Home › Posts tagged digital

Tag: digital

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Despite the best of intentions, CIOs and their organizations often struggle to deliver business outcomes from digital transformation strategies. According to research firm Gartner, 89% of corporate boards say digital is embedded in all business growth strategies, but only 35% of organizations are on track to achieve digital transformation goals. And while KPMG reports that 72% of CEOs have aggressive digital investment strategies, McKinsey details a harsh reality that 70% of transformations fail.

Stats such as these raise the question: How can CIOs and digital transformation leaders better recognize failure signs and proactively address issues?

My experience leading many digital transformations is that failures stem from a series of derailments, many of which are inadvertent. Even if digital transformation leaders avoid outright failure, these derailments delay initiatives, create avoidable organizational stress, and often yield underwhelming business outcomes.

Five years ago, I shared that the No. 1 reason digital transformations fail is that executives fail to recognize that digital initiatives are bottom-up transformations that require change across the organization. Employees must understand the why behind digital strategies and have incentives to participate in transformation initiatives. CIOs like to say, “Digital transformation is a journey,” but I believe leaders must strive to lead transformation as a core organizational competency. 

CIOs can’t be involved in every strategic discussion or dive into every initiative’s details, but there are several high-level signs that indicate a digital transformation may be destined to underperform, especially as CIOs add initiatives. In my experience assessing digital transformations, the following five are the most common. 

1. Prioritize too many initiatives without a shared vision

“One of the most common ways to derail digital transformation efforts is ignoring the importance of a clear strategy and defined goals,” says Arturo Garcia, CEO of DNAMIC.

CIOs must communicate strategy and goals when making investment cases and garnering support from the CEO, executives, and the board. As challenging as it is to get to a yes, it’s what comes next that often derails digital transformations at the very start.

CIOs must facilitate a discussion on priorities. Having too many number-one priorities sets unrealistic expectations with business stakeholders and stresses team leaders. Worse is when prioritized initiatives don’t have a documented shared vision, including a definition of the customer, targeted value propositions, and achievable success criteria.

When I survey transformation leaders and their teams, I privately ask each person three questions: What’s your top priority, why is it important, and how many other initiatives are also taking up your time? The risk of derailments increases as I hear inconsistent answers or too many conflicting priorities.

2. Neglect to set collaboration and communication principles

Digital transformations can start with one initiative, defined goals, and a dedicated team. But CIOs are under pressure to accelerate and find digital transformation force multipliers. That means growing the number of leaders and teams that can plan innovations and deliver transformative impacts.   

“Innovation does not happen in isolation: It occurs when organizations encourage and nurture it, often with processes to enable nontraditional ways of thinking, working, and the space to try out ideas in a safe environment,” says Hasmukh Ranjan, CIO of AMD.

Here’s how I spot derailments: Ask initiative leaders to share access to their roadmaps, agile backlogs, collaboration tools, stakeholder communications, and internal documentation. I seek information completeness, communication consistency, and ease-of-use factors. When CIOs struggle to grow beyond one transformation initiative, the root cause is often gaps in collaboration and communication principles.

3. Customize solutions to meet everyone’s requirements

Many organizations use agile methodologies when planning and executing digital transformation and assign multidisciplinary teams to manage releases, sprints, and backlogs. But are product managers developing market- and customer-driven roadmaps and prioritized backlogs? Unfortunately, many digital transformation initiatives succumb to stakeholders dominating priorities with neverending wishlists and poorly defined requirements.

One recent study shows that only 50% follow a product-centric operating model focusing on customer centricity and delivering delightful customer experiences. “Companies that leverage high-quality data, center their enterprise around responsible risk-taking, and organize around products are the most likely to experience profitable growth from their digital transformation journey,” says Anant Adya, EVP of Infosys Cobalt.

Subject matter experts and internal stakeholders should be contributors to priorities and requirements, not decision-makers or backlog dictators. Digital transformations derail when CIOs miss the opportunity to establish and communicate product management responsibilities for creating and evolving market- and customer-driven roadmaps.

4. Underinvest in developing digital trailblazers

In its 2023 State of Digital Transformation report, TEKSystems found that 48% of tech and business decision-makers report needing to revise the nature of their organization’s talent base, and another 34% acknowledge needing new types of talent. “Organizations can derail their digital transformation journey by failing to map out goals, objectives, and tactics prior to launch and not valuing the right mix of IT and business stakeholders in the planning stages,” says Ricardo Madan, senior vice president at TEKSystems.

CIOs invest in skills development, and HR usually offers leadership development programs, but these approaches often don’t address the knowledge and skills needed to lead digital transformation initiatives.

Digital trailblazers, including product managers, program managers, architects, agile delivery managers, and data scientists, need specialized learning programs and coaching to build their confidence in handling transformation responsibilities. Derailments can happen when transformation leaders seize up when negotiating priorities, fail to facilitate decisions on requirements, or struggle when handling conflicts or blow-up moments. Digital trailblazers face many people challenges when guiding employees through a transformation, and CIOs should identify coaches and development programs to prepare their leaders.

5. Drive KPIs and data-driven decisions without a data strategy

Building digital products, improving customer experiences, developing the future of work, and encouraging a data-driven culture are all common digital transformation themes. Leaders should define new KPIs and OKRs that help people understand the objectives and recognize how their work contributes to the organization’s transformation goals.

But there are common pitfalls, such as selecting the wrong KPIs, monitoring too many metrics, or not addressing poor data quality. “Having bad data, or an inability to realize the value and take action from data, is a surefire way for a digital transformation project to go south quickly, says Dwaine Plauche, senior manager of product marketing at AspenTech. “Without useful, contextual data that can be scaled and used throughout the organization, digital transformation efforts may simply become one-off  projects that get stalled at the pilot phase, leading C-suite leaders to believe the technology was a failure or the investment was a waste.”

This derailment stems from having no defined data strategy or having one not aligned with digital transformation objectives.

Consider how it looks to nontechnical executives when every digital transformation initiative has customized dashboards, different KPIs, and metrics with underlying data quality issues. Instead of initiatives telling a cohesive story, it leaves results open to interpretation and challenges. The data strategy should include guidelines on the types of KPIs, standards for dashboarding metrics, and responsibilities for improving data quality.

The five derailments I focus on here fall within the CIO’s responsibilities to address. They are important for CIOs leading multiple transformation initiatives to deliver against several business strategies. The practices that worked when digital transformations started small with one initiative must evolve into a digital culture and a transformation operating model. It’s in this transition where increasing derailments can lead to digital transformation failures.

Digital Transformation

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Creating new revenue streams, identifying untapped audiences and better engaging fans onsite and all year-round are just some of the wins iconic Australian sporting events are chalking up thanks to human-centric digital innovation.

