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In this article
CHANGE IS INEVITABLE
Enterprise operations are a balance of growth and risk, and leaders are understandably wary of disruption.
But, as technology continues to transform the global economy, roles and expectations rapidly evolve as well.
Change is as necessary as it is inevitable. For many organizations disruption—and its partner innovation—already ushered in an era of exponential business value. According to the 2021 TCS Global Leadership Study, organizations rank innovation as a cultural priority—above shareholder value and financial performance. After all, the ability to innovate frequently drives business success.
But, when the world is changing at a seemingly break-neck pace, how do you determine business models and processes that promise results?
The Six Key Elements
While each organization’s requirements vary, there are six key elements that consistently enable successful operations and drive growth.
Siloed IT, IT infrastructure, and business operations – the three operational arms – can hinder forward progress.
How do you smash the silos? Enterprises do this can gain a significant edge.
For example, a leading Asia-Pacific-based utility provider launched a new, integrated approach across its operations to enable digital transformation across the customer onboarding, meter to cash, and retention value chain. The result: >90% customer satisfaction, reduced service costs, and a significant improvement in cash flow. Win-win-win.
An agile team responds well to change and makes incremental improvements using collaboration and collective wisdom. Teach your teams to think in sprints – cut big challenges down to bite-sized pieces and tackle each component in a two- or three-week time-boxed approach. Gather ideas and insight from every corner of the business, too – from your interns to your C-suite. Great, problem-solving ideas are bound by department or title. (This goes hand-in-hand with smashing silos). And keep all stakeholders in the loop at every step.
For example, a global market research firm faced a longer lead time for a critical activity. Agile methodologies and problem-solving techniques helped the team halve their lead time. And multiple sprints resulted in a faster time to market and prevented losses of more than US$200k.
A TCS survey of nearly 300 large companies found that, despite upheaval during the first few months of the pandemic, 90% of organizations maintained or even increased digital investments. Need to know where you should focus to keep a strong digital core?
- Digital-first cloud: As the new ERP, cloud is often the foundation of an integrated enterprise. Take it from a global telecommunications company that migrated its R&D environment to cloud. The result: A product development lifecycle that’s now 10X times faster.
- Data-driven insights: Data-mining technologies blend new sources and real-time insights for better decision-making. An example: By deploying a cognitive business command center for their order-to-cash processes, a prominent chemical organization improved order tracking, improving on-time fulfillment from 71% to 93%.
- Automation: Widespread automation and advanced analytics – such as AI, ML and NLP – can usher in greater efficiency and accuracy. For example, a leading oil and gas drilling company implemented automations with in-built machine learning algorithms that helped reduce procurement transaction spends from 5% to 3.8%.
The 2021 World Economic Forum's Global Risk Report confirms that cybersecurity failure is one of the top 10 global risks by likelihood, and IT Infrastructure breakdown is one of the top 10 global risks by impact.
A layered security architecture helps align business strategy, regulatory compliance needs, and cybersecurity standards.
An example: A large Europe-based financial services organization needed to fulfil GDPR data privacy regulations and data protection requirements. During development operations they reduced overall provisioning time by 70%, and delivered advanced cyber threat intelligence, analytics, orchestration and automation.
While enterprises are rapidly shifting their focus to virtual environments. At the same time, traditional skillsets are evolving as digital technologies scale within enterprises.
- Anytime, anywhere workspaces: A borderless, secure operating model encompasses a wide range of digital technology, operating models, and human functions.
- Talent cloud: Highly distributed, location-independent work models have given rise to the talent cloud – a concept that pairs talent needs with workers based anywhere in the world to maximize business opportunities.
- Shifting skillsets: Business context has become invaluable, leading to a dramatic need for cross-functional techno-ops skill. Along with skills such as emotional intelligence, adaptability, flexibility, mindfulness, a can-do mindset, and a commitment to lifelong learning.
Evolving consumer expectations reflect a need for an end-to-end services provider. As boundaries disappear and businesses converge, operations must connect ecosystem partners across boundaries to provide seamless, end-to-end services.
This requirement may well prove more of a mind shift challenge than a technological one. Competitors often have the critical resources needed to achieve an integrated, end-to-end experience. This requires a level of collaboration not all organizations will want to embrace. In the TCS Study, just over half (51%) of those surveyed report collaborating with competitors. This reluctance will likely change as the benefits become more evident. The ‘Leaders’ (in the study) are more willing to collaborate with competitors than their counterparts (80% versus 23%).
An example: A leading telecom player successfully integrated an ecosystem of operations partners at the back-end to manage multiple onboarding aspects, from fiber layout design to service installation to field service engineers to provide a delightful onboarding experience.
A unique opportunity
Shifts in customer behavior, workplaces, and supply chains give enterprise operations a unique opportunity to reimagine the future and better— and more digital—ways of working. The key elements outlined in these articles identify proven, practical next steps from leading companies who are already embracing and leveraging disruption to their advantage.
