Accelerating Business Outcomes with Digital and AI-enabled Transformation
Despite a few “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” experiences (think Steve Martin & John Candy 😉), Steve Fox and I made it to the 30th anniversary Shared Services & Outsourcing Week (SSOW) conference in Orlando last week.
Suffice to say, the weather in 70% of the US was nasty, from severe electric storms, to heavy snow, wind, tornadoes, you name it . . . TSA delays were almost a light relief!
But this experience was contrasted by dynamic, lively discussion in a workshop entitled “Accelerating Digital and AI-enabled Transformation”.
We explored the full gamut of enabling (and disabling) factors;
- Business Demands, Aspirations, Expectations & Barriers to Success
- Business Outcomes, Business Value & “What Does GOOD Look Like”
- The Nature of Transformation & “End to End” Processes / Value Streams
- The Technologies and the Essence of Digital and AI Success
- The Necessary Data Foundations
- Stakeholders, WIIFM and Customer Experience
- The Art of Execution – a.k.a Getting Sh*t Done!
And more . . . .
There was some great input and debate on some key discussion points;
- What are the Transformation Demands from your Business?
- There is the perennial “faster, better, cheaper” and improved customer service demand . . . and the unsurprising echo of requests that are purely for “AI”. Whilst “how are we exploiting AI” is a reasonable question, we need to get better at asking “what business problems or opportunities are the priority to address?”. Ultimately it all comes down to Revenue Growth, Profit Growth & Working Capital Optimization. A timely reminder to ALWAYS “Start with WHY?”.
- What are the Barriers to Transformation Success?
- The ego and pride of “ownership” in functional silos was discussed as a perennial challenge. Silo performance measures and KPIs, competing priorities, technology initiatives and teams, lack of alignment and clarity on the transformation purpose and ultimate business outcome. All this led to a discussion on the need for an “end to end” process, or “value stream”, view.
- What does “Business Value” mean to You?
- Clearly business value is “in the eye of the beholder”, and getting clarity requires extremely good stakeholder alignment. At an individual service level, this often translates to consistency, customer experience, scalability, operating cost etc but all benefits need to be reflected in something the C-Suite will understand and can be observed in the P&L or Balance Sheet – Increased Revenue, Improved Profitability, Working Capital . . . Functional KPIs are not genuine business value and can actually obscure it!
In addressing one of the questions at the core of AI-enabled transformation, we discussed “where does AI fit, and where does it not?”. It is easy to assume in the hyperbole that AI has subsumed all technologies, but it has not. Deterministic approaches in software remain as important as ever and, in the new world of Agentic, are the perfect bedfellow for probabilistic (AI) techniques.
We shared a simple, but useful categorization. When looking at any process, to determine the appropriate use of AI or other technology, we need to judge the classes of tasks that need technology support (automation or augmentation), for example;
- Logical – Data & Rules Based (Deterministic, Single Answer)
- Analytical – Data & Scenario Based (Probabilistic, Multiple Answers)
- Communication – Content & Time Based
- Humanistic – Relationship, Judgement, Intuition Based
Then we have a better handle on how we might apply the right technologies to the right parts of our redesigned process, to achieve effective transformation.
As Tom Bangemann reminded us, in the plenary session, that “Transformation” is defined as “Metamorphosis”, as in “the caterpillar to the butterfly”. Too often, when leading with technology, we end up with a caterpillar on a motorized skateboard . . . . The metaphor extends to Gen AI and Agentic, but that is for another time . . .
Back in the workshop, we debated, discussed and shared collective experiences and we had a good time 😉 There were even a few laughs despite the early mornng hour.
There are some clear lessons and inter-related keys to success in Digital and AI-enabled Transformation. There are no silver bullets, but many of the lessons are captured in the material below.
Accelerating Business Outcomes with Digital and AI-enabled Transformation
Thanks for reading . . .