Digi­ti­sa­tion of Busi­ness – A Re­al­ity Check

On June 5th 2018, economiesu­isse and the Fed­er­a­tion of En­ter­prises in Bel­gium (FEB) or­gan­ised a con­fer­ence on the im­pact the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of busi­ness has on com­pa­nies, work­ing con­di­tions and the so­ci­ety at large. The con­fer­ence had been set up to com­mem­o­rate the 120th an­niver­sary of the Swiss Cham­ber of Com­merce in Bel­gium and the Grand Duchy of Lux­em­bourg. In pres­ence of the Swiss State Sec­re­tary for econ­omy, Marie-Gabrielle In­e­ichen-Fleisch, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of com­pa­nies from Switzer­land and Bel­gium deeply in­volved in the process of dig­i­ti­za­tion and so­cial part­ners guests had the op­por­tu­nity to ac­quire first-hand knowl­edge from ex­pert who are con­fronted with dig­i­ti­za­tion in their every­day work.

Dig­i­ti­za­tion – A re­al­ity in many com­pa­nies

Set up in three suc­ces­sive pan­els dif­fer­ent as­pects of the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion were dis­cussed. In the first panel com­pa­nies from var­i­ous sec­tors demon­strated with con­crete ex­am­ples how digi­ti­sa­tion is im­pact­ing their busi­ness model and the or­gan­i­sa­tional struc­ture. Rainer Müller, re­spon­si­ble for the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in TE Con­nec­tiv­ity, a man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pany from Schaffhausen pro­vid­ing con­nec­tiv­ity and sen­sor so­lu­tions world­wide, gave an in­side view of the stag­ger­ing tech­no­log­i­cal changes tak­ing place in their sec­tor. This has how­ever not de­creased the de­mand for qual­i­fied em­ploy­ees who cur­rently amount at 75’000 world­wide. Kelly Grif­fith, Head Ire­land and UK of Adecco Group X, the Group’s Dig­i­tal In­no­va­tion and in­cu­ba­tion busi­ness showed how dig­i­tal so­lu­tions can for in­stance help to se­cure so­cial se­cu­rity en­ti­tle­ments of em­ploy­ees work­ing in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Ac­cord­ing to Jorik Rom­bouts, founder and CEO of Rom­bit, an Antwerp-based IoT-com­pany, many com­pa­nies now are look­ing to in­ter­con­nect their for­mally closed dig­i­tal en­vi­ron­ment with the rest of the world in order to in­crease their pro­duc­tiv­ity and stream­line their processes. Dorothea Wies­mann, who is head­ing the de­part­ment for Cog­ni­tive Com­put­ing and In­dus­try So­lu­tions of the IBM Re­search cen­ter in Zurich showed how ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence is a game changer for deep search, show­ing trends, find­ing sci­ence gaps, etc. and ul­ti­mately is trans­form­ing the way we do re­search.

Dig­i­ti­za­tion and the im­pact on the labour mar­ket

The sec­ond panel started out with a pre­sen­ta­tion on a study made by economiesu­isse on the dy­nam­ics of the labour mar­ket in Switzer­land in 2015 (Digi­ti­sa­tion: a real threat to the fu­ture of jobs or just a dis­torted per­cep­tion?). The pre­sen­ta­tion trig­gered a lively dis­cus­sion be­tween the Eu­ro­pean So­cial part­ners. Peter Scher­rer, deputy sec­re­tary gen­eral of the Eu­ro­pean Trade Union Con­fed­er­a­tion showed us the pos­si­ble neg­a­tive im­pact au­tom­a­ti­za­tion can have on the labour force. Maxime Cerutti, di­rec­tor for so­cial af­fairs of Busi­nessEu­rope on the other hand gave the point of view of em­ploy­ers. As for­mer di­rec­tor gen­eral for em­ploy­ment, Michel Ser­voz, Se­nior Ad­viser of the Com­mis­sion for Ro­bot­ics, Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence and the Fu­ture of Eu­ro­pean Labour Law was well placed to con­tribute to the lively dis­cus­sion.

In her speech which ini­ti­ated the third panel, the Swiss Sec­re­tary of State rec­om­mended to re­frain from any state pol­icy for dig­i­ti­za­tion, but rather to set favourable frame­work con­di­tions for com­pa­nies to thrive. Her speech was fol­lowed by a panel dis­cus­sion be­tween pol­icy mak­ers from Bel­gium, the Eu­ro­pean Union and Switzer­land whom all pre­sented the dif­fer­ent ap­proaches of their gov­ern­ments to allow for a smooth tran­si­tion into this “new” dig­i­tal era for com­pa­nies and cit­i­zens.