If there’s any lesson brands should have taken from the last three years of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s that investing in digital can deliver even more engagement – online and in-person. And with increasingly immersive technologies such as virtual reality, data-driven insight using artificial intelligence and creative video delivery coming to the fore, opportunities to unite digital with human-centred design principles to win in both physical and digital realms are growing.

The power of human-centric digital experiences is particularly apparent in the work Infosys has been doing to ensure leading sporting brands create unparalleled customer experiences. Here, we explore two stellar examples in the Australian Grand Prix and Australian Open.

Serving up digital innovations for the Australian Open

Using digital, immersive technologies and data to ensure fan engagement is even more immersive is also a long-term imperative for Infosys and Tennis Australia around the Australian Open. And this year’s event proved an unparalleled showcase of how physical and digital are coming together in innovative ways.

Among the highlights of the 2023 Australian Open were a revamped Match Centre 2.0, available on the AO website as well as mobile app for all matches throughout the tournament and providing fans with immersive insights such as Matchbeats, Stroke Summary, Rally Analysis, Courtvision and AI Commentary. A ‘win predictor’ also gave fans real-time predictions as each match progressed. Accessibility was equally in the spotlight, while an enhanced Infosys MatchBeats presented simplified game data and visualisations thanks to contrasting colour combinations that met Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 AA.

A host of AI Video Insights further powered on-court strategy and media reporting while giving fans, players and coaches unprecedented insights into every game.

In addition, an enhanced Player’s Portal with AI-generated videos democratised the level of insight available to players and coaches around game and competitor insights for post-match reviews and pre-game analysis. For example, Get into the Zone served up video montages of a player’s former winning performances, while an opponent tendency feature allowed players to view and analyse the statistical playing tendencies of their opponents.

And AI Shot of the Day also boasted of enhancements, enabling Tennis Australia’s media team to quickly analyse and post social media ready clips from the best shots of each day.

“For us, this has been a monumental and strong partnership with the Australian Open since 2019. Post each edition, our team takes a step back through an empathy led approach and assess data from all stakeholders engaging with the AO. This follows design thinking workshops to reimagine how our digital innovations can further enhance the stakeholder experience with the Happy Slam, make it more accessible, immersive and engaging. Our strength is digital whether it is AI, digital learning platforms or mixed reality and we combine it with a passion for tennis.

We’ve seen over 50 million fans engage with the digital innovations built by Infosys over the years with MatchBeats alone seeing 7.2mn views this edition, witnessed over 100 million views of footage generated by our AI driven innovations, launched physical platforms such as the virtual hub to engage 10,000+ key consumers of AO during the pandemic and are now going beyond with Infosys Springboard to nurture future leaders and Engage to leverage digital for sustainable futures. Over 11,000 fans engaged with our VR experiences which has doubled from 2022, highlighting a strong appetite for digital experiences. And being conscious of the future, our entire footprint this year onwards at AO 2023 was and will continue to be carbon neutral”, says Navin Rammohan, Vice President, Segment Head Marketing, Sponsorships and Events at Infosys.

Onsite, Infosys itself harnessed virtual reality in its fan zone activation. This allowed attendees to experience tennis in several creatively themed metaverse worlds, from a ride into hyperspace with moon tennis and battling thousands of flying tennis balls in a spaceship, to sparring with AO superstars avatars on centre court.

“Working with Infosys over the past five years has enabled us to set new benchmarks in fan engagement using digital technologies,” says Tennis Australia CEO and Australian Open Tournament Director, Craig Tiley. “This partnership has enabled us to deliver new innovative digital experiences year after year for everyone associated with the tournament. We remain committed to making the Australian Open a global standard for a digitally-enabled sport that is inspiring, engaging, inclusive and sustainable.”

Focusing on the fans of the Australian Grand Prix

Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGPC) General Manager of Marketing and Experience, Arthur Gillion, will never forget 13 March 2020. Just two days out from the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix sporting event in Victoria’s Albert Park Circuit, and hours before practice sessions were to begin, the event was cancelled due to Covid-19.  

“The world was watching. It was a hard moment to go through,” Gillion recalled during the recent Infosys Confluence event. “From a strategic perspective, what we had planned for the following years had to change. The way we approached brand management, from diagnosis, to strategy to tactics all flipped on its head.”

Yet even as the pandemic negatively impacted the physical race, it presented an opportunity for the AGPC to overhaul digital experience to create a more fan-fuelled approach.

“We couldn’t stop communicating or trying to provide some joy to the fans,” Gillion said. “The emphasis had to be on the digital experience. We were very innovative in that space to stay connected.”

Helping AGPC was strategic technology partner, WONGDOODY, the global human experience company of Infosys. Together, the pair reassessed AGPC’s digital ecosystem as a first step. Diving into data the organisation held about its fans to build insights that could be realised in added value and simplified, improved touchpoints was the overarching driving force.

“While AGPC had a lot of data, the team didn’t necessarily know what it was telling them,” WONGDOODY’s chief experience and design officer APAC, James Noble, explains. “The key was to work out what information was relevant, versus irrelevant, then use that to understand the different audiences and what each of those fans wants.

“Being able to convert that into a digital experience would make it easier for audiences to understand the Australian Grand Prix, lead them towards stronger engagement and in time, to purchase things like tickets.”

Focus shifted to digital content as the dominant mechanism for keeping fans connected, and to an annual timeline of engagement, rather than burst of activity surrounding the events. Owned platform articles, blog posts and a podcast series developed by AGPC took centre stage, with built-in capabilities making it easy for audiences to engage with and share content.

With the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix website the first point of touch from a brand perspective, giving fans what they want online is critical to any human-centric approach, Noble says. WONGDOODY helped AGPC understand its digital touchpoints, understood which customer segments AGPC were trying to attract, inform, educate and engage, and transformed this into a solution. The Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix caters to diverse customer cohorts, from motor and F1 enthusiasts, to those who come for the spectacle, ‘culture vultures’ wanting to be seen; families on a day out; and corporate and sponsor delegates.

“It’s working out not only the user experience but the content strategy and experience and how that leads you through the funnel, as opposed to having people floating around with no direction,” Noble continues. “Do you want them to press that button? Or talk to that person? What is it you want to happen next?”

As AGPC began work to bring its physical event back, digital experience took on another vital role. A major achievement was improving the ticketing pathway online for the returning five-day event.

“There are lots of different permutations of tickets and it had been difficult for a consumer to understand what they’re buying,” Noble says. “We looked at the matrix of all the ticketing permutations and experiences you could have, put in a simpler interface and easier-to-use experience, and skipped all the doing it again to go straight to purchase. Just by that happening and knowing what ticket types were selling out, the AGPC team could make informed business decisions and understand where to adapt and create more of what’s popular.”

