At the heart of the Digital World Class performance advantage are two key aspects: operational excellence and business value. When it comes to facilitating business recovery and continuity while futureproofing against global disruptions, the best-performing organizations are those who are thriving in digital transformation and technology enablement.
According to new Digital World Class™ IT research from The Hackett Group, digital-first businesses can achieve superior levels of efficiency and effectiveness, improved agility, and enhanced customer experience.
- Digital world-class organizations will operate at least 34% more efficiently than its peers.
- Through digital world-class functions, total operational cost has a 17% reduction.
- World-class performers spend 32% less on customer service processes thanks to digital technology platforms.
- Tech-driven firms allot more than 75% of their time for analytics which leads to better decision making.
Digital adoption minimizes errors on customer-related services by up to 40%.
“For decades The Hackett Group’s benchmarks have been the gold standard by which most global companies measure world-class performance in human resources and other business services,” said Global HR Practice Leader Harry Osle. “Now, with the growing impact of digital transformation, The Hackett Group is raising the bar further with its shift to a Digital World Class measurement standard. Our new research details how highly technology-enabled organizations are achieving new levels of peak performance.”
Digital transformation journey has raised the bar for companies across a wide range of industries to close the gap to world-class performance. For example, there were continued pipeline data, less operational disruption, and minimal supply-chain blind spots for organizations with fully digitized service delivery models, highly virtualized end-user provisioning, and exceptional IT customer support during the 2020 pandemic shutdown.
“The results are impressive. But the bottom line is straightforward. Our research provides empirical evidence of the impact that digital transformation is having,” said Osle. “For years, companies have been making incremental improvements, optimizing processes, cutting costs and reducing transactional labor to reach world-class performance. But new technologies allow many companies to fast-forward to Digital World Class levels of operational excellence and business value. And they can get much of this benefit by overlaying digital technology on their existing systems, rather than embarking on large-scale infrastructure changes.”
The Path to Digital World Class
Business and IT capabilities necessary for a digital model must have the following characteristics:
- Putting emphasis on leaner teams, more agile ways of work, and a more fluid talent pool
- Incorporating digitized stakeholder experiences in day-to-day operations
- Focusing on a cloud-first approach to new and updated infrastructure needs
- Replacing human tasks with analytical, intelligent process automation
- Aggressively decommissioning old systems to limit technical debt and complexity
Investing more in emerging technologies for a competitive edge
Achieving digital world-class performance requires a focus on six fundamentals:
Agile Operating Model: Always evolving, always adapting, always anticipating changes to quickly respond to demands and expectations of customers, partners, and the business as a whole.
While traditional organizations follow a static, siloed, structural hierarchy; agile organizations operate in rapid learning, decision-making, and implementation cycles. Traditional organizations always let the whims and convictions of the top management govern all business decisions whereas, agile organizations use data-driven metrics to make assessments and provide options. An agile organization can ideally combine efficiency, adaptability, velocity, and stability.
“Successfully scaling an agile operating model requires new skills, behaviors, and mind-sets across the organization,” said a McKinsey report. “Specifically, any successful agile transformation will invariably create a capability accelerator to retrain and reorganize staff, make the agile idea common to all, and develop the right skills across the organization.”
Value-Focused Digital Leadership: Digital adoption is the next enabler of performance.
Organizations that measure their expenses will be able to identify the value of their investment and have the ability to justify costs to improve their plan for digital transformation continually. If you don’t measure, you will be left in the dark; additionally, if you aren’t finding success from what you’re measuring, you can address those areas of improvement by analyzing your measurements and taking corrective action.
According to Stefan Katanic, Founder and CEO of Veza Digital, “Seeking new opportunities, saying yes to challenges, and getting outside your comfort zone are all ways to drive maximum value in business. A leader is someone who has the compass for driving results, becoming the fuse of change, staying ahead of any new developments pertaining to their company or industry — all while keeping an eye on tomorrow.”
Customer-First Service Design: Stakeholder insight helps shape services and their alignment with current and future capabilities.
Customer-first service design highlights sustainable solutions and optimal experiences for all customers – fine tuning these solutions to suit all users’ needs in context. With advances in digital technology continually redefining how user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX) can be realized, the focus is on maximizing convenience, removing barriers, and facilitating an impressive customer journey.
“Customer focus is the lens by which you analyze all your interactions with your customers,” says Jonathan Brummel, Senior Manager, Premier Support at Zendesk. “It’s a core value to who you want to be as a company and how you want your customers to feel about you.”
Extended Delivery Network: Organizations move past a basic “make vs. buy” decision to get the best service at the best location for the best stakeholder outcome.
The pressure to deliver goods faster at a lower cost and with more transparency is higher these days as organizations try to focus on their core competencies. Swift and seamless supply chain management on a global level requires an integrated solution that accesses real-time information from all platforms and systems – whether you operate it or outsource it.
“The overarching goal is to move away from a transactional approach and toward a more strategic, forward-thinking structure, reducing cycle times and adding regional distribution hubs,” says global manufacturing giant Honeywell. “Keeping up with this change will necessitate a complete overhaul of operations based on data and digital procedures – integrating new technologies like AI, robotics, and digital twins into all aspects of its operations and using data from suppliers and sub-suppliers.”
Cloud-Based Modern Architecture: Digital-led architecture increases the reliability, security, and scalability of all business applications, platforms, and systems.
In order to stay relevant and competitive within the global market, businesses must create better digital products and services – and they must do it at an increasingly rapid pace. Modern application development is a powerful approach to designing, managing, and promoting cloud-based products and services.
“Harness digital assets and ecosystems to continually improve customer outcomes and, simultaneously, improve operational excellence by applying digital thinking to customer experiences, operations, ecosystems, and innovation,” explained a Forrester Research.
Digital Enterprise Partners: Offering eclectic, comprehensive, and end-to-end customer solution options that delivers superior IT service management (ITSM) capabilities.
The best digital enterprise partners adhere to well-defined best practices which have bottom-line implications beyond meeting service-level agreements – doing everything they can to help organizations stay successful and, crucially, profitable.
According to Sean-Michael Callahan of the NiVACK Group, “The objective of having the right partnership with digital enterprise vendors or contractors is to fortify company success and overall marketplace performance.” He explained that there should be an intentional process to “enhance collaboration, foster innovation, and drive competitive advantage”.
For more ways to experience Digital World-Class Performance establish through outsourcing partnerships, request for FREE CONSULTATION with an Outsource Asia expert today.
