Digital Transformation Is Not Buying Everyone a Tablet
Mr Njoroge runs a distribution business in Industrial Area. After attending a breakfast seminar with the words "digital" and "future" in the title, he came back to the office inspired, called a supplier and ordered twenty tablets. They arrived in shiny boxes. There was a small ceremony. Someone took photos for the company WhatsApp group. Digital transformation, Kenyan style, had officially begun.
Six months later, I visited. The drivers still filled in paper delivery notes. The notes still went into a tray. Every Friday, Chebet in accounts still typed them into a spreadsheet while muttering things I will not repeat. And the tablets? Three were cracked, two were missing, and the rest were mainly used during lunch for football highlights. The company had bought devices. It had not transformed anything.
Digital transformation in Kenya is about how work flows
Digital transformation is a grand phrase for something quite simple: changing how work gets done so that it is faster, cheaper, more accurate or easier for customers. Technology is a tool for that change. It is not the change itself. Handing someone a tablet without changing their process just gives them a more expensive clipboard.
Mr Njoroge's real problem was not a lack of tablets. It was that information about deliveries travelled slowly and got retyped several times. Every retyping was a chance for a mistake and a few hours of Chebet's life she would never get back.
Start with the pain, not the gadget
Before buying anything, sit with the people who do the work and ask some boring but powerful questions.
Where do things get typed more than once?
Where do we wait for someone to physically sign or carry a paper?
Which questions do customers ask us repeatedly?
What do we only find out at month end that we wish we knew daily?
Which task does everyone dread, and why?
The answers will point you at the real opportunities. Often the first fix costs nothing: removing an unnecessary approval, merging two forms, or agreeing that a WhatsApp photo of a signed delivery note is acceptable while you build something better.
Fix the process before you automate it
There is an old saying in this business: automate a mess and you get a faster mess. If your leave approval needs four signatures because of a decision someone made in 2011, putting it into an app just means four digital signatures and the same delays, only now with notifications.
Draw the process on a whiteboard, sticky notes and all. Cross out the steps nobody can justify. Then decide what the simplified version should look like. Only after that should you ask what software, if any, will support it. Sometimes the answer is a proper system, such as HR and payroll software built for Kenya for leave and payslips. Sometimes it is a shared spreadsheet with clear rules. Both are valid if they solve the pain.
People are the hard part
Fatuma, who manages operations at a logistics firm, rolled out a simple digital job card system. The software was fine. The resistance was fierce. The senior drivers had done things on paper for twenty years and saw the change as a sign that management did not trust them.
What worked was not a memo. Fatuma picked two respected drivers, involved them in testing, fixed the things they complained about and let them teach the others. Within a month, the drivers were the ones complaining when the system was slow. That is when you know adoption has happened.
Involve the people who will use the system from the start
Train in small groups, in Swahili or English, whichever people prefer
Expect a slow first month and plan for it
Celebrate the first visible win, like faster payments or fewer lost documents
Keep the old method available briefly, then switch it off clearly
Measure whether anything actually changed
Pick one or two numbers before you start: how many days it takes to invoice after a delivery, how many errors finance catches each month, how long customers wait for a reply. Check them again after three months. If they have not improved, the project is not finished, no matter how modern the office looks.
As for the tablets, Mr Njoroge eventually found them a proper job. Once the delivery process was redesigned, the drivers used them to capture signatures and photos on the spot, and Chebet's Friday typing marathon disappeared. The tablets were never the problem. They were just early.
Your next step: book one hour with the people who actually do the work, grab a whiteboard and some sticky notes, and map one process from start to finish. You will spot the first easy win before the chai gets cold.