The work done as an organisation to lift digital innovation has without doubt delivered AGPC incredible growth. In 2022, almost 420,000 people came to the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix, up from 324,100 in 2019, adding more than $170 million to the visitor economy. AGPC also saw a 154 per cent increase in digital traffic during event week and a 218 per cent increase in traffic in the months leading up to the event. It exceeded 2.6 million unique visitors to the site in 2022, a 200 per cent increase on 2019.

Importantly, the first release of Grandstand tickets for the 2023 event sold out in under 3.5 hours, testament to the seamless purchasing process. This ticketing architecture overhaul has since triggered changes to the physical environment and decision-making driving further revenue growth.

For example, pre-pandemic, the F1 event had four private lounges. In 2022, there were eight, and this year’s Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix has 14. Being in the fortunate position of having much demand and selling tickets faster enables AGPC to shift focus quickly, and use insights to innovate physical experiences.

“Because the team knows so far ahead about what kinds of tickets are being sold, there’s an opportunity to create another stand or another section. The forward planning is so much easier and it’s adding millions to sales generated,” Noble adds.

Infosys

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , ,

Continuing with current cloud adoption plans is a risky strategy because the challenges of managing and securing sensitive data are growing. Businesses cannot afford to maintain this status quo amid rising sovereignty concerns.

Some 90% of organisations in Europe and 88% in the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) now use cloud technology, which is a keystone for digital transformation – according to an IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by VMware. As it becomes a dominant IT operating model, critical data is finding its way into the cloud. Almost 50% of European companies are putting classified data in the public cloud.

While private on-prem cloud remains an organisation’s primary cloud environment for storing high-sensitivity data, 23% of those surveyed chose public cloud for this data class. Some 32% of companies use global public cloud providers to store confidential data.

Rising volumes of sensitive data in public cloud make sovereignty an imperative

Organisations are starting to value strategic autonomy to ensure resilience amid growing geopolitical and economic uncertainties. Digital sovereignty starts with data sovereignty, which forms the legal basis for organisations to ensure regulatory compliance. Data sovereignty is about making sure that data is subject to the laws and governance structures of the country it belongs to. With a large amount of sensitive data now hosted in cloud, sovereignty should influence an organisation’s future cloud strategy. This is becoming a priority as sensitive data volumes are growing exponentially.

The importance of sovereignty for EMEA organisations

The only option for customers to get sovereign cloud security is to engage with cloud providers which are well positioned in local markets.

Drivers for considering sovereignty:

Relevance of data sovereignty cited as “very important” or “extremely important” by 88% of very large organisations (5,000 FTEs) and 63% of all EMEA organisations.

In Europe, organisations are driven by the need for continuous compliance, regulations, and legal obligations.

In META, organisations are driven by the introduction of internal/corporate policies.

Business drivers for data sovereignty:

Customer expectations about privacy and confidentiality

Need to protect future investments in data

Continued macroeconomic volatility, ambiguity, and uncertainties are heightening interest in sovereign solutions

Protection against future EU ruling that could impact your business

How VMware can help

Sovereign Cloud is all about choice and control. VMware’s offering addresses the strategic imperatives for data sovereignty on data security, protection, residency, interoperability, and portability: 

Leveraging the VMware Multicloud Foundation 

Innovating on sovereign capabilities (Tanzu, Aria, open ecosystem solutions) 

Leveraging a broad ecosystem of sovereign cloud providers 

VMware is well recognised on trust and on several capabilities for data sovereignty needs: flexibility and choice/data security and privacy/control of data access/multicloud/ data residency. It is already deployed with more than 20 Sovereign Cloud Providers. 

Laurent Allard, Head of Sovereign Cloud, VMware, says: “To ensure success in their sovereign journey, organisations must work with partners they trust and that are capable of hosting authentic and autonomous sovereign cloud platforms. VMware Cloud Providers recognised within the VMware Sovereign Cloud initiative commit to designing and operating cloud solutions based on modern, software defined architectures that embody key principles and best practices for data sovereignty. More than 36 global and 14 EU VMware Sovereign Cloud Partners can deliver to customers cloud services in alignment with security and local regulations, while enabling sovereign innovation.”

To read the full InfoBrief click here. Find out more about VMware’s Sovereign Cloud here.

Cloud Management, Cloud Security, Data Management, Data Privacy

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

“Supply chains are under stress,” said Thomas Saueressig, member of the SAP executive board and head of its Product Engineering division, at the recent Hanover Fair. The past few years have shown how prone to failure global logistics chains are, and he added this also has far-reaching consequences for the German manufacturing industry. Digital supply chains, therefore, are needed to be more agile, flexible, resilient, and sustainable. “While companies are aware they need to invest in Industry 4.0 and AI to make their supply chain more resilient, many are still in the pilot phase,” Saueressig said, citing discussions with CEOs and results of a study by Oxford Economics.

Earlier this year, analysts asked nearly 1,000 people around the world in management from 15 industries about the digitization of their supply chains. As a result, managers in manufacturing were more inclined than those in other industries to introduce intelligent technologies on a large scale in order to make better predictions. However, only 36% of the companies surveyed would already use forward-looking analyses in one area of ​​their company.

SAP builds AI into its supply-chain solutions

At the fair, SAP announced it would further expand its logistics chain solutions. SAP Digital Manufacturing, for instance, will be expanded with additional AI tools, which, according to a statement, will allow users to gain AI-supported insights and visual inspections in production to ensure that defective parts are discovered early in the production process and appropriate measures are taken quickly, thus reducing the reject rate and producing higher quality products. The number of complaints would also fall as a result, and the condition and maintenance of systems would be optimized, the provider said.

One of the first adopters of AI-enhanced SAP Digital Manufacturing is Smart Press Shop, a joint venture between Porsche and press manufacturer Schuler. Founded in 2019, the company seized its greenfield opportunity to rethink and redesign the press shop as part of a cloud-first development strategy. Hendrik Rothe, the company’s CEO, spoke of completely paperless production and a fully automated process to configure machines in the production line to cut set-up times nearly in half.

The dark factory dream

According to Rothe, there are many advantages to the digitalization of manufacturing based on the principles of Industry 4.0. In addition to self-optimizing production, continuous traceability, and resource-saving production, smaller batch sizes can also be produced economically. This is an important factor, especially in the automotive industry in the switch to electric vehicles because the quantities are smaller.

Rothe dreams of fully automated dark factories, but there’s still a way to go before those become a reality. According to him, operations are currently at 30 to 40% automation, although the potential varies greatly from area to area. While production itself is fully automated—order-controlled from the SAP system—things are different in the warehouse, as manual processes with forklift drivers continue to work more profitably. “Every automation has to pay off,” says Rothe, and automating transport processes in the warehouse is currently not economical.

Also, while the Smart Press Shop can already carry out its production processes completely paperless, many customers still need paper documents in order to process supplied pressed parts.

