Throughout my work designing and implementing management systems, I have personally developed, documented and implemented many effective operating procedures using conventional approaches.
These procedures were formally issued, supported by training and systematically put into practice. Those carrying out the work understood their roles; managers knew when to intervene, which issues needed to be escalated, which cases required corrective action, what data needed to be consolidated and when an issue could genuinely be considered closed.
In other words, these procedures were being implemented and operating smoothly in practice. Yet when those same procedures were moved into a digital environment, particularly in ERP projects, a significant gap began to emerge:
A process may work very effectively in practice, but becoming a digital process still requires it to be translated and refined at a deeper level—from processing logic, data and statuses to its connections with other processes.
The challenge, then, is no longer simply to “put procedures into software”. It becomes a question of digital operating architecture: how can what people previously understood, remembered, judged and connected be translated into logic that a system can recognise, process and coordinate consistently?
In conventional systems, part of the operating logic resides in people
Let us begin with a fairly typical situation.
An inspection identifies an issue. The person conducting it records the findings; simple deviations can be addressed immediately, while unusual, serious or recurring cases move on to investigation, nonconformity management or corrective and preventive action (CAPA).
In a conventional operating environment, this often happens quite naturally.
An experienced manager can quickly determine:
How serious the finding is;
Whether its cause needs to be investigated;
Whether the issue relates to something that has happened before;
When CAPA needs to be initiated;
Which unit is responsible for addressing it;
Which records need to be referenced or linked;
At what point the issue can genuinely be considered closed.
Not all of these decisions need to be described as detailed, step-by-step instructions in a standard operating procedure (SOP).
In practice, a substantial part of the operating logic is carried out through the experience, judgement, contextual understanding and ability to connect the wider picture of the person managing the system.
That is why a requirement such as “Unusual findings or nonconformities shall be referred to the appropriate handling process” may be sufficiently clear for a competent professional to understand and act on correctly. In a digital environment, however, the word “appropriate” becomes an entirely different challenge.
Software cannot understand “appropriate” unless the underlying logic is defined
A digital system cannot rely on experience or tacit understanding. To recognise, process and coordinate work, the logic that previously resided in people must be translated into explicit conditions.
For example:
If a finding concerns both food safety and equipment, should the system create one record, multiple records, or simply establish the relevant links?
If an open CAPA already exists for the same issue or cause, should the system link to the existing record or initiate a new CAPA?
Which data should be carried over from the source record, and which must be added?
How does the output of process A become an input to, or a trigger for, process B?
When process B is completed, does the status of A need to be updated automatically?
If a corrective action is assessed as ineffective, should the system reopen the original record, start another cycle of action, or initiate a new case?
An experienced manager may previously have dealt with questions like these almost instinctively. When processes are digitalised, however, they must be identified, standardised and translated into specific business rules, statuses, trigger conditions and linking mechanisms.
A relatively simple sentence in an SOP can therefore translate into dozens of processing rules within a system. What needs to be digitalised is not only the steps of a process, but also the logic and relationships that people have quietly been managing in the spaces between those steps.
This is precisely why a process that works very effectively in practice may still need to be translated and refined at a deeper level before it can become a digital process.
And when multiple processes move into a digital environment, the challenge goes further: each process must not only work correctly in its own right; the processes must also be designed to connect correctly within a shared architecture.
The difference between management software and a digital governance system
Today, digitalising individual functions or processes is no longer particularly difficult. The market offers many relatively comprehensive solutions for areas such as HRM, CRM, WMS, DMS, LMS, accounting, payment management, task management and document management. Organisations can select a suitable platform, configure workflows, set up permissions and approvals, store records, track statuses and generate reports with relative ease. At the level of an individual department or business function, these solutions may work very well indeed.
Problems begin to emerge when an organisation seeks digital governance across the enterprise, while each software application has been developed or selected as a standalone solution, rather than being considered from the outset as one component of an overall digital operating architecture.
