infoTECH Feature

July 01, 2015

Three Steps to Prepare an Enterprise for Digital Revolution

By TMCnet Special Guest
Madhavan Krishnan, Senior Director, Cloud Solutions at Virtusa

Business innovation through digitization and the reimagining of business processes driven by data has become a necessity for every organization across a variety of industries. Consumers have led the business in this charge, leaving businesses with no choice but to respond or perish. Business models and processes, which had previously worked for decades in many companies are now under assault. Not surprisingly, this massive consumer empowerment has coincided with the democratization of digital technologies like mobile, social media, cloud computing, and big-data to name a few. These technologies empower consumers to not only influence product and service design, but also empower communities to collaborate and influence decision making in real time. Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP (News - Alert) famously commented that every business is now a C2B (Consumer to Business) industry.

So, how can businesses respond? Is there a respite to this constant onslaught of change? Businesses always seek comfort in a structured and systematic approach to respond to events. This change however, has left every business in every industry scrambling to gauge and understand:

  1. The nature of this change (its impact on viability of their current business model, consumer buying behavior, profitability etc.?)
  2. The velocity of change (how soon do we have to respond?)

This uncertainty is driving cyclical business mandates for organizations – to reimagine their current products and services through the lens of digitization, and to develop new capabilities to tap into new market opportunities that this change brings about.

To respond to these dynamics, organizations must revisit the fundamentals of business through the lens of:

  1.  Business planning and business model viability assessment
  2.  Systems and processes redesign and
  3.  People change management

Let us delve deeper.

Business planning and business model reassessment

Staying relevant to customer needs is a fundamental requirement for survival. With the consumerization of technology and super-empowered consumers, businesses need to constantly evaluate how their current business models perform, examining the problems and assessing how they can respond. With the consumer landscape constantly changing, businesses need a systemic approach to evaluate the impact of emerging changes in consumer behavior.

Business leaders are used to annual budgets and revenue planning cycles. A modern-day, successful business will also need to have planning cycles, but ones that respond to market realities and adjust to threats and opportunities dynamically. Building systems and processes that respond and adapt to market realities is clearly a function of a leadership’s ability to absorb, assess and respond to changes in market dynamics. Revisiting business plans at shorter frequency, say quarterly or monthly, to assess and respond to changes will increasingly be the norm. Decision-making in business areas that need budgets and prioritization in order to respond to a threat or to grab new opportunities needs to be taken in real time and cannot wait for annual budget cycles. This requires leadership to collaborate across various lines of businesses and service lines of an organization to work together as a team.

Successful businesses invest disproportionately into emerging new trends in order to be ahead of the curve. They are ready to grab market share in tomorrow’s business areas. Businesses that are left behind are generally those who invest disproportionately defending yesterday’s business models.

Systems and processes redesign

Design thinking and an organization’s ability to be open to the “art-of-possibility” is more a mindset change than any insurmountable technical change. Every system and process in all parts of an organization’s value chain will need to relook at ways to increase efficiency in order to better provide a positive user experience. Both operational and business enabling systems need to be configurable, adaptable and elastic to provide a differentiating user experience. This is a massive challenge for enterprises that carry decades of legacy by way of infrastructure, software and outdated skillsets of their work force. Prioritization and an action plan to make the changes happen over time is critical in providing enough run way for the systems, processes and people to adapt to the new way of working.

People change management

People are the heart of any change, especially the generational change of digitization that is unfolding right now. Forward-thinking organizations have a road map for change, particularly for people who are supporting the business functions and systems that are being transformed by digitization. Fortunately, the change that we are witnessing, although dramatic, is also one that provides enough opportunities for people to learn and adapt to new ways of working, if properly prepared. This is particularly a challenge for organizations that have survived decades with legacy systems and processes. It is the responsibility of the leadership and HR to be ahead of the curve and lead organizational transformation. The new digital era will provide unprecedented opportunities for individuals and companies that are transformational and skilled at creating a workforce that can adapt to new opportunities. 




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino
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