Open-data space for manufacturing

Initiatives are currently underway to eliminate fractures in the digital supply chains, and SAP wants to have a say in this. “SAP is in charge of many initiatives in the industry,” says Saueressig, specifically naming two examples. Catena-X, an ecosystem and open-data space, is currently being established in the automotive industry and Saueressig expects the first concrete applications in the current year. And Manufacturing-X is a comparable open-data ecosystem, which will be created in the manufacturing industry.

Around its digital manufacturing, SAP has also expanded other solutions with additional functions. For example, the 3D Product Viewer functions of the SAP Enterprise Product Development solution are now integrated to make all processes, from design and production to service and maintenance, more resilient. So employees in production could display 3D product models in their digital manufacturing dashboard and their work environment, thereby optimizing complex assembly processes. In the SAP Service and Asset mobile application manager, with the help of 3D augmented reality views, field service technicians can carry out maintenance on systems more efficiently to reduce downtimes, SAP says.

Better metrics for sustainable manufacturing

In order to operate their own supply chains more sustainably, users could, in the future, integrate company-specific guidelines for sustainable packaging into the SAP Responsible Design and Production solution. Customers would then have the opportunity to control and monitor the design of packaging more precisely to avoid waste.  

Plus, SAP announced it would expand its integration with EcoVadis, a provider of corporate sustainability ratings. As a result, suppliers could receive more precise sustainability indicators and make their rating status visible in the SAP Business Network. SAP assures its customers this will help buyers see how they can better comply with ​​due diligence and report against the background of new ESG laws. New suppliers can then be selected on the basis of key figures in such a way that sustainability goals in their own business, including the associated value chain, are met.

Digital Transformation, Events, Manufacturing Industry, SAP, Supply Chain Management Software, Vendors and Providers

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Digital transformation has always been a continuous journey, one that should become an organizational core competency, with the introduction of digital services an ongoing imperative to evolve the business and stave off disruption.

While this may remain the case, subtleties are emerging about how digital transformation should be thought of, impacting how it should be undertaken. Within these schools of thought, what was once called digital transformation should now be viewed as business transformation because such initiatives encompass so much of the way organizations operate, and because technology alone does not a transformation make.

It’s that latter point that may be the biggest change in our perception of digital transformations. A framework for thinking about digital initiatives today is part digital strategy (new capabilities, new markets, and new products), part technology aligned with the strategy, and an ability to adapt to and adopt new processes, resources, and ways of working, according to Deloitte.   

“If you can only do one thing, focus your efforts on technologies aligned to strategy because it drives superior market value,’’ the firm says. 

With that in mind, here are five strategies, approaches, and technologies around digital transformation that are hot and two that have gone cold.

Hot: Debate about the term ‘digital transformation’

Depending on whom you ask, the very concept of digital transformation is either still the raison d’être of IT today — or it’s becoming a thing of the past. And while the discussion around this can seem semantic or even pedantic, there are meaningful impacts arising from the debate.

At Schneider Electric, “we don’t even use the term ‘digital transformation,’” but rather, ‘business transformation,’ says senior vice president and CIO Bobby Cain, who came from the business side of the company. “In order to transform how you work, the business has to lead the transformation.”  

Bobby Cain, SVP and CIO, Schneider Electric

Schneider Electric

Melanie Kalmar, corporate vice president, CIO, and chief digital officer of Dow, agrees. Speaking in a recent Gartner webcast, Kalmar said that digital transformation goes beyond technology. Further, IT is not going to drive digital transformation on its own, she said.

“The previous perception of being digitally driven was that IT would lead all of the change and that technology would be the driver,’’ Kalmar said. “Digital transformation is really about how people do their work differently and understanding IT wasn’t going to drive this on our own.”

She referred to digital transformation as “a team sport.” At Dow, each business now owns its digital strategy, and digital leaders have been placed in the business units to ensure data quality.

But Isaac Sacolick, founder of digital consultancy StarCIO, believes business transformations are more about mergers and acquisitions and outsourcing, and that digital, AI, and analytics fall under the purview of IT, so CIOs are expected to continue leading digital transformations. Results from the State of the CIO survey concur, as 84% of IT leaders say CIOs are more involved in leading digital transformation initiatives compared to their business counterparts. Moreover, 72% of line of business leaders agree.

Jim Ruga, CIO of Fictiv, a quote-to-order manufacturing provider for mechanical parts, says a lot of businesses in the manufacturing industry struggle with digital transformation because business leaders view it in the context of buying a big ERP system and expecting it to solve a problem.

Melanie Kalmar, CVP, CIO, and chief digital officer, Dow

Dow

“It’s the threading together of these systems [and] processes where decisions are made by humans, and you have to introduce machine learning and AI and glue them together to make these things effective,’’ he says. “It’s no longer just buying the software and ‘Wow, we’re digital.’”

Instead, IT needs to take these large systems and make them smart to realize the gains and benefits of labor or cost reduction, Ruga says. “You don’t get that by implementing systems off the shelf.”

Cold: The how of hybrid work

The concept of hybrid work, new for the majority of organizations when the effects of the pandemic reached a point where people started returning to the office on a part-time basis, is far less novel of late, and as such initiatives aimed at making it work have cooled since their apex just a year or so ago.

“People have figured it out based on the resources they have and the tools they have to support it,’’ Cain says. “Honestly, it’s becoming a tiresome conversation. I think it’s losing its relevancy.”

This is not something people need to learn; employees have figured out how they work best, he says.

Future work is focused on what people are doing and how they’re providing value, whereas hybrid work is about how do we continue operating when people won’t be in the office 100% of time, adds Sacolick. Yet, “what’s interesting is over 60% of companies in the tech space remain hybrid.”

In other words, if you haven’t figured out how to make hybrid work by now, you’re still likely not ramping up solutions to address it. In fact, enhancing hybrid work technologies was the No. 1 decreasing priority for IT leaders, according to the State of the CIO survey, and many CIOs have long been unraveling the ‘pandemic debt’ incurred by investing in digital productivity solutions during the height of the pandemic.

Hot: Digital trailblazers and micro transformations

With the CIO role changing to be more business-oriented and focused on both internal and external customer needs, CIOs need more of what Sacolick calls “digital trailblazers” who can act as “lieutenants.” These are people who “understand the lane they’re working in, whether it’s apps or security.” It’s incumbent upon CIOs to groom them to become leaders with “outside-in learning,’’ through a combination of attending nontechnical industry events and finding mentors outside the organization.

The trailblazers should be branched out into the business to run smaller transformation programs, he says.

Dean Kontul, executive vice president and CIO of KeyBank, is also a proponent of implementing micro transformations alongside large-scale transformations. 

Dean Kontul, EVP and CIO, KeyBank

KeyBank

The bank uses a pilot test-and-learn approach wherever possible. Along these lines, KeyBank uses consulting and outsourcing partners to accelerate the process. 

“Our most successful transformations rely on leadership across KeyBank and on speed of delivery with multiple impactful components delivered in parallel, versus waiting on a big-bang approach delivered all at once,” Kontul says.

