Organizational Training within Digital Transformation:

The ToOW Model

Maria João Ferreira

1,4

, Fernando Moreira

1,2,3

and Isabel Seruca

1,4

Universidade Portucalense, DEGI, Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida, 541, Porto, Portugal

Portucalense Institute for Legal Research – IJP, Porto, Portugal

Universidade Aveiro, IEETA, Aveiro, Portugal

Centro Algoritmi, Universidade do Minho, Portugal

Keywords: Digital Transformation, Social Media Tools, Organizational Training.

Abstract: Information systems and technologies (IST) are the essence of up-to date organizations, and changes in this

field are occurring at an uncontrollable pace, interrupting traditional business models and forcing

organisations to implement new models of business. Social media tools represent a subset of these

technologies that contribute to digital transformation (DT) of organizations and which are already used within

organizational training contexts. However, the adoption of social media tools, by itself, does not guarantee

such a transformation; changes in the organization’s culture and behaviour are also needed. Taking advantage

of the DT technology enablers and realising the need for updated approaches to address organizational

workers’ training, we propose a model to guide organizational training within DT. The model, called Training

of Organizational Workers (ToOW), addresses the 2nd layer of the mobile Create, Share, Document and

Training (m_CSDT) framework formerly described. The advantages foreseen for the model usage are two-

fold. On the one hand, the model acknowledges the crucial role that an organization plays in promoting a

culture of continuous learning/training of its employees; on the other hand, the model provides guidance on

setting up the training strategies and activities, as well as on the monitoring of training results achieved, which

are measured according to the performance metrics considered within the organizational strategy.

1 INTRODUCTION

It is widely acknowledged that organizations have

suffered a large evolution at the social, economic and

technological levels where the traditional barriers of

transferring information and knowledge have been

progressively eliminated. This evolution allowed the

elimination of silos, the breaking down of hierarchies,

the connection of internal and external stakeholders

and the empowering of employees (Berkman, 2014).

In this context, the integration of technological

innovations, such as Big Data – Analytics, Cloud

Computing, Mobile Connectivity, and Social, the

four pillars of digital transformation (DT), in business

practice can enable significant competitive advantage

(Uhl and Gollenia, 2016).

According to Earley Information Science (2016)

DT is today a top priority for executives, being that

(1) 125000 enterprises expect revenue from their

digital initiatives to increase by 80% by 2020; (2) DT

initiatives will more than double by 2020, from 22%

to almost 50% and, (3) only 27% of businesses have

a coherent digital strategy for creating customer value

in place.

The main purpose of digital transformation is to

obtain benefits of digital technologies, such as

productivity improvements, cost reductions and

innovation (Hess et al., 2016). Nevertheless, as stated

in (Miller, 2016), for these results to be achieved, a

total organizational commitment is required.

To this extent, Hinchcliffe (2016) points out that

“…because digital itself is so intangible…. It’s often

even harder to understand the diverse needs,

perspectives, and skill gaps of the people that have to

change along with the technology”. Hence, it may be

assumed that continuous education/training is an

imperative in the organizational context.

Continuous education/training may be seen as the

process of identifying and implementing professional

skills, enabled by new scientific and technological

knowledge and implemented in an organisational

context, to address new professional needs.

526

Ferreira, M., Moreira, F. and Seruca, I.

Organizational Training within Digital Transformation: The ToOW Model.

DOI: 10.5220/0006366105260532

In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2017) - Volume 2, pages 526-532

ISBN: 978-989-758-248-6

Professionals need new life-long learning approaches

to assist them in keeping up with the rhythm of

technological change that requires a continuous

update of the learning contents, learning processes

and delivery approaches of developing training

(Kadiri et al., 2016).

The learning mechanisms require an immediate

update, putting people, particularly the organizational

workers, in the centre of the flow of knowledge and,

changing the traditional learning to experimental,

social and data-driven learning. This update will

allow new knowledge to be acquired more quickly

and to be more adapted to the Generation Y (those

born in 1980 or later) that constitutes 75% of the

world’s current labour force (Uhl and Gollenia,

2016).

