UCL School of Management

18 November 2021

Making digital transformation sustainable

Business person touching global network and data exchanges over the world

Digital transformation is essential to remain competitive and relevant in today’s fast-paced business environment, but do the digital technologies required impact climate change? Speaking with Raconteur, Paolo Taticchi shares his insights from a recent consulting project with pharmaceutical company, Consilient Health.

As an expert in sustainability and strategy, Paolo believes that innovation and sustainability go hand-in-hand and are a key tool for organisations to reduce spending, yield better results and remain competitive. Consulting on a digital transformation project with Consilient Health, Paolo proves that digital transformation supports sustainability efforts. Consilient Health’s aim was to secure important partnerships with major manufacturers and customers in the pharma industry and retain its relationship with the NHS, with a new corportate sustainability strategy. 

Paolo says: “The sustainability objectives have become a true source of innovation in the context of the digital transformation agenda.”

Whilst working with Consilient Health Paolo said, it was evident that digital transformation projects, which could provide real-time information and metrics as well as a medium to be open and transparent with internal and external stakeholders, would be essential in successfully implementing a sustainability strategy. The company experimented with various digital transformation projects, including distributed ledger technology in the management of supply chains and the implementation of a new ERP system.

Paolo warns sustainable digital transformation is not an easy task and establishing as governance structure that is embedded throughout the organisation is fundamental to the success. As in Consilient Health’s case, the implementation of a sustainability strategy required changes in systems and processes across the organisation. This changed the ways people work and therefore required buy-in and support for internal and external stakeholders.

When speaking about the process with Consilient Health, Paolo advises “The process wasn’t easy, as the digital transformation and sustainability agenda pushed the organisation to a major change in the way of working…A clear business case for all initiatives was defined in order to engage the board and senior management team. The CEO acted as champion of both initiatives.” 

Read the full article on Raconteur’s website.

Last updated Tuesday, 23 November 2021