This may not be bleeding edge, he notes, “but we certainly are forward-thinking and adopt new tools quickly and proactivity look to apply lessons learned from small initiatives with emerging technologies to broader use cases.”

Instead of the conversation being about a big, monolithic ERP transformation, CIOs should think about agility, Schneider Electric’s Cain says. “Do you think agile or are you agile? Look at [digital transformation] on a micro-scale and transform the way you work with a modular approach.”

Hot: Business-IT partnerships

Similar to Dow, Schneider’s IT group has been structured to be aligned with specific business domains “to better enable the business and be a better business partner.”

Not everything has to be enabled by technology, Cain adds. “You don’t want to just automate a crappy process — change the process.” Schneider uses an approach called a “power couple,” which pairs a domain or business leader and a digital leader together. They are responsible for the ‘what’ and ‘why’ and the digital leader is responsible for the ‘how’ and the ‘when.’

“When you partner those two people together … it’s very, very powerful and you don’t burn a lot of calories in solutioning and trying to do other people’s jobs and overwhelming people,’’ Cain says. “We utilize [them] in a dual delivery leadership model — the same people, the same rank, the same level and we put them together.”

Hot: Embedding AI in enterprise systems

There was a time when embedding AI and machine learning into enterprise and SaaS platforms fell to data science teams, but now, organizations are expanding those programs, Sacolick says.

“They’re looking to use AI and MI in ways that deliver value … beyond what marketing is saying [these platforms] can do. It’s not about the science but the application and getting the value without having to invest in the skillsets to build the models,” he says.

Take recommendation engines. They have been around for many years inside ecommerce and content management systems, he notes. “The CIO and IT have to make sure the information is presented to [the recommendation engine] in a way so it will make better decisions,’’ Sacolick says. “That often means expanding the context and data available to it.”

Ruga agrees, saying that applying AI or machine learning with “data inputs that make sense” makes large systems more valuable. At Fictiv, IT is doing that for quotes for manufacturing parts.

“Now you have something that has been educated by machine learning that has seen lots and lots of similar examples and can infer the conditions that are necessary to say, ‘This configuration or this design will cost you X dollars to make,’ and makes recommendations,’’ he says. “We are seeing that everywhere.”

Hot: Digitizing the manufacturing supply chain

Digitizing the entire supply chain is at the forefront for BSH, a Munich, Germany-based global provider of home appliances, says Berke Menekli, senior vice president of digital platform services, whose digital strategy tackles four pillars: enterprise processes, manufacturing processes, products, and the consumer journey.

BSH’s approach incorporates Industry 4.0, or I4.0, an IT-fueled strategy for improving efficiency using automation and data-driven operational decision-making.

Berke Menekli, SVP of digital platform services, BSH

BSH

To achieve this, BSH is investing in inbound/outbound logistics flow to maintain the continuity of production and supply chain automation “to ensure value creation toward our products can be transferred to our consumers,” Menekli says.

Initiatives such as these have become hot, he says, thanks to the advancement of supporting technologies such as machine learning and data lakes, which have become fast and strong enough to be operationally reliable in a manufacturing environment.

Taking that a step further, Ruga says it’s become more important to insulate the manufacturing supply chain, given global socioeconomic conditions.

“If I’m faced with a scenario like COVID or the war in Ukraine, and I have tons of people I employ and tons of vendors that depend on me and all of a sudden COVID hits, my supply chain collapses,’’ he says. Or “maybe I had a manufacturer in Ukraine that was producing unique parts for me, and … that factory got blown up and now I have to find a new vendor, which costs me time and money.”

A new trend is for manufacturers to vet their networks to insulate their supply chain and have the work managed for them, Ruga says.

“It’s not about whether I put Oracle in, it’s whether the collection of systems I’ve put in place insulate my business from risk,’’ he says. “An outsourced insulated supply chain de-risks things like supply chain disruption when COVID hits and a machine shop shuts down.’’

Cold: Traditional RPA

Some IT leaders are finding that robotic process automation is a lever-based approach involving the time-consuming process of collecting financial and operational data, and detailed process mapping, and doesn’t have enterprise scale. Many of the initial bots developed focused heavily on process efficiency, and this has limited opportunities for scalability, observers say.

Organizations must rethink how work is being done with bots that are broader in scope, or the investment in them will underdeliver.

Sacolick thinks RPA has become a band-aid. “I think what we’re doing is scripting on top of broken processes, in some cases, data technologies, and in many cases, a lack of APIs to get a backdoor into digital capabilities.” This is leading to an accumulation of bot debt because “any time I build a bot I have to continue to evolve and support it.”

He believes organizations will soon be talking about RPA more as a set of integrated tools, or what Sacolick calls hyperautomation, using low code and machine learning.  

“A bot is a piece of a solution, not a complete one,’’ he says. A lot of what they do is fill out forms and ‘screen scraping.’ In invoice processing, for example, you can either outsource the work or build a bot that will do some data entry internally instead of having people key the information into an ERP system.

That saves time and money and avoids mistakes and the need to change vendors, he says. But when a vendor changes their system or the company updates its ERP system, the bots will have to be changed, and that causes the debt, especially when the vendor doesn’t have an API the company can use, Sacolick says.

Another approach is to build a low-code system that flows into the ERP system through an API. “RPA is a tool to orchestrate a workflow, low code is a tool to build a workflow, and machine learning is tool so my workflows can be triggered based on analytics,’’ he explains. “RPA will shift from being a platform to a tool. It’s providing one capability; it’s not that powerful alone.”

More on digital transformation:

What is digital transformation? A necessary disruption10 ways to accelerate digital transformation7 secrets of successful digital transformations8 reasons why digital transformations fail7 digital transformation mythsDigital KPIs: Your keys to measuring digital transformation success

Digital Transformation, IT Leadership, IT Strategy

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Chris Richner signed on as CIO of Norco Industries with a clear mission: To guide the US-based manufacturer through wholesale digital transformation.

“I was brought on board to be a change agent,” says Richner, who is now 18 months into the job. “The first order of business was to get my infrastructure shored up, because the end goal in my five-year plan is to bring digitalization to the shop floor.”

Norco manufactures a range of recreation vehicle (RV), industrial, and automotive products under seven brands, including Adnik (seating systems), Bal RV (RV components), Norco Professional Lifting Equipment (floor jacks, clutch jacks, transmission jacks), Flo-Dynamics (fluid maintenance equipment), Nortool (machining and tooling equipment), Norcoat (e-coat and powder coat finishing), and Freedom Industrial Hydraulics (industrial lifting equipment).

The manufacturing industry is undergoing seismic change due to increased digitization and other IT advancements, and CIOs are at the center of this, with 86% of manufacturing IT leaders saying their role is becoming more digital and innovation focused, and 84% agreeing that the CIO is becoming a changemaker, according to the 2023 State of the CIO survey.