Taking advantage of the DT technology enablers

and realising the need for updated approaches to

address organizational workers’ training, we propose

a model – Training of Organizational Workers

(ToOW) – for the 2

layer – of the mobile Create,

Share, Document and Training (m_CSDT)

framework formerly described in (Ferreira et al.,

2014; Ferreira et al., 2015).

The paper is structured as follows: Section 2

describes the new technology trends for organizations

while engaging in digital transformation. Section 3

provides a summary of the use of social media tools

by organizattions in several contexts and discusses

their particular use for organizational training

ativities. Section 4 presents our model contribution to

address the gaps identified, supporting the education

and training of organizational workers. Finally,

Section 5 concludes with a summary of our

achievements and directions for future work.

2 NEW TRENDS FOR

ORGANIZATIONS

2.1 Digital Transformation

The definition of digital transformation (DT) is not

consensual among the stakeholders involved in this

issue, particularly in organizations, leading to several

perspectives of what it really means. These

perspectives range from a focus on technology, to

digital customer engagement, to new digital business

models and so on. The lack of clarity often results in

piecemeal initiatives, missed opportunities and false

starts in the organization digitalization. According to

Solis (2017) DT may be defined as “the realignment

of, or new investment in, technology, business models,

and processes to drive new value for customers and

employees and more effectively compete in an ever-

changing digital economy”

Following this line of reasoning, from the

organizations’ point of view, DT can be seen as a

deep and accelerating transformation with regard to

processes, activities, competences and models, in

order to take advantage of the changes and

opportunities offered by the inclusion of digital

technologies into an organization.

On the other hand, Uhl and Gollenia (2016) enrich

the DT concept, arguing that the adoption of

technology-based change is focused on four

technology enablers: (1) cloud, (2) mobile, (3) social,

and (4) big data - analytics. Hence, DT draws on these

four pillars to place a business context over the

technologies, while taking advantage of them to

support innovation.

2.2 Big Data – Analytics

As discussed in (Chen et al., 2014), on the one hand

Big data is considered an abstract concept and, on the

other hand, the academic and industrial communities

have different views on the definition (Team O. R.,

2011; Laney, 2001). However, some definitions have

appeared over time, namely by Apache Hadoop,

IBM, McKinsey & Company and IDC. The first

definition was though introduced by Doug Laney

(2001), where he presents the 3Vs model (Volume –

great volume, Velocity – rapid generation, and

Variety – various modalities). In 2012 the 3Vs model

evolves to a 4Vs model with the inclusion of Value

(huge value but very low density).

Despite the added value that Big Data presents in

responding to new requests, some of the existing

challenges need to be addressed. In (Agrawal et al.

2012) eight challenges are presented. Within our

contribution, we place special emphasis on the

challenge identified by these authors as "Analytical

mechanism", since it will be tackled in the solution

proposed in Section 4.

2.3 Cloud Computing

The basic definition of cloud computing can be found

in (Armbrust et al. 2010) and is given as “Cloud

computing refers to both the applications delivered as

services over the Internet and the hardware and

systems software in the data centers that provide

those services. The services themselves have long

been referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS).

Some vendors use terms such as IaaS (Infrastructure

Organizational Training within Digital Transformation: The ToOW Model

527

as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) to

describe their products.”

This new paradigm is supported by a set of

vendors such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

Microsoft offers SaaS, PaaS and IaaS cloud packages

to end users (Amato et al., 2013). Some of the

significant benefits of cloud computing include

device and location independence, 24x7 support,

lower total cost of ownership (TCO), reliability,

scalability, sustainability, agile deployment, lower

capital expenditure and a single infrastructure to fulfil

all computing, networking and storage needs for

various applications.

2.4 Mobile Connectivity

Mobile devices and connections grew in 2013 to 7

billion, and will grow to 50 billion by 2020 (Reddi

and Zhu, 2017). Not only the devices are targeted by

this growth, but also the volume of mobile Web

traffic, which often exceeds the "traditional" Web

traffic.

This massive use of mobility devices through the

vast amount of applications and services is based on

Mobile computing. Mobile computing is defined in

(Bucki, 2016) as “a generic term used to refer to a

variety of devices that allow people to access data

and information from where ever they are. Sometimes

referred to as "human-computer interaction," mobile

computing transports data, voice and video over a

network via a mobile device.”

