MISTRA DIGITAL FOREST 2019 1
MISTRADIGITALFOREST Increase knowledge to find ne
w business and new strategies – training is an important step for the management team at Holmen Skog Today, many companies are taking a huge step forward in a digital transformation that will affect working practices, business transactions, and organisational culture alike. Holmen Skog strongly prioritises finding the right digital strategy for the future. The entire management team is currently being trained, in a venture developed by the Swedish Center for Digital Innovation (SCDI), at Umeå University. – We have seen that there are different levels of digital transformation. It is not easy to understand the implications for our industry. We used to think that it was all about technology and software, but now we realise that we need to understand the area more broadly, and more deeply, at a strategic level, says Lisa Nilsson, IT Manager at Holmen Skog, a business unit within the Holmen Group. The training is a proactive initiative where ten people within the management team earmarked their time, in order to increase their knowledge. Lectures are interspersed with workshop sessions, where current issues are incorporated into the theory being presented. – It is important to understand what this can do for our business. Partly this is understanding the ecosystem of data within which the company operates, and the opportunities that exist for creating even higher values, through co-operation. We often want to do most things ourselves, but in this case, perhaps we need to get used to the idea of collaborating with other stakeholders. Then a strategy is needed so that long term data management is carried out well, says Lisa Nilsson. Training is part of Holmen’s involvement in Mistra Digital Forest, and it is one concrete result of the interview study conducted by SCDI, which shows that knowledge about digitalisation needs to increase within the forest companies. – Our role is to describe what we see in the research, and based on that to assist the management team in their work of formulating a digital strategy. It is also about promoting digital logic - all of a sudden, different things than before are being seen as resources in the companies. This requires mental restructuring, and that is a process that takes time. This is why the entire management team being involved and committed is so good, says Lars Öbrand, Senior Lecturer of Informatics at Umeå University, who runs the training days. LISA NILSSON 5 Photo: Johan Olsson