Digital Transformation.

Three stages are commonly distinguished. Digitisation in the narrow sense converts analogue into digital, such as a paper form into an online form. Digitalisation of processes goes further and connects steps: the online form automatically creates an order that continues through the system. Digital transformation, finally, changes what a company offers and how it works — for example when customers see status, documents and invoices themselves in a portal and the phone no longer rings for it.

For SMEs the term often sounds bigger than it needs to be. The most effective steps are usually unspectacular: find a point where the same information is entered several times, and eliminate it. Replace an inbox that serves as a filing system with an overview in which every case has a status. Turn knowledge that lives in one person's head into rules a system applies. Each of these steps is measurable in itself: less time, fewer errors, fewer follow-up questions.

Transformation projects rarely fail because of the technology, but because of two other things. First, the process is not clarified before the software, and then the system silently decides questions that management should really decide. Second, the people who work with it every day are involved too late. Software built without regard to daily work gets bypassed, and the old Excel list lives on.

Whether standard software is enough or a custom solution is needed depends on how distinctive the process is. For accounting, time tracking or an ordinary online shop, mature products exist. Custom development pays off where a business's core process is so particular that no standard tool fits it cleanly.