Digital organization: choose your tools!

To help you select your HR tools, we've created a simple, pragmatic cartography. To ensure that you find the tools that meet your needs, it has been designed from a usage point of view. It is aimed at both managers of small and medium-sized businesses and HR professionals in companies who want to combine people and technology, and be part of the companies of the future!

The crisis has accelerated digitalization Many of our companies are now practicing teleworking, using collaborative platforms or even training entirely online.

More than ever, this situation has created the need for our organizations to evolve. In this fast-changing context, digital transformation and human management are inextricably linked. What's more, the ability to make your organization evolve through men and women The success of every company's digital transformation depends on the people who make it up.

Faced with these challenges, the Agence du Numérique is making available a mapping of tools, platforms and services potentially useful for the digital evolution of organizations. Its aim is to help you, executives, managers and HR directors, select the tool(s) best suited to your company's needs, size and budget.

Every digitization project must be designed to support the company's overall strategy: it cannot be considered in isolation. In fact, under your leadership, the aim is to offer your teams the best possible conditions for contributing to the objectives you have set.

Consequently, the selection of digital tools and platforms is crucial. But it has to be admitted that this choice is often a complex one, as it requires you to take into consideration both your company's internal data (level of maturity of HR practices, employee profile, type of organization, available resources, etc.) and external data (market trends, number of potential partners, sector benchmark, etc.). It's precisely to help you see things more clearly that this mapping has been created.

Designed as a decision-making tool, this map is intended to help you identify the digital solutions best suited to your company's specific needs, from a non-exhaustive list.

As the tool is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, Agence du Numérique has classified them according to practices, whether they are planned or already in place within your company.

All the practices identified are structured into 4 main areas of activity:

• Manage administration and optimize compensation.
• Developing organization and teamwork.
• Supporting individuals in their development.
• Transforming working methods and environments.

These four areas cover almost a hundred practices, which are mandatory and carried out by all companies, such as the payment of salaries, but also improvement practices such as the strengthening of social ties or the assessment of employee well-being.

It's important to avoid the trap of "buying" a tool or platform simply because everyone else is doing it! It's essential to clearly define the business need you wish to meet. While certain challenges are common to all businesses, your organization also faces its own challenges. Given the scale and multiplication of needs and expectations, where do you start? How can you be sure you've understood the expectations? How do you choose the tool best suited to current and future needs? These are just some of the questions you need to ask yourself before getting started. To answer them, remember to ask your employees! At the heart of your company's operations, they'll help you to better understand the practices that could make their day-to-day work easier, and increase the company's efficiency.

Once your needs and expectations have been clearly identified, draw up an initial list of solutions based on at least the following criteria:

• Small or large organization. Is the pre-selected solution suitable for small, medium-sized or large companies? To those who argue that it's not the size that counts, we'd say that sometimes there are exceptions... Your company's growth dynamic certainly comes into play, too.
• Safety or Innovation. Is the pre-selected solution proven or emerging? If you're looking for security and stability, opt for a proven solution. If it's more secure, it's also often more expensive. If you want to distinguish yourself through innovation, and your culture blends well with disruptive tools, don't hesitate to opt for an emerging solution. In some cases, choosing the latter will enable you to limit expenses.
• Local or international. Is the pre-selected solution local or international? It's important to take into account your need for support in implementing the digital solution you're considering. If your teams have no experience in this field, it is preferable to choose a local solution, supported by a team capable of assisting you on a day-to-day basis. However, this should be tempered in the light of our recent experience: the virtual world has clearly demonstrated its ability to take over when it comes to remote collaboration. In addition, knowing or being able to quickly get in touch with your supplier's other "local" customers could be useful, notably by giving you leverage in negotiations.

When selecting your digital solutions, it's essential to put together a multi-disciplinary team, involving your partners (internal and/or external) and your various experts and/or departments: Operations, IT, Finance, Communications, Business, etc. It's clear that any digital transformation project can only be a success if it's carried out collectively, and by mobilizing a wide range of skills. Indeed, depending on each person's role within the organization, not everyone will be attentive to the same elements: business usefulness, technical feasibility or budgetary impact. These are all useful points of view to help you make the right choices.

If your team is small, don't hesitate to surround yourself with experts from other horizons, colleagues with experience in the field. Also, get in touch with companies using a solution that could potentially meet your needs... Are they satisfied? If so, why? What difficulties, if any, have they encountered and/or are they encountering? What factors influenced their choice?

Enough advice! Time for action... Go to organisationnumerique.be.

COVID's health context has led more than one company to turn to online collaboration tools. Before the crisis, 17% of all Walloon companies were already using collaborative tools such as Teams, Zoom, Slack,... During the containment, 24% of companies that remained in business said they used these tools systematically and 13% occasionally, i.e. 37% of companies. This rate rises to 57% in companies with more than 10 employees.

If you would like to find out more about the digital maturity of Walloon companies, consult the baromètre 2020.

Agence du Numérique has created a center of expertise dedicated to this theme: the "Humans and Society(s)" center.». It aims to mobilize organizations to develop an agile and responsible strategy to meet the human and organizational challenges of digital transformation.

Three tools are already available:

• DigiScore to assess your company's digital maturity
• Digital Skill Scan to test your digital skills
• Digital organization to choose your HR and management tools 

To find out all you need to know: get in touch with one of the experts atAgence du Numérique.