Michael Ungar tells SMEs to skip the big AI and Industry 4.0 projects and instead break digital transformation into small, measurable steps that deliver quick wins. Involve staff from the start, build each initiative on the last, and pair technology change with people change to avoid massive failures.
when I was in the AI space with data analytics, everybody wanted big data and AI. And a lot of times, if you're going from an Excel spreadsheet, AI and big data isn't your next step, even though that's the sexy thing that everybody's talking about. Same thing with Industry 4.0 and digital transformation and digital twins. That is all really great stuff that they can work towards and big companies are investing in, right? But for the average small to medium-sized business, it just is so far out of reach that it can be hard to even think about. I've always looked at it like this: big transformation projects, take it one bite at a time and look at it so that every step of the way you can measure your success. You can get a small ROI so that you don't end up mired in a huge project that if it eventually fails, you got nowhere. You want to take a small step so that each step is actually building on itself. And you can have a measurable ROI and you can pivot quickly if that particular step didn't go so well. Technological change is also mostly about people changing. Yes. And you have to take that step by step. So whether it's automation, if you're running a fully manual shop, start with something semi-automated. Create a little jig for your operator for them to automate part of what they do to make their job more efficient and easier. Invest in small steps so that it's easy to justify that investment as you go. And then also get your people involved in every step and make sure that they know what is coming and how they're going to be a part of it.
