Tag Archives: Transformation
Overcome the Most Common Roadblocks to Digital Transformation
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Your digital business is constantly changing: customer demands are shifting, as are the means of production and operation. To support effortless experiences, new business opportunities, and real-time intelligence, your business needs to be agile. However, transforming into a digital business that enables agility is not easy. You have a lot of legacy architecture and a culture that’s just not ready to change. Fortunately, you now have two resources to help you overcome any roadblocks you might be facing in your digital transformation efforts.
Both Gartner and TIBCO have recognized the most common roadblocks to digital transformation and have laid out manageable road maps of how to overcome them. Using both the Gartner report (talked about below) and the TIBCO solution (the TIBCO Responsive Application Mesh blueprint), you can become a truly agile, digital business, regardless of your current technology debt or any other hurdle that may be preventing you from becoming a digital organization.
To begin, Gartner explains three application architecture trends that you can use today to facilitate transformation, modernize your application portfolio, and deliver new capabilities. The three modern application architecture trends that they recommend you adopt to help transform are:
Mesh App and Service Architecture (MASA)
First, you must build a mesh app and service architecture (MASA) that provides fundamental architectural capabilities that enable applications to multi-channel experiences. It responds rapidly to digital business demands such as agility, shared business capabilities, security, and resiliency. As digital business depends on a flexible application portfolio that enables effortless experiences, supports new ways of doing business, and makes the most of new technologies, now is the time to implement a MASA in your organization.
API Platform
Your organization needs APIs that enable access to the services that implement your business capabilities and data. However, It is not enough to just create APIs; you must also manage and govern your APIs and pull them together into a platform of shared business capabilities. You need a full lifecycle management API platform and strategy to design, build, publish, advertise, and manage your APIs.
Event Processing
The fast pace of modern business requires that organizations improve their real-time awareness and decision making. Event driven architectures have proven to be a differentiator for those businesses that have taken the time to learn and deploy them. They deliver intelligent insights gleaned from event processing solutions detecting and responding to patterns in business operations, often in real time. Event processing is an old concept that has never really taken off in many enterprises, mainly due to its apparent complexity. However, embracing this type of architecture in a phased way can greatly speed up your digital transformation efforts.
TIBCO Can Help You Transform into a Digital Business
According to Gartner, to build business agility and transform into a digital business you need to start with three modern application architectures: MASA, an API-platform, and event processing. These provide the foundation for rapid innovation—one that is API-led and event-driven to maximize connectivity and take action on events in the business as they occur in real-time.
To help your organization take advantage of these modern application architectures, TIBCO has devised an easy to use blueprint, called the TIBCO Responsive Application Mesh. This blueprint can help you efficiently build a technology foundation that will enable agility, regardless of your current infrastructure and technology debt. Meaning – if you use the TIBCO Responsive Application Mesh, you don’t have to throw away what you already have. We will help you transform no matter what roadblocks you may face.
To support effortless experiences, new business opportunities, and real-time intelligence, your business needs to be agile. Click To Tweet
Digital businesses are constantly demanding new application capabilities. Thus, application leaders should work to modernize their application infrastructure with the latest trends to enable these capabilities. Read this report from Gartner and learn about the TIBCO Responsