As early as 2012, Michelin, the global tire manufacturer, connected its products using embedded sensors to analyze data on usage, distance traveled and maintenance. Today, the company offers customers total tire management services, and has transformed its business model from selling tires to selling ‘kilometers without hassles’.
This is the digital mastery that enterprise transformation aims for. It is a state of constant and rapid evolution that is also becoming increasingly complex. It is, therefore, not surprising that the WNS-Corinium Intelligence 2021 global survey Business Transformation After the Digital Tipping Point shows that no company’s digital transformation is truly complete, although 99 percent of the respondents maintain that they are fully committed to it.
Enterprise digital transformation demands efforts beyond siloed attempts to achieve organization-wide strategy and execution. The ‘digital tipping point’ has been crossed – and organizations have to bring together Artificial Intelligence (AI), analytics, intelligent automation, hyperautomation, data governance and cybersecurity across enterprise systems to thrive in this digital-only landscape.
Outside-in View
The customer perspective is the best place to start the digital transformation journey. Creating compelling experiences for the customer calls for innovative and technological capabilities, design thinking skills, and a deep understanding of customer journeys and personas. To create the best Customer Experience (CX), user data should be readily available across the enterprise so that there is a single and accurate source of truth in understanding customer behavior. A French multinational retailer attempted to do this by creating an application-based digital CX with AI and Virtual Reality (VR) that closely mimics the personalized in-store experience.
McKinsey calls this approach to CX the ‘digital factory’ where cross-functional teams collaborate to build experiences, solutions and services across the organization. This improves go-to-market timelines, increases productivity and attracts the right talent for an evolving digital landscape.
Interoperable systems that exchange data and information, cloud-based applications that fuel collaboration and data tools that enhance customer engagement are part of this transformational ecosystem. This is what a Spanish multinational financial services company did successfully. It consolidated its digital services, and eliminated duplication of applications and systems by removing internal silos for a seamless experience.
Inside-out Performance
Once a clear understanding of customer requirements is achieved, it is time to rapidly and comprehensively scale the transformation. A unified enterprise-wide digital transformation is built on the understanding that all business strategies and actions touch the customer in an inter-connected way. CX becomes the core of all functions, and the objectives, systems and operations of each function must connect people, processes and technologies across the organization.
In addition, a digital Center of Excellence (CoE) model that supports the different functions with knowledge, technology, processes, best practices, deep-learning analytics, intelligent automation and hyperautomation helps set a common vision for the transformation.
More than 18 months into the COVID-19 reality, organizations are discovering that a digital strategy is not a standalone approach — it needs to be a corporate or organizational strategy. In the RACE to adopt digital, there has been a complete change in the mindsets of leaders; they now view digital as a crucial priority for competitive advantage and not just cost savings.
Are enterprises ready to Re-imagine, Accelerate, Co-create and Emerge in the evolving normal? Read our full survey report on the state of digital transformation here.