At Norco, Richner is stepping up with an aggressive plan to transform the company’s technology infrastructure within his first five years. But embracing new technology wholesale is a tall order. So Richner hit the ground running with a plan to use robotic process automation (RPA) to free the company’s staff from time-consuming, repetitive tasks, giving them the bandwidth to embrace broader change.

RPA uses technology, business logic, and structured inputs to automate business processes. Richner sat down with Norco Industries CEO Michael Tallman to discuss how the company could leverage RPA and to determine possible use cases to prove its utility. Together they decided the finance department was the perfect choice.

Proving the pilot

Richner’s team worked with finance to identify workflows that could most benefit from the technology, and then took those workflows to RPA vendor Kognitos to help create automation plans. They decided to use RPA to power the entire accounts receivable and accounts payable (AR/AP) process, including billing and invoicing.

“We have a lot of repetitive tasks, things that are error prone,” Richner says. “No one wants to do those tasks. They don’t want to scan documents all day.”

The resulting automation enabled Norco to save 10-15 hours of employee time per week, eliminate 15-20 hours of billing tasks per week, and remove 30 hours of invoicing tasks per week, while reducing human error and hiring needs. Even nontechnical employees were able to use the Kognitos platform to check processes and verify the automations were working correctly, Richner says.

Here, the platform’s ability to use natural language has been beneficial, Richner notes.

“The philosophy in RPA has been we need to teach humans how to talk to machines,” says Binny Gill, founder and CEO of Kognitos. “That is not scaling well because it’s a hard thing for most of us to think like a machine. It’s alien.”

Human brains, Gill notes, are expert at handling ambiguity, whereas machines struggle with it. Like ChatGPT and other generative AI, Kognitos relies on conversational exception handling, reaching out to human users and asking for clarification and additional information where necessary.

Envisioning RPA possibilities

With the experience of building the finance automation under their belts, Richner and Tallman decided to expand the effort, bringing in Norco’s two division presidents and the director of human resources for an envisioning workshop on RPA.

“We came up with a total of 16 different workflows that we could leverage and some of them are fairly significant — major impact,” Richner says. “Generating a bill of materials is a big one, because there’s a lot involved in how we generate them off design specs.”

One of the things that sets Norco apart from many of its competitors is that it engineers on request. A customer might want to change the design of the RV that sits on top of a Norco frame, making it wider, for example. That customer would submit those changes to Norco, who would then engineer to the new specs and come back to the customer with a design and price quote.

Today, Richner explains, that’s a highly manual process involving somewhere between 12 to 15 steps, three or four employees, and lots of back and forth. RPA could allow Norco to automate the entire process. Customers could make changes to their designs in real-time in a customer portal. RPA could then generate the bill of materials from those design specs, generate a master table from the bill of materials, feed that master table into solid modeling CAD engineering application SolidWorks, and render the design in real-time. The system could then present the new design back to the customer in the portal with a price quote.

“That’s a game-changer right there,” Richner says.

There are other plans too. For instance, Norco’s human resources department is active in monitoring social media.

“What if I had an AI engine that could go do that for me? We don’t want it to do an automated response because we want the response to come from us, but at least it’s finding it for us,” Richner says.

Onboarding and offboarding employees, processing checks, and handling chargebacks from freight are all additional opportunities.

“We’re at the very beginning and have a long way to go,” Richner says. “The next step is getting APIs and AI wrapped together and doing some off the charts stuff.”

To his peers getting started with RPA, Richner says, “Don’t be scared. Spend the time to understand it.” You don’t have to be an expert, he says, but learn the basic concepts, find a good partner, and go through an envisioning process with your stakeholders.

“They’ve got to buy into it as well,” he says. “If you start there, it’ll happen. And once it starts to happen, it just snowballs and gets bigger and bigger.”

Digital Transformation, Manufacturing Industry, Robotic Process Automation

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

The CIO Digital Enterprise Forum will be held in London on Thursday 11th May at Prospero House, London Bridge. Amit Sen from the United Nations Refugee Agency and Howard Pyle from Experience Futures will host the opening keynote. They will focus on the importance of organizations linking analytics with social impact goals and standards of inclusion.

Only a third of companies are currently seeing social impact as a core strategy, despite many being active in social responsibility. Understanding the organization’s target audience and defining ethical principles that reflect their needs is crucial when applying generative AI. Organizations need to plan for generalized standards for reporting on the users they’re serving through AI-driven experiences and what the impact is. Howard Pyle shares that “CIOs will need to play a leading role in guiding their organizations toward creating personalized and inclusive experiences that align with their overall KPIs and social impact goals. By developing inclusive product and experience strategies that are tailored to each user’s needs and abilities, organizations can ensure that all stakeholders receive the maximum value.”

It is essential to consider the impact of generative AI on the business and individual audiences while planning for generalized reporting standards. Personalization can reduce acquisition costs and increase revenues and marketing efficiency, but CIOs and IT leaders must focus on aligning social impact and business KPIs, developing a product and experience strategy based on them, and creating custom-tuned experiences. . It is critical to keep in mind the need for inclusive and ethical technology, the importance of individualized experiences, and the power of generative AI when used strategically and with clear goals in mind. By doing so, CIOs can help their organizations create experiences that meet the needs of individual users and the broader goals of the business.

The programme continues to include a panel discussion on keeping ahead of your data strategy, featuring Rashad Saab, Founder & CTO of rkbt.ai; Raj Jethwa, CTO, Digiterre; and Caroline Carruthers, Chief Executive, Carruthers & Jackson. The panel discussion will focus on the challenges of reaching data strategy goals and creating a data strategy that meets business needs and practices while allowing for future possibilities.

Discussion will focus on the human side of cybersecurity in the digital enterprise. The panel will look at human perception and social trust to digital counterparts and how to ensure cybersecurity alongside the introduction of new emerging tech. The moderator for the panel will be Michael Hill, Editor, CSO, and the panelists will include Jennifer Surujpaul, Head of IT & Digital, The Brit School; Mel Smith, CIO, Buckles Solicitors LLP; and Sue Khan, VP of Privacy and DPO, Flo Health.

In a keynote session, the Green Web Foundation, a Dutch non-profit, will discuss its efforts to increase the internet’s energy efficiency and speed its transition away from fossil fuels. The foundation stewards the largest open dataset that tracks websites running on renewables, with an open tool suite used over 3.5 billion times.

Closing the Forum will be Dy Jacqui Taylor, sharing her insight and expertise on the evolution of the digital enterprise, finding the golden thread of resilience as tech continues to change as well as how to achieve the NetZero agenda.

Along with the themes of the forum, this event preview was written using ChatGPT, with insight shared by our keynote speaker Howard Pyle. Share your thoughts on using these emerging technologies by registering here to join, the forum is free for qualified attendees and you can view the full programme here. 

