It seemed natural that one of the key themes at the sixth annual Digital Transformation Summit – DIGIT’s second physical event since the pandemic – would be the importance of collaboration.

People from across Scotland and beyond, representing the tech industry, came together to share insights, network, and to discuss the latest trends in digital transformation. The consensus was that collaboration is the key to unlocking the potential of data and digitisation.

Many of the challenges organisations face are common, regardless of industry or sector. The main difference is often just scale. This means that solutions developed by one group can translate to another, so long as there are platforms to share insights.

We’ve seen the power that digital technology has in bringing us together across the pandemic. From video conferencing services like Zoom and Teams, which almost became household names overnight, to the myriad of productivity and coordination products like Trello and Asana, tech hasn’t just kept us working, but kept us working together.

With data forming the foundation of digitisation, being able to access data is another example of the importance of collaboration. Over the last few years, the Cloud has been a clear enabler here as it becomes cheaper and scalable.

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By breaking down traditional siloes, the Cloud has democratised data, allowing everyone in an organisation to work from the same sources.

Even movements like low coding have created citizen developers, moving away from expertise and specialism, with digital platforms being leveraged to share their creations to other non-programmers, helping innovative solutions propagate through the ecosystem.

Furthermore, the advantage of digital spaces is that they provide spaces for experimentation. Working together helps people act more creatively, taking new ideas and developing them together. Furthermore, digital environments provide safe spaces for failure, reducing losses to organisations.

This is particularly important for SMEs. When time and resources are limited, failure is not an option, limiting the scope for experimentation.