By N Shashidhar – VP, Global Platform Head, Edge Platforms, EdgeVerve
In an era where organizations today, on average, die younger than their employees, it’s evident that many fail to adapt to an ever-changing and increasingly complex environment. Rather than a single pivotal event, disruption has become a permanent condition in modern markets. So, how should established companies respond so that they can persist and flourish?
Over the last decade, businesses significantly invested in transforming their models – how they create and capture value. Yet, many digital transformation initiatives met with limited success, with studies indicating only a third succeeding. The coming decade calls for a different kind of transformation that modifies the operating model or how value gets delivered.
The end state of this journey leads to what we term as the ‘Connected Enterprise’. It leverages technologies to establish interconnected systems that drive collaboration, efficiency, and innovation. By integrating people, processes, data, and devices, organizations can gain a competitive edge, enhance decision-making, and deliver better customer experiences in today’s digital age.
A connected enterprise shifts from a traditional operating model that limits growth and responsiveness due to a siloed structure to a new model designed to leverage an integrated data foundation. This new model rapidly deploys AI-powered applications, enabling exponential growth in scale, scope, and learning, and is built fundamentally on the foundation of software (data and algorithms) as opposed to people.
Building a connected enterprise is an ongoing process and not a one-time effort. The approach and process need to be well thought through. Some best practices based on our experience include:
- The Process of Automation: Automation fundamentally alters the workforce’s composition, skill breakdown, and cultural makeup. Therefore, the process of implementing automation is as important as the automation of the process itself.
- Organize Operational Improvement Program Around “Journeys”: These journeys naturally cut across organizational silos.
- Adopt Multiple Technology Levers: Achieve compound effect through digitization, automation, orchestration, advanced analytics, and AI/ML. No one technology can solve all problems.
- Leverage Contextual Insights: Each organization is unique; hence the transformation needs to leverage ground-up insights to guide where to apply technology levers.
- Step Up to the Leadership Challenge: As the primary change agents in the business, CEOs and senior business executives have an outsized influence on the success of this transformation and need to lead from the front.
The journey towards a connected enterprise may be challenging, but with the right approach and leadership, businesses can navigate the blind spots, drive their transformations, and ultimately flourish in an increasingly complex digital landscape. As business leaders set out to build a connected enterprise, they should focus on three main priorities:
- Drive Cognitive Operations: Leverage data and AI to drive autonomous processes within the enterprise.
- Enable Value Networks: Invest in technology-enabled value networks that improve resilience and maximize value outside the enterprise across its external ecosystem.
- Amplify Human Potential: Amplify human potential by leveraging AI to set the new standard for the future of work.
Technology changes quickly, but organizations change much more slowly. Overcoming the inertia of a large organization is also a leadership challenge, and people alignment and culture form the foundation upon which these strategic tracks need to be implemented.