CIO

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

The CIO Digital Enterprise Forum will be held in London on Thursday 11th May at Prospero House, London Bridge. Amit Sen from the United Nations Refugee Agency and Howard Pyle from Experience Futures will host the opening keynote. They will focus on the importance of organizations linking analytics with social impact goals and standards of inclusion.

Only a third of companies are currently seeing social impact as a core strategy, despite many being active in social responsibility. Understanding the organization’s target audience and defining ethical principles that reflect their needs is crucial when applying generative AI. Organizations need to plan for generalized standards for reporting on the users they’re serving through AI-driven experiences and what the impact is. Howard Pyle shares that “CIOs will need to play a leading role in guiding their organizations toward creating personalized and inclusive experiences that align with their overall KPIs and social impact goals. By developing inclusive product and experience strategies that are tailored to each user’s needs and abilities, organizations can ensure that all stakeholders receive the maximum value.”

It is essential to consider the impact of generative AI on the business and individual audiences while planning for generalized reporting standards. Personalization can reduce acquisition costs and increase revenues and marketing efficiency, but CIOs and IT leaders must focus on aligning social impact and business KPIs, developing a product and experience strategy based on them, and creating custom-tuned experiences. . It is critical to keep in mind the need for inclusive and ethical technology, the importance of individualized experiences, and the power of generative AI when used strategically and with clear goals in mind. By doing so, CIOs can help their organizations create experiences that meet the needs of individual users and the broader goals of the business.

The programme continues to include a panel discussion on keeping ahead of your data strategy, featuring Rashad Saab, Founder & CTO of rkbt.ai; Raj Jethwa, CTO, Digiterre; and Caroline Carruthers, Chief Executive, Carruthers & Jackson. The panel discussion will focus on the challenges of reaching data strategy goals and creating a data strategy that meets business needs and practices while allowing for future possibilities.

Discussion will focus on the human side of cybersecurity in the digital enterprise. The panel will look at human perception and social trust to digital counterparts and how to ensure cybersecurity alongside the introduction of new emerging tech. The moderator for the panel will be Michael Hill, Editor, CSO, and the panelists will include Jennifer Surujpaul, Head of IT & Digital, The Brit School; Mel Smith, CIO, Buckles Solicitors LLP; and Sue Khan, VP of Privacy and DPO, Flo Health.

In a keynote session, the Green Web Foundation, a Dutch non-profit, will discuss its efforts to increase the internet’s energy efficiency and speed its transition away from fossil fuels. The foundation stewards the largest open dataset that tracks websites running on renewables, with an open tool suite used over 3.5 billion times.

Closing the Forum will be Dy Jacqui Taylor, sharing her insight and expertise on the evolution of the digital enterprise, finding the golden thread of resilience as tech continues to change as well as how to achieve the NetZero agenda.

Along with the themes of the forum, this event preview was written using ChatGPT, with insight shared by our keynote speaker Howard Pyle. Share your thoughts on using these emerging technologies by registering here to join, the forum is free for qualified attendees and you can view the full programme here. 

CIO

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Digital transformation has embedded IT at the center of business strategy, making all organizations technology enterprises today, irrespective of their industry. Business processes, culture, workflow, and systems are all necessarily impacted by digital transformation efforts, which by definition overhaul how business gets done, expediting efficiencies, modernizing the enterprise, and — when executed well — enhancing profitability.

It’s little wonder then that CEOs across the world are attaching high importance to digital transformation as a means for achieving their future goals. According to KPMG’s latest 2022 CEO Outlook survey released in January 2023, 72% of the 1,325 CEOs across 11 markets have an “aggressive digital investment strategy, intended to secure first-mover or fast-follower status.”

But driving radical change in any enterprise without a well thought out strategy is a recipe for disaster. Before embarking on digital journeys, IT leaders must address several key areas that could otherwise stymie the entire process.

Unfortunately, the following planning, or ‘phase 0,’ mistakes are too often made by IT leaders looking to move forward with digital implementations before they are truly ready to make good on investments.  

Failing to secure LOB bandwidth

IT leaders must first gauge the readiness of their organizational engine to drive digital transformation. Without adequate resources, intentional change can quickly become chaotic. Resource assessment is a vital phase 0 or even phase -1 process of any digital initiative.

Most digital transformation initiatives fail because of lack of resources. While IT leaders often focus on planning, evaluation, partnerships, and platforms, they often forget to assess the human resource bandwidth required to implement, execute, and make good on the completed program — in particular within the lines of business (LOBs) impacted by by digital transformation.

No digital initiative today can succeed without LOB sponsorship and involvement. For instance, if a company intends to overhaul its recruitment strategy with a new digital solution, there must be complete involvement of the human resource department. However, in most cases, the HR team already has its hands full with its day-to-day workload and is unable to take out time to work alongside IT on the project.

With low HR involvement in meetings and feedback phases related to the project, IT will struggle to hit goals and timelines, jeopardizing the initiative’s outcome.

While it is relatively easy for an IT leader to put his or her team in place before embarking on a digital transformation journey, it may not be as easy for LOB leaders to identify the right team members to be involved. Therefore, it is on CIOs to ensure that their LOB counterparts set aside the right talent from their departments to be involved in the process and prioritize their participation alongside their daily work. This must be done right at the start, not after the project has launched, else the CIO will have to continue to re-baseline the timing and requirements of the initiative. Cross-functional teams are vital to digital success, and CIOs should insist on them.

Misunderstanding the organization’s digital maturity

Another major reason digital transformations stumble is the lack of visibility business and technology leaders often have into their organization’s digital maturity before they begin. To become digitally mature, an enterprise must know its capabilities. This is an imperative precursor before deciding to go digital.

Each company has a different level of digital maturity at the enterprise, technology, and functional levels, and how it complements business. If business and technology leaders understand where they stand on this digital maturity curve, it gets easier to know where they intend to go and how long will it take to reach that destination.

The onus lies on the CIO to apprise top management on the status of the company’s digital maturity, so they know where they stand. For instance, if a company is in growth mode, it may need to align resources, scale up its technology platforms, and hire more employees. By getting to know the digital maturity in each of these functions, technology investments can be prioritized and aligned in relevant areas accordingly. In the absence of this, companies can make investments in wrong areas without realizing larger value.

Some questions CIOs can ask as part of the digital maturity discovery process could be: Does the company have a clear strategic vision, objectives, and direction? How does the company rank (laggard, mediocre, or leader) against its competition? How consistent is the organization’s digital experience across various channels?

To get more visibility into digital maturity, CIOs would be wise to create digital maturity indexes and link them to various facets of the business.

Launching without a clear mission

Any digital journey kicks off with a problem that is worth solving. It would, therefore, help if there is a single, clear statement that throws light on the problem at hand, those experiencing it, and the reasons to solve it. IT leaders may come up with lengthy project briefs and comprehensive RFPs but without a clear, precise problem statement they are all no good.

