What managers need to know about the essence of DX - Nikkei Top Leader OnlineSpecial
The “DX Report” published by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in 2018 drew attention to the issue called “the cliff of 2025,” but the “DX Report 2” says that many incorrect interpretations were made there. Now, three years after the release of the “DX Report,” what is DX that companies should be thinking about? What is the importance of DX for SMEs? We interviewed Mr. Takuya Watanabe, Director, Information Technology Utilization Promotion Division, Commerce and Information Policy Bureau, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
We warned that if we did not immediately start revamping our information systems by 2025 as one of the target years, we would incur a great deal of economic loss. However, it is true that many people have taken DX as a renewal of information systems because of the overemphasis on the problems caused by legacy systems. DX is, in the first place, a change in management itself. In other words, there must be a management vision and business strategy as a company based on the premise of digital technology. Therefore, the result is the renewal of information systems, but thinking about it from there is not the right order. Therefore, in the “DX Report 2,” we indicated that we need to start with a corporate culture that can quickly change the way the company is structured and quickly provide high-value products and services to customers when major social changes occur, such as the recent Corona disaster, for example.
- agility] to adapt quickly to big [Social Change
What is the background behind METI’s going this far to promote DX? When I look at the indexes published by international organizations on the degree of progress of digitalization in each country, Japan lags far behind other countries. I think Japan’s strength is that it has a strong frontline, but when it comes to the new phase of “digital,” this has become a hindrance. Japanese companies can probably produce better output than anyone else in terms of performing the tasks assigned to them, but DX will also destroy the business category that is their framework. [DX is a fusion of different fields and new ideas, so the more fluid the human resources are, the more advantageous it will be. On the other hand, this is one of the advantages of working in Japan, but digital technology has the destructive power to destroy all of these factors.
- Strength in the field makes it harder to break the framework.
- integration of different fields. - Integration of different disciplines
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