Talent - Key to Accelerate Digital Transformation: Telia

Almost half of all industry managers surveyed for a new report by Telia, Ericsson and Arthur D. Little points to access to the right talent as key to accelerating the digital transformation of three of Sweden’s leading export industries, manufacturing, forestry and mining.

Making digital transformation a strategic priority, accessing the right talent and putting people at the center of your digitalization strategy as well as daring to invest in emerging digital technologies and building a future-proof digital infrastructure, are some of the important success factors identified in the study.

“Going digital is critical to keep both Sweden and our leading export companies globally competitive. The positive news out of this report is that most companies understand this, and the industry seems to be on the threshold of scaling its digital transformation. However, there are still real challenges to get more projects out of the pilot stage into the deployment phase”, says Magnus Leonhardt, Head of Innovation and Strategy, for Telia’s Enterprise Business Unit in Sweden.

Highlights from the report:

Research by Arthur D. Little shows that early adopters of digital technology can have an EBIT advantage of 46% over followers while also gaining in efficiency, market share, price leadership and customer loyalty.

3 out 4 of the industry professionals surveyed for this report state that digital transformation is of high importance to their company’s strategic agenda.

Many companies are struggling to fully implement digital technologies, with more than 50% of such initiatives still in the planning and pilot stages

Accessing digital competence is both a success factor and a challenge to scaling up digitalization. 44% of industry managers says obtaining the right digital competencies are key to the digital transformation of their companies.

50% of the respondents consider connectivity a limiting factor, making next-generation, high-performance connectivity solutions another essential element to accelerate implementation of new digital solutions.

The digital divide: Managers at larger companies in general consider digital transformation more strategically important than managers at smaller one. The report also indicates that smaller companies are on average in earlier stages of implementation of their digitalization initiatives than larger companies.

Most popular digital initiatives in each industry:

In manufacturing: Automation and performance monitoring are the most common types of digital solutions, with over 60% of companies either having implemented them or planning to do so. Examples: Automated robots and sensors for quality monitoring.

In mining: Automation and digital operations are the most common types of emerging digital technologies in the industry, with two out of three companies either having implemented them or planning to do so. Examples: Automated vehicles and remote operations of machines.

In forest: Digital operations, like remote asset management and monitoring, is the most common type of use case of emerging digital technologies in forestry, with 70% reporting that they have implemented them or are planning to do so. Examples: Using drones to monitor and analyze forests.

The manufacturing, mining and forestry industries are critical to the Swedish economy. These sectors together employ over 620,000 people in Sweden, contribute SEK 650 billion to the economy and account for around two thirds of Sweden’s exports by value.