Adjacent and Between: Demystifying Digital Transformation with Power Apps and Power Automate

Everyone talks about digital transformation, but it seems like no one really explains what it means... until now. In today's episode, Rob and Justin dive deep to cut through the buzzwords and lay out the reality. They're tackling why digital transformation isn't about making huge, instant changes but rather about the smart, subtle tweaks in areas that usually get ignored but badly need a digital lift. They dive into how leveraging tools like the Power Platform can spark significant improvements, showing that it's the small changes that can really boost efficiency and smooth out your workflow.

Ever found yourself wondering how to translate all the chatter about digital evolution into actionable steps? That's exactly what Rob and Justin are unpacking. They're guiding you through how minor, yet clever adjustments can transform your processes. It's all about enhancing the routine, one step at a time.

And, as always, if you enjoyed the episode, be sure to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform to help new listeners find us.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Rob Collie (00:00): Hello, friends. In today's episode, Justin and I demystify what is meant by the phrase digital transformation. Phrases like that are one of my least favorite things. Why do I say that? Well, these are phrases that get used a lot. They cast a big shadow. You encounter them almost anywhere you go. That's fine by itself. But in the case of digital transformation, that massive shadow is multiplied by no one understanding what it actually means.

(00:30): Now earlier in my career, I used to be really intimidated by things like this. Everyone seems to know what this means because they're using it all the time. I don't know what it means, so should I just pretend and play along like everyone else? But at some point, many years ago, I had this moment where I realized that the Emperor has no clothes. It almost never has clothes. Now when I encounter phrases like this, instead of being like paralyzed or intimidated, I instead start working in my own definition and this process takes time. I've been picking apart and stewing on the definition of digital transformation now for probably the better part of a year plus. Somewhere along the way in that process, I realized that we at P3 are doing quite a bit of digital transformation work, I just hadn't realized it yet because I didn't have a good enough definition.

(01:18): Lately, I've been noticing that my definition for digital transformation has reached a steady state. It's not changing over time anymore, which tends to be my signal that I've arrived at a definition that works. Now seemed like a good time to sit down and compare notes with Justin, who's been following his own parallel process of arriving at a definition. I'm very pleased with where we landed. A practical and specific definition that can be reduced to practice with an almost paint-by-numbers type of approach.

(01:47): If you asked someone for a definition of something like digital transformation, and by the time they're done giving you their definition, you can't practically boil that down to what it means for you, that's not a problem with you, that's a problem with the definition. A lot of times, people's definitions for terms like this are almost like deliberately vague, as a means of projecting power, as a means of actually controlling you. You'll get a lot of definitions that are engineered to sound smart, engineered to sound authoritative, but not engineered to provide anything resembling clarity. Because if you sound smart, and you sound authoritative but you leave your audience hungry, you create a feeling of dependency. Folks, I just think that's yucky. That's just gross.

(02:35): To show you what I mean, I just ran the Google search, "What does digital transformation mean?" The very top hit, enterprisersproject.com, defines digital transformation as "the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business resulting in fundamental changes to help businesses operate in how they deliver value to customers." Did that clear it up? Nope. Boiling that one down, it sounds a lot like you should use computers and use them to make changes. But it sounds smart, sounds authoritative.

(03:06): Here's the second result from our old favorite, McKinsey. McKinsey defines digital transformation as "the process of developing organizational and technology based capabilities that allow a company to continuously improve its customer experience and lower its unit costs, and over time sustain a competitive advantage." All right, so that one sounds like McKinsey is almost starting with that original definition and adding additional value to it. They're saying use computers to improve, and to make money, and to compete. If you have $1 million to spend, you can get advice like that.

(03:43): All right, with those two definitions, we don't even need an episode. We can just skip it? Because everyone knows exactly what they're talking about. These are the top two hits on Google, folks. Useless. Part of the reason these definitions are useless, again, is because they're designed to be useless. But I also think though, that a lot of times you hear definitions like this is because the people writing them actually cannot boil them down. By the time you come up with a truly useful definition, or a framework, or a guide for understanding a topic like this, it almost by its definition, it's not going to sound nearly as sexy, nearly as smart. It's going to sound relatively simple, mundane. But those are the valuable definitions, the ones that we can actually apply, that make a difference in how we actually view our own business.

(04:29): That's what we set out to do in this episode. I think we succeeded, came up with a very practical, applicable definition that you'll never find on McKinsey's website. Let's get into it.

Speaker 2 (04:42): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please?

Speaker 4 (04:46): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive Podcast, with your host, Rob Collie, and your cohost, Justin Mannhardt. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element.

Rob Collie (05:12): Justin, one of the things that we really like to do, I really like to do, I think you do as well, is to take a phrase or topic, and demystify it. Especially phrases that you hear repeated over, and over, and over again, and everyone has to pretend that they understand what they mean. But even when they do, they often have very different pictures in their heads.

(05:33): One that I think is due for a treatment, and we've hinted at it once before on this podcast but not with any depth, is digital transformation. What does it mean?

Justin Mannhardt (05:45): What does it mean, what does it not mean, all parts in between.

Rob Collie (05:50): Starting with the places where I hear it. I often hear it in the context of this is something that's already done. The big talking head analysts at places like Gartner-

Justin Mannhardt (06:00): Yeah.

Rob Collie (06:00): Will talk about it like it's in the rearview mirror. "The shift to digital, the pivot to digital has forced the following things," so has forced, it's a past tense thing. Which further underlines the idea that well, if it's already happened, clearly everyone knows what it means. They don't stop to define it, they're just tossing that aside as a means of getting to the next point. I find that to be one of the most troubling habits of the talking heads.

(06:28): The first few times I encountered this phrase, I didn't really know what it meant. I imagined that it meant switching to ecommerce from brick-and-mortar.

Justin Mannhardt (06:37): Yeah.

Rob Collie (06:37): I didn't even realize that that was the impression I had, it was just this vague feeling in the back of my head.

Justin Mannhardt (06:42): The word digital, I'm just thinking about this now because a lot of times, you'll look at one of these diagrams, it's like, "Your digital transformation wheel includes all these things." You'll see something like, "Move to the cloud." I'm like, "Okay, were the servers with the software, was that software analog or something?"

Rob Collie (06:59): Yeah, we've been digital for a long time, right?

Justin Mannhardt (07:01): Yeah.

Rob Collie (07:01): Most broadly defined, you could say that the digital transformation really got going with the adoption of the PC.

Justin Mannhardt (07:09): Right.

Rob Collie (07:10): That was when digital transformation started. In the sense that it started in the 1980s, maybe it is something worth talking about somewhat in the rearview mirror, but that's not what they mean. They don't mean the adoption of the PC.

Justin Mannhardt (07:23): No. But it's interesting, when you think about the timeline of technology evolution. People say, "Oh, you described it as past tense." Digital transformation has occurred in en masse in market. Now today, it's like AI is here, en masse in market. But the pace at which new things are coming out, what's really happening is just the long tail is longer back to where companies were at in this journey. It's not like the entire industrial complex has been collectively moving to the modern current state across the board. There's companies that are still running SQL 2000, that's their production world still. This isn't something that's happened.

Rob Collie (08:09): I think that the big talking head analysts often tend to really only talk about the most elite sub-strata of even their own clients. When they talk about this as something that's completely done, even most of Gartner's paying clients, I would suspect, aren't anywhere close to done. But we still haven't really started