The growth of the mobile computing market

allows access to a wide range of technologies, and the

integration of a variety of environments, such as

cloud computing, social networks, big data

computing and big data analytics.

2.5 Social Business and Social Media

According to (Bharadwaj et al., 2013), digital

technologies are transforming the relations of the

digital structure, regarding the spaces of action of

customers and companies, due to social media and

social networks. The social business concept

encompasses two directions, the resolution of social

problems and, in a broader perspective, allowing a

transformation of organizations so as to turn them

more agile and more resilient.

Hence, Social Business may be regarded as a

popular tendency that is revolutionizing

organizational work and generating value for all of its

elements, i.e. employees, customers, partners and

suppliers. It means that all departments in an

organization integrate their social capabilities into

traditional business processes (Dorn el al., 2007) to

change the way of working in order to create value.

This view is reinforced by (Bharadwaj et al., 2013) as

they state that "digital business strategy is simply that

of organizational strategy formulated and executed

by leveraging digital resources to create differential

value.” These authors also defined three indicators to

assess this added value: “(1) going beyond the

traditional view; (2) going beyond systems and

technologies; and (3) explicitly linking digital

business strategy to creating differential business

value”.

3 SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS

3.1 The Use of Social Media Tools in

Organizations

There is a growing number of reports of use of social

media tools in organizations. In this section, we

provide only an example, but we can find out several

more (Hummer (Hansen and Sia, 2015), LEGO

(Sawy et al., 2016)) that are focused on the

companies’ digital transformation efforts.

Starbucks is a multinational company with more

than 20,000 stores worldwide, headquartered in

Seattle, USA. In 2009, Starbucks, after a poor

performance and share price value, which was cut in

half, focused its digital strategy to re-establish the

connection with its customers (Fitzgerald et al.,

2013). One of the first measures introduced was to

offer free Wi-Fi in all Starbucks stores, in addition to

free access to The Economist's magazine contents.

Furthermore, an important step in the undergone

digital transformation was to restructure teams to

collaborate from the start of projects. By that time, the

company was able to reduce 10 seconds in the

processing of each card transaction, reducing the total

service time by 900,000 hours, considering 3 million

mobile payments per week.

The use of social media tools, in addition to other

technologies, changed customer relationships,

operations, and the business model, leading to

increased customer relationships; as a result, the

Starbucks company shares value increased from $8 in

2009, to nearly $73 in July 2013.

Internal communication also benefited from this

strategy of use of social media tools; to that extent,

the company’s CIO remarked that “social business

tools and processes had transformed the company's

innovation culture, helping it develop products and

understand risks as rapidly as new markets

emerged.” (Fitzgerald et al., 2013).

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3.2 The Use of Social Media Tools in

Training

This section reviews some scenario attempts found in

the literature to use social media tools within a

training context.

Mamaqi (2015) argues that informal learning or

training can today be considered as one of the most

viable ways for companies to have better-qualified

employees. This author shows that organizations are

increasingly using social media tools for

collaborative learning through informal learning or

workplace training.

To better understand this reality a study was

conducted where the efficiency that the different

modes of training (classroom, social media tools and

traditional training in the workplace) may have in the

performance of the organization was analyzed. The

results of the study showed that there are differences

in training according to job categories; however,

evidence was found that the use of the three training

modes is associated with increased performance.

The international Intensive Programme

Empowering Learning environments in nursing

education (EleneIP) was created by Finland together

with partners from Cyprus, Lithuania and Spain

(Salminen et al., 2016). The goal of EleneIP was to

provide a platform for the use of social media tools in

nursing education, to provide a collaborative learning

environment and to increase technological literacy

among teachers in order to adjust their pedagogical

approaches to new types of apprentices.

Manca and Ranieri (2016) conducted a study

aimed to find empirical evidence on how higher

education teachers are using social media tools for

personal, educational and professional purposes. The

results have shown that the use of these tools is still

rather limited and restricted, and issues like age and

antiquity seem to influence the adoption of these

tools.

