Digitisation and Digitalisation

People mostly mix between digitisation and digitalisation. However, in business matters and services it would be very important to differentiate between digitisation and digitalisation.

Understanding the key differences between these two terms is essential when formulating business strategy. Also, there are some legal implications here regarding data protection, authenticity of the docs for evidence purposes and acceptance before Courts.

In brief, digitisation means to convert something into a digital format, and usually refers to encoding of data and documents. 

While, digitalisation means to convert business processes to use digital technologies, instead of similar things or offline systems such as paper or whiteboards.

In a nutshell, digitisation refers to information, while digitalisation refers to processes.

Appreciating the difference is important because they are genuinely different things to business matters, each requiring different resources, approaches and tools. Whether you are using the term digitise or digitalise, make sure you are referring to the right thing to avoid confusion, misunderstandings and could be legal repercussions.

Digitisation is basically the process of taking analogue information, such as documents, sounds or photographs, and converting into a digital format that can be stored and accessed on computers, mobile phones and other digital devices.

In business, digitisation may involve scanning old documents into PDFs, converting printed photographs into image files, or transforming printed reports into meaningful data that can be manipulated and analysed. 

Some digitisation projects may include going back over years of business records and information and converting them into a digital format for easy reference and other logistical purposes. The original content may be stored or destroyed, or may degrade over time, as in the case of magnetic tapes.

In other cases, it may be that any new information being captured in a business is now created and stored primarily in a digital format, with any physical forms being only secondary copies.

 We have to mention that, the law regulates this process of keeping the old data and storing them in magnetic tapes. This is sensitive work to be undertaken by experienced personnel and requires careful attention, as courts may ask for them.

For digitalisation, there is still some debate around the exact meaning, which means that people sometimes use it to describe digitisation. 

However, the general consensus is that digitalisation refers to the conversion of processes or interactions into their digital equivalents. 

And because all business processes and interactions involve people in some way, it would be more accurate to say that digitalisation is the reorganisation of these business activities around digital technologies.

Examples include moving from sending physical letters via the postal service to using email, or from having in-person meetings to using online video conferencing tools. The Zoom meetings were very helpful and useful during Covid-19 and sure will continue for practical reasons.

Digitalisation of a business is also likely to be an ongoing exercise, as new technologies emerge that allow further digitalisation of processes and interactions in many times and for many purposes.

I believe, the distinction between digitisation and digitalisation is clear. However, the mixture is there which makes unnecessary confusion.

Dr AbdelGadir Warsama Ghalib is a corporate legal counsel. Email: awarsama@warsamalc.com