Digital Transformation 101: Using Smart Radios to Optimize your Frontline

Digital transformation looks and sounds different depending on who you ask, but one thing is for certain: industry has been slow to adopt it. However, a recent study by McKinsey and Company shows a 400% increased likelihood of exceeding business expectations when digital transformation solutions are implemented organization-wide. But, since you’ll get a different explanation of what digital transformation is with every person you ask, how does weavix™ work for any workplace?

As the world’s first Internet of Workers (IoW) platform, weavix™ optimizes your facility by narrowing our focus on one thing every business has in common: the human workforce.

At first, it’s easy to denounce digital transformation initiatives and the process of implementing them as expensive, complex and time-consuming. But that’s not always the case. While it’s an umbrella term for many digital initiatives throughout industry, weavix™ uses digital transformation to essentially lay the groundwork for your entire organization to evaluate and improve frontline processes, maximize productivity and maintain your competitive advantage through digital solutions. 

Before you start to pursue digital transformation for your organization, there are a few questions to answer first. What goals do you want to accomplish? Are there any obstacles that could impede a successful digital transformation effort? Why is it important? Will the effort be worth it in the end? Most importantly, what is digital transformation? In this blog, we’ll give an introduction to the ever-expanding world of digital transformation and what weavix™ can do to optimize your frontline.

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is implementing digital solutions, including both hardware and software, to improve business functions and processes. For some organizations, these changes can help better meet the needs of your customers, but weavix™ excels in internal digital transformation: making the best solutions possible to benefit your frontline which then benefits your enterprise, your competitive edge and your bottom line.

Our IoW platform helps improve your business processes out in the field through unlimited digital communication capabilities for both your deskless and deskbound workers. Together, they can work as a seamless workforce, allowing your field crews to act faster, leaner and more agile with the added support of the office.

Why is Digital Transformation Important?

At its core, digital transformation is all about improving your entire organization, not just bits and pieces of it. Enterprises have adopted digital transformation solutions for various issues within their facilities. From streamlining operations to fixing bottlenecks to building new, more efficient processes, technology has supported organizations in creating solutions for years. Whatever your business goals are, your frontline and digital transformation are equally part of the solution.

Goal: Creating a Safer Work Environment for my Frontline

Due to the nature of the work, production methods and the mechanisms used, industrial facilities are oftentimes more dangerous than other workplaces. While necessary safety precautions are in place to mitigate as many safety concerns as possible, safety for the frontline is still a major concern that digital transformation helps alleviate.

weavix™ gives every worker a smart radio to communicate and connect with the entire workforce at any time from anywhere in the facility. Workers can now, with the ability to communicate freely with their fellow crew members, better enforce existing safety measures, respond faster when an accident occurs and identify areas or practices needing improvement.

Without digital transformation, identifying areas of concern to improve safety in your daily operations would not have the additional support technology provides and, instead, would rely fully on manual processes.

The daily operations in an industrial facility are only one part of the necessary safety practices in an industrial facility. Fires, severe weather, active threats and other unsafe working conditions can happen quickly. Traditionally, emergency mass notifications have relied on using sirens and intercoms to make workers aware. While there are many issues with this tactic, one is that digital transformation and innovation haven’t been applied.

Instead, weavix™ implements an emergency mass notification system that’s targeted, informative, specific and guaranteed to reach your workers. This is digital transformation at work on the frontline, improving the welfare of your workforce during an emergency and in their day-to-day.

Goal: Enhancing Productivity and Teamwork for my Field Crews

As we said, digital transformation is all about making improvements to your business operations and processes. Internally, these improvements oftentimes lead to higher rates of productivity and teamwork with your crews, especially on the frontline.

Leading in industrial communication, weavix™ connects your workforce, whether they work in the office, the frontline or fall somewhere in between. Through the IoW platform, your field workers are no longer left out of the conversations; they are just as accessible, engaged and communicative as if they were in the office or the same room. For productivity, this allows your frontline to get informed and change direction faster when needed, all while consistently knowing what priority is and hitting their deadlines.

Through communication, your crews’ collaborative abilities are also enhanced, creating a more efficient team on your frontline. Historically, radios have only been given to select teams or crew members, and not to everyone on the frontline, drastically restricting your crews’ ability to work as a team. weavix™ makes digital communication accessible for every worker with our walt™ smart radio, regardless of their team, superiority level or role, to create one united, efficient workforce.

Goal: Lowering Costs while Maintaining Profitability

Labor costs are a business’ highest expense. With digital transformation, however, you can curb these without settling for solutions that aren’t improving your facility. No, we aren’t talking about reducing your workforce and expecting them to do more with less, but using smart systems and tools to identify and fix major inefficiencies that end up costing you money in the long run.

According to the SAP Center for Business Insights, companies that undergo digital transformation improve both their efficiency and profitability. weavix™ optimizes your workforce and our platform is designed for them; we transform your human workers into a cost-saving cornerstone to your facility’s operation. In an industrial facility, we believe your workers are best adept at identifying inefficiencies in your manual procedures because they experience them daily. Our platform isn’t designed to replace your human workers, it’s designed to support and empower them without growing your bottom line.

How do the Internet of Workers and Digital Transformation Work Together?

Traditionally, the Internet of Things (IoT) and digital transformation have worked together: an organization identifies what new technical solutions are needed, IoT designs, develops and manufactures the “things” and then they get implemented through the process of digital transformation. however, the human workforce is still necessary to operate, maintain and update the innovations brought to life through IoT, but they oftentimes get neglected. What does the Internet of Workers put at the center of our innovations? The human workforce.

IoW puts innovation that digital transformation offers to the frontline. What’s best to optimize your field crews to perform at maximum efficiency is typically the best solution for your whole facility. IoT lives within our IoW platform with its principles regarding the development of innovative solutions, but we keep it within the lens of the frontline. This not only guarantees that all innovations are worker-focused, but also applies to every worker, not just ones in certain business sectors or positions.

Where IoT fails in its delivery of new systems and solutions for the frontline, weavix™ picks up the slack. After deploying walt™ smart radios to every worker, digital transformation starts to take shape throughout the rest of your facility, outside of the frontlines. Processes can then be streamlined; issues can start getting identified and then resolved; and higher efficiency can begin taking hold of your facility. Digital transformation with weavix™ starts at the frontline with a device, and then our IoW platform starts benefitting every worker.

Getting started with digital transformation can seem like a big undertaking, but weavix™ is your easy, cost-effective solution. With a focus on the frontline, we can help your organization overcome obstacles and accomplish your goals, whether they’re focused on procedural, financial or productive improvements. Speak with a weavix™ specialist today to get started.