Re-Think Industry: Seminar on digital transformation in SMEs

“All the links in digital transformation must make a contribution and be proactive around transforming”. (Alberto Lorenzo Mitxelena, EUN chief executive)   

The Re-think Industry seminar on digitalisation in SMEs, a fundamental part of competitiveness for Guipuzcoa-based companies, was held on 31 March. The different conferences featured prestigious professionals from the world of business including Juan Antonio Zufiria, Senior Vice President Global Technology Services, IBM  and Julián Flórez, Director General of Vicomtech, in addition to different heads of small and medium-sized enterprises.   

EUN chief executive Alberto Lorenzo Mitxelena spoke about EUN’s track record and the change that digital transformation has entailed across our products, solutions and services, as well as within the company itself. We no longer make projects thinking only about the customer we will sell a product, solution or service to but reach further and provide solutions that satisfy the users who will live with the project (and its content) for the next ten, twenty or thirty years.   

Users are increasingly asking for software-based solutions and although we may occasionally wonder whether paper storage has had its day... we have found it is not disappearing but simply becoming a hybrid form of custody: physical paper and digital replica. And to deliver on new projects, we have not just overhauled our products, solutions and services but got the entire company behind an ongoing digital transformation of our processes and manufacturing, etc.    

At the opening of the event, Juan Antonio Zufiria gave a keynote speech on how to act with regards innovation “based on the equation between talent with creativity and business risk”, the ecosystem “that forms part of the company, since the company is not an isolated or closed element” and nor should it be, and the digitalisation of companies:   

“Digitalisation is no longer the key, it is the meeting point and a precondition. The gambit lies not in digitalisation, which is taken as read, but in the maturation of many technologies at once.”   

(Juan Antonio Zufiria)   

The event was brought to a close by Julián Flórez, who again stressed the importance of being intra- and extra-connected with the business environment: with different industries, different sized companies, different countries, etc.    

 “Digital transformation is nothing short of a cultural and organisational watershed that leverages digital skills to improve competitiveness,” he said. “The responsibility should not be left entirely up to computer technicians but must be led by management and owners, who have to see how and where they want to situate the business; and the driver will be all the people in the company”.     

(Julián Flórez)