It is important to recognise that a digital system is not created simply by placing multiple software applications side by side. Its value lies in how those components are designed to connect, share or exchange data according to a coherent logic, creating an end-to-end flow of information that supports operations and governance. If these connections are not considered from the outset, each application may still perform very well within its own scope, while fragmentation across the organisation continues to grow.
That is the dividing line between management software and a digital system.
Software helps a task or a process to be managed more effectively.
A digital system enables multiple processes to connect, exchange data and coordinate with one another as components of a shared operating mechanism.
And if those components are not designed to work together from the outset, an organisation may digitalise a great many activities without ever establishing a true digital governance system.
Do not just digitalise processes. Digitalise the flow of work.
When moving from a management system to a digital governance system, the question should go beyond “What steps does this process contain?” to ask: “What triggers this process, what data does it receive, what outputs does it produce, and how will those outputs be used further downstream in the system?”
Viewed this way, a process is no longer an isolated sequence of steps. It is a link in the organisation’s overall flow of operations.
One useful approach to designing a digital process is to examine it through six layers: Trigger → Input → Process Logic → Decision → Output → Connection.
Of these, Connection is often the most easily overlooked. A process may be very well designed in isolation, yet the system as a whole may still perform poorly if its outputs are not structured to serve as suitable inputs for the next process.
The value of digitalisation therefore lies not in giving every process its own workflow, but in maintaining continuity of data, responsibility and status as work moves across different processes.
This requires the connection points to be clearly designed:
Which outputs become inputs;
Which data are carried over;
Which events trigger the next step;
At what point responsibility is transferred;
Which statuses need to be communicated back to the source record;
Which points should be automated, and which still require human judgement.
When these elements are designed within a consistent architecture, processes no longer merely sit alongside one another on the same platform. They begin to operate as components of a unified system.
Do not begin by digitalising processes one by one. Begin by understanding how work flows through the system. In practice, the boundaries of work rarely align perfectly with the boundaries of a single process. It is this end-to-end flow that needs to be designed into the architecture if an organisation is to move from digitalising tasks to genuine digital governance.
Standardise to digitalise, and digitalise to keep improving
A common view is: “Processes must be standardised before they are digitalised.” This is true. A process with unclear responsibilities, processing logic, inputs and outputs, or control points will be difficult to implement effectively in a digital system.
But that is only one direction of the relationship. In the other direction, the act of digitalisation itself forces an organisation to examine its processes in greater detail and with greater structure. What could previously be handled through experience, habit or tacit coordination between people must be made explicit as data, statuses, business rules, trigger conditions and connection points.
Through this exercise, organisations often discover:
Which steps still genuinely add value;
Which data are being entered repeatedly;
Which approvals can be streamlined;
Which handover points remain unclear;
Which information can be carried over instead of re-entered;
Which processes need to be redesigned to connect more effectively with the wider system.
Standardisation and digitalisation should therefore not be viewed as two separate stages in a one-way, linear sequence.
Well-standardised processes provide the foundation for digitalisation; digitalisation carried out with rigour, in turn, creates opportunities for an organisation to continue refining, simplifying and improving its own operating processes.
This is also why a process that already works effectively in practice may still need to be adapted when it moves into a digital environment.
What lies at the heart of digital transformation
If the most capable manager of a process were no longer there tomorrow, would the organisation’s system still know:
Which workflow an issue should follow, which data it should connect to, who is responsible, when the next step is triggered, and at what point it can genuinely be considered closed?
If the answer is not yet, the organisation may have digitalised its tasks without truly digitalising its operating system. The deepest value of digital transformation lies not in moving work into software, but in translating the logic, relationships and coordination mechanisms that have depended on people into an architecture that can operate consistently, transparently and sustainably.
And perhaps that is where the journey of digital transformation truly begins.
Nguyễn Ngọc Thanh Hoa, CQP MCQI Founder, SoConn Vietnam
PEOPLE — SYSTEMS — SUSTAINABILITY
Governance is not control — it’s connection.