn.

Sebastian Nyström

Chief Transformation Officer, SOK

Over 800 technology experts work at S Group – in this series, they share their insights and stories from our digital transformation journey.