Case ABB

Digia's consulting brought clarity and commitment to a digitalisation journey

ABB's global Drives Service unit is focused on ensuring strong, sustainable growth for the future. Digia provided ABB with both strategic and practical support for managing their digitalisation journey, framing it as a people-centric journey of change, not merely a technology project. Through close collaboration between ABB and Digia, this phase of the program was successfully completed within a few months.

Read the summary (AI-generated, human-reviewed)

Digia helped ABB’s Drives Service unit identify the most impactful development areas for digitalisation journey, emphasising a people-centric approach and employee engagement throughout the change.
First phase of the program included a comprehensive employee survey, interviews, and innovation days, which formed the basis for a roadmap, operating model, and innovation process for the digitalisation journey and integrated objectives into ABB’s OKR framework.
In addition to these tools, ABB gained clarity on strategic priorities, team-specific guidance, and dozens of concrete development ideas, while strengthening employees’ knowledge of digitalisation and AI.

Within ABB's Drives Service unit, the changing global business landscape demanded more agile ways of working than ever before.

”Of course, digitalisation has been a priority at ABB for years. At this point, our unit wanted to take stock of our progress across different areas and, based on that assessment, plan where to focus next to ensure our organisation's capability to leverage the latest technologies," says Kirsi-Marja Rytsälä, leader of the Digitalization Journey program at ABB.

”We chose Digia because their approach was so strongly people-centric, recognising that change is ultimately driven by people's actions. It felt like an excellent cultural fit.”

What we delivered

Assessment of organisational change capability and digital maturity
Established a development roadmap, operating model, and innovation process for digitalisation journey
Facilitated innovation days for identifying digitalisation ideas and developing skills
Integrated objectives into the OKR model
Provided change management support through training and communications

Methodology used

Digia Diamond methodology for assessment of Organisational Change Capability
Prosci methodology for change management (e.g. ADKAR model)

We chose Digia because their approach was so strongly people-centric, recognising that change is ultimately driven by people's actions. It felt like an excellent cultural fit.

Kirsi-Marja Rytsälä, leader of the Digitalization Journey project, ABB

Harnessing digitalisation for growth

ABB Drives Service unit wanted to harness digitalisation to support business growth. As part of this effort, the management needed to understand how the organisation’s current capabilities supported their desired digital progress.

They also sought to identify the most impactful development areas to ensure the successful execution of the unit's strategy. Furthermore, ABB required a clear vision for how to strengthen different organisational capabilities to succeed on their digitalisation journey.

What we did

Digia brought its strong change leadership and technology expertise to the project, providing ABB with both strategic and practical support for their digitalisation journey.

This was treated not as a technological initiative, but as an organisational change journey with people at its core. The project utilized participatory methods, which allowed employee perspectives to be taken into account in developing the roadmap. This approach increased employee commitment to the change while deepening people's understanding of how digitalisation and AI can be practically applied.

The collaboration with ABB was close throughout the project. Much of the planning was done side-by-side to ensure the change could be seamlessly integrated into ABB's existing structures and daily operations.

Digia helped to assess the organisation's current capabilities from the perspectives of people skills and competence, leadership practices, supporting processes, and technological opportunities. When these were benchmarked against ABB Drives Service’s strategy and best practices, it became clear which areas for development were most important to focus on.

The current state of change capability and digitalisation maturity were evaluated through an extensive employee survey. The survey is based on comprehensive research previously conducted by Digia and its established framework for change capability. The data was further enriched with over 20 interviews, primarily with management team members and process owners. Additional insights were gathered and analysed during dedicated innovation days and several workshops with ABB stakeholders.

"Through the survey and interviews, we gave employees a voice and made the differences between their experiences and those of the management visible," describes Henna Ahtola, Director, Business and Change Advisory at Digia.

"It was a pleasure to see how enthusiastically the staff got involved. This was reflected in the high survey response rate of around 80%. It helped us to accurately understand the current situation in various areas and to select the right measures for moving forward."

Project outcomes: Concrete models and key learnings

The project delivered both immediately applicable, concrete results and important learnings for ABB Drives Service.

Management gained clarity on strategic priorities and the key considerations for leading the change. The roadmap for developing the needed capabilities, operating model, and innovation process created during the project now provides clear, prioritised steps for the future. It was also crucial to ensure that digitalization journey’s strategic objectives would be fully aligned with operational activities. To achieve this, the development of capabilities that promote digitalisation was integrated into the organisation's OKR model, which guides all activities.

In addition to the leadership team, line managers received dedicated guidance. Beyond the unit-wide results, Digia produced team-specific summaries on the different areas of change capability. These findings were reviewed with the line managers, and each team was provided with recommended focus points to concentrate on in their day-to-day leadership.

Change communication was initiated during the project. Combined with the participatory approach, this increased employee commitment to the transformation.

Innovation days held with employees yielded dozens of concrete development ideas, with the most promising developed into PoC-ready descriptions. This provides a solid foundation for further development.

ABB is a global technology leader in electrification and automation, enabling a more sustainable and resource-efficient future. By combining its expertise in engineering and digitalisation, ABB helps industries across sectors achieve high performance while improving efficiency, productivity, and sustainability—ensuring long-term success. This commitment is captured in ABB’s ethos: "Engineered to Outrun". With a history spanning over 140 years and a workforce of 105,000 worldwide, ABB is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (ABBN) and Nasdaq Stockholm (ABB).
www.abb.com

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