A well-honed problem statement provides clarity for all involved. Deep into the complexity of a transformation, team members can return to this document for guidance, using it to help address drift or any additional issues or questions that may arise along the way to ensure they stay on course and on mission. A clear problem statement can also be helpful if a technology leader has taken up three or four projects simultaneously, as it can help with prioritization issues and any overlapping complexities that might arise to help ensure each project is successful.

A simple exercise such as a drawing board session can go a long way in understanding the pain points of the relevant stakeholders and coming up with a refined problem statement. A couple of weeks of such a collaborative process, prior to getting into a long-drawn digital initiative, can help business and IT to get on the same page and ensure they stay focused on delivering the optimal outcome regardless of what they encounter along the way.

Digital Transformation

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , ,

You heard about a nightmare scenario playing out for peers at other companies and hope it doesn’t affect yours. Trouble tickets are rolling in, and there’s a lack of qualified people to address security alerts and help desk issues right when customer demand, supply shortages, and potential threats are at their peak.

Even with flexible remote work policies, the most seasoned employees in roles such as customer support, data science, business analysis, and DevSecOps move on to greener pastures and leave—just when they finally seemed to figure out how everything works.

Why is an exodus of skilled knowledge workers becoming a recurring pattern in customer-oriented organizations, and what can IT leaders do to improve their digital employee experience (DEX) to convince them to stay?

The great hybrid office migration

A few lucky “born on the web” companies were built on the premise of 100% remote work. The pandemic of 2020 forced the rest of the world to move knowledge workers out of the office into fully or partially remote work models. 

Migratory employees in technology roles appreciated the newfound ability to work from home in sweatpants and avoid the daily commute. Many idealistically vowed never to return to work for an employer that required them to come back to the office.

Employers benefitted too, releasing some of their real estate for savings on facility costs and reducing travel expenses. Less scrupulous bosses took it a step further, capturing additional hours in the workday by implementing draconian attention monitoring tools or letting employees stay on duty beyond typical office hours.

Now that the pandemic has become endemic, some companies are reversing their position on remote work and asking employees to come back into the office, at least some of the time. We’re settling on a hybrid model of digital work. In 2023, 58% of knowledge workers in the United States will continue to be able to work remotely at least one day a week, while 38% will continue as full-time remote workers.

Despite the initial novelty of having pets and kids hilariously interrupting Zoom calls, this new normal of blurring the lines between work and home life has not turned out to be all unicorns and rainbows for digital employees.

Dealing with digital work friction

Employers used to be able to tell teams to stay late in the office to fulfill a rush of customer orders, or be on-call to respond to issues on weekends. The signs of employee burnout were easy to predict even before “the great resignation” of the 2020s. 

CIOs built or bought applications to allow virtual work, which allowed more team members to be available online to respond to requests through remote access, without coming into the office. This was helpful, but unfortunately the burnout rate has only increased for today’s digital worker who may have lost separation between work and home life, and staffing still couldn’t keep up with workload. 

A Gartner HR study recently estimated that 24% of workers would likely shift to a new job in 2022–and this turnover rate is especially true of knowledge workers who must interact daily with the company’s systems. Compared to pre-pandemic employee sentiment, 20% more respondents cited their digital work experienceas a significant contributing factor to job satisfaction.

Even with some arbitrary job cuts happening at larger companies, skilled team members can find work elsewhere if they are frustrated, and unfilled roles in customer service, SecOps, and engineering positions are still common. 

Potential recruits can check any number of salary disclosure sites to figure out what they are worth on the market, and they can also look on Glassdoor to see why employees are dissatisfied working at a company. In a hybrid work world, a bad employee experience is not always about low pay, long hours or “mean bosses” anymore–it’s about digital work friction that inhibits their ability to deliver meaningful value.

Employee expectations of DEX

All employees want to work for employers with fundamentals, like fair compensation, a harassment-free workplace, and work/life balance. In specific, digital employees have a unique set of concerns about the technology environment they must work within, since in many cases it is their only connection to co-workers and customers.

This is why CIOs spend so much of their time researching the digital tools employees use and spinning up new projects to upgrade that experience.

A successful DEX technology suite can positively impact employee sentiment if it delivers for them on three dimensions:

Engagement: Are employees using the company’s suite of productivity tools, issue tracking, collaboration, and system monitoring tools on a daily basis? Individuals want self-service platforms that will work on their target workstation or devices, but they also need education, documentation, and expert support from the organization to maintain successful adoption.

Companies can measure improved engagement through monitoring and visibility into organizational, team, and individual usage patterns, but more importantly, they should offer mechanisms for a positive feedback loop, so employees can register their preferences and concerns about the suite.

Empowerment: Are individuals, teams and regions authorized for just the analytic, management, and problem-solving tools and data they need without unnecessary friction or distractions? Employee empowerment is a continuous struggle for many companies to deliver, as permissions for analytics, user data, work items, and access privileges are usually highly customized to meet overlapping work, customer requirements, and regulatory regimes.  

Empowered employees proactively identify emerging demands and roadblocks, and effectively take action to collaborate with the right team members to find solutions. 

Efficiency: Intelligent automation triages and prioritizes important customer issues for teams, and helps individuals filter through irrelevant alerts from disparate systems and services. Employees progress through tasks with fewer interruptions, spend less time on pointless root cause analysis, and remediate resolutions with automated actions.

All employees want to make progress on goals. The upside of efficiency is almost limitless because as one productivity constraint is removed, another bottleneck will appear upstream or downstream.

Enterprise expectations of DEX

From the CIO’s perspective, DEX is best thought of as an enterprise-wide transformational initiative that increases the value of critical talent over time, rather than as a project that delivers short-term gains.

The customer still comes first. But let’s face it, there are already enough customer-facing performance metrics in the world. 

DEX turns measurement and metrics inward, then captures even more value from the intentional feedback and non-verbal cues provided by employees.

This virtuous cycle of continuous feedback and improvement of the ‘three E’s’ of DEX will fuel engagement, empowerment, and efficiency for employees and executives–and better performance, not just on meeting revenue and cost targets, but in terms of employee satisfaction and higher retention rates.

The Intellyx Take

Work has changed forever. 

From a morale perspective, remote workers might miss something about the camaraderie of an office: the exciting pre-launch demo, an in-person standup, an informal desk visit, or a coffee break to share ideas about a particular issue with colleagues. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make DEX the best it can be, wherever the team is located.

Therefore, every organization will need to define a digital employee experience that engages and empowers employees, making every working minute a more efficient use of time, including taking some well-earned time off to unplug from the digital world.

©2023 Intellyx LLC. At the time of writing, Tanium is an Intellyx subscriber. No AI chatbots were used to write any part of this article.

Digital Transformation