4 TRAINING OF

ORGANIZATIONAL WORKERS

DT in organizations is already a reality that needs to

be implemented and in some cases. Acknowledging

this context, the m_CSDT framework was formerly

proposed in Ferreira et al., (2015); the framework will

serve as a basis for the model proposal presented in

this paper. In the following sub-sections, the ToOW

model will be described as well as a model usage

scenario, addressing the 2

layer of the m_CSDT

framework.

4.1 The Rationale for the Model

Proposal

As discussed in the previous sections, the need for

digital transformation of organizations, and

consequently, in light of this paradigm, the need to

introduce changes in the conduction of business and

training of employees, are now recognized within the

scientific community and by organizations. However,

new approaches to address this paradigm are needed,

so that guidance may be provided for their

implementation within an organization.

Figure 1: 2

layer – ToOW – of the m_CSDT framework.

Organizational Training within Digital Transformation: The ToOW Model

529

Hence, a new contribution is hereby presented,

originating from the work reported in (Ferreira et al.,

2015). The former approach was focused only on the

changes introduced by social business, supported by

social media tools. However, DT, as discussed earlier,

is based on its four pillars discussed in section 2.

Thus, to address this objective – taking into

account these four pillars and not just one – the former

approach was extended; it consists of a three-tier

framework (m_CSDT), covering: (i) the creation,

sharing and documentation of information and

knowledge in and out of an organization; (ii) training

of organizational workers, and (iii) promotion of ad-

hoc discussion.

As shown in Figure 1, it is possible to consider a

generic approach for the implementation of DT,

based on the four technology enablers mentioned as

well as in the Agility and Collective Intelligence

dimensions. Furthermore, emphasis is placed on the

production of value for the organizational ecosystem.

The ToOW addresses the 2

layer of the

framework, and is presented in Figure 2 as a cyclic

sequence of stages, aiming to use the four pillars of

DT in the definition of training strategies for the

organizational workers, aligned with the

organizational strategy.

Figure 2: The ToOW model.

As depicted in Figure 2, the ToOW model is

designed to train organizational workers supported by

social media tools (3) (see section 3). The training

strategies of the organization (2) are aligned with the

organizational strategy (1) and analytical tools are

used to evaluate the employees training, on the basis

of their performance, according to the defined

organizational strategy (4).

In order to enable a more flexible training scheme,

the model also considers training actions proposed by

employees; however, training attendance will always

be compulsory according to the defined training

strategies (2). The definition / adjustment of the

training strategies (2) should be made in a periodical

basis, so as to pace with the evolution / needs of the

organization.

Regarding the use of social media tools, the model

considers a complete set of tools to be used within the

training activities, which can be used inside and

outside the organization, that is, in different learning

contexts. The model is designed in such a way as to

enable training in the classroom, at distance or in

workplace context, in a formal or informal way. In the

case of informal training there will always be, as

shown in Figure 1, an Observer / Facilitator, who will

have a role of moderator on the ongoing training.

As cloud is one of the pillars of DT and social is

one of the others, the use of social media tools located

in the cloud, will allow to consider the ToOW

approach as collaborative learning, as it enables

internal training (Figure 1 – Employees) as well as

external training (Figure 1 – Nomadic employees),

enabling the interaction and collaboration among the

participants and, thus, the sharing of information

and/or knowledge.

All the training sessions carried out have to be

evaluated so that it can be understood if the

investment made in training employees meet the

needs of the organization and the impact it may have

on organizational processes’ improvement. Hence,

analytics tools – one of the pillars of DT – will be

used to monitor and compare training results with the

defined metrics goals to improve organizational

processes.

The absence of a training culture embedded in the

organization's ecosystem may lead to the failure of

training strategies set for the employees and for the

organization in general. In order to avoid this failure

scenario, the model hereby proposed aims to promote

the development of a culture of lifelong training,

adding value to organizational development and

being central to achieve the objectives defined in the

alignment of the organizational strategy with the

organization training needs.

4.2 A Scenario for the Model Usage

In this section, we outline an application scenario for

a training plan that uses the ToOW model proposed

in this paper. The scenario targets a real estate agency

which seeks to be more agile in its interactions with

customers and sellers, in order to better promote its

properties, while enhancing its selling staff training

ICEIS 2017 - 19th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

530

procedures and staff performance assessment system

(Stage 1, Figure 2).

