Lenovo Canada’s Colin McIsaac Talks About Digital Transformation From The Standpoint Of An Organization’s Culture

This is the third article in the Spotlight Series of posts by Canada’s top IT Executives who will be at what I consider to be a must-attend event, the Long View Systems’ #ActivateDigital2018 Conference on February 27th in Guelph, Ontario.

In today’s post, Lenovo Canada’s Managing Director Colin McIsaac talks about digital transformation from the standpoint of organizational culture.

With Lenovo, Digital Transformation Is As Much About Culture As It Is Technology

In a May 2017, Computer Dealer News article I talked about how the philosophy at Lenovo had changed, and that our focus isn’t only on selling hardware but building out our solutions to create value for our end users leveraging our channel partners.

The word “change” may be somewhat of a misnomer, in that it might suggest that it was a one-time event.  However, this was a continuation of the companies evolution which began when Lenovo acquired IBM’s PC Division in 2005.

Looking back, it is clear that 2005 was the beginning of a digital transformation for Lenovo. And it was through that transformation we recognized the importance of having a culture that embraces an IT evolution.  In other words, we had to look beyond the technology to ensure that the right people were in place to transform objectives into the initiatives that would lead to tangible outcomes.

Of course, when I talk about looking beyond the technology, I am not suggesting that it is not an important part of the digital transformation equation. It most certainly is, which is why we are continuously pushing our technology to the cloud’s edge. In this regard, Lenovo believes that a “sound” digital strategy should reflect the following three key objectives:

Enabling workers to be mobile and productive; workers need to be equipped for anywhere, anytime, anyway computing to maximize your digital transformation investments.

Streamlining internal operations;  to provide maximum system uptime, allow more IT flexibility, and enable better hardware utilization advanced technology solutions that are Agile and Customer-Centric must be better leveraged.

Ensuring seamless collaboration; giving local and remote workers ready access to the tools and technologies they need to do their jobs from start to finish through seamless collaboration is a crucial component of digital transformation.

In the end, harnessing the power and the promise of technology is about people as much as it is about hardware. And it is with our people and those with our channel partners I believe you will find both our greatest strength and your greatest return.

As a participant at Long View’s ActivateDigital2018 conference, we’re excited to be amongst a group of industry leaders. As one of our most valued channel partners, we look forward to joining Long View Systems in demonstrating how people as much as technology are the key drivers behind a successful digital transformation strategy.

You can follow this series as well as other stories relating to the conference on Twitter using the hashtags #ActivateDigital2018 and #TakeTheLongView

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