The corporate website is the main institutional

platform of communication of the agency with its

customers, by advertising the properties offered and

providing further sellers contact information; it is also

from the website that it is possible to access social

media platforms, newsletters and blogs. For internal

communication and training purposes, the agency sets

up an intranet based on cloud computing technology

(e.g. DropBox; Google Drive) for training of its

selling staff (Stage 2, Figure 2). In the intranet, there

is a folder for each property with the property full

description and promotion images, and a video for

guiding the seller with the highlights that should be

focused on the property visits’ with the potential

customers. Virtual reality and/or augmented reality

applications may also be considered for that purpose.

The entire promotion plan for the property

(advertisement in the corporate newsletter, web site

promotion, social media campaigns, special events,

etc.) is also available so that the seller is aware of the

agency sales and marketing strategy regarding that

property; hence, the seller can record what was the

trigger of contact of a customer with the agency

regarding a given property. This folder is shared by

all the sellers in charge of the property’s promotion.

After each property visit or customer interaction, the

seller uses his/her mobile device to fill a spreadsheet

record with the main features of the visit/interaction

and results achieved, which may also involve

updating the property status. After each visit, the

customer is invited to fill an online questionnaire so

as to assess his/her satisfaction on the service level

provided by the seller and agency. The results of all

the questionnaires filled regarding a property are

saved into a spreadsheet available in the property

folder.

There is also an institutional blog for the real

estate agency (accessed from the corporate website)

where customers may establish a chat conversation

with the sellers and post comments and questions

about the property as a result of the contacts or visit

they did or even discuss further meetings (Stage 3,

Figure 2).

As the history of all the interactions and

engagements of the seller with customers about a

property is stored, loading a datawarehouse of sellers-

customers interactions, analytic tools may easily be

used to monitor the KPI’s set by the real estate agency

regarding the performance of the seller (Stage 4,

Figure 2). Hence, KPI’s like the number of property

visits promoted, the visits conversion rate, sales

growth, blog engagement, top sellers in sales revenue,

website traffic lead ratio, newsletter signup

conversion rate, customer satisfaction, customer

retention may be measured and contribute to the

seller’s assessment. Depending on the organizational

strategy, some of the KPI’s related with the sellers

performance may be shared among the sellers team,

so as to improve the collective intelligence, generate

useful sales and marketing insights and stimulate

organizational goals achievement. If the assessment

results of sellers are not satisfactory, the reasons may

be analysed and the alignment of organizational

strategy with the training needs may be resettled,

generating a new cycle of application of the ToOW

model.

5 CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER

WORK

DT is currently one of the major challenges faced by

organizations and involves a set of highly complex

activities. Within these activities, organization

workers’ learning/training plays a fundamental role

and requires particular attention.

Learning/training of organizational workers

involve restrictions and requirements which were not

considered in formal higher education study

programmes, as training is now targeted to “students”

who have already entered their working life. These

requirements include time expenditures and facilities

costs for the learning/training process. Additionally,

the starting point and expected outcomes of the

learning/training process can differ significantly.

While these new training processes do not fit

within formal education, they can benefit from the

opportunities offered by informal processes of

learning. Acknowledging this new context of

learning/training, the m_CSDT framework referred in

this paper aims to contribute for the implementation

of DT in an organization.

Taking advantage of the DT technology enablers

and realising the need for updated approaches to

address organizational workers’ training, we

extended the m_CSDT framework and proposed the

ToOW model to address the 2

layer of the

framework.

The advantages foreseen for the model usage are

two-fold. On the one hand, the model acknowledges

the crucial role that an organization plays in

promoting a culture of continuous learning/training of

its employees; on the other hand, the model provides

guidance on setting up the training strategies and

activities, as well as on the monitoring of training

Organizational Training within Digital Transformation: The ToOW Model

531

results achieved, which are measured according to the

performance metrics considered within the

organizational strategy.

Future work will include the testing of this model

within a business environment, based on the

experiences obtained with pilot tests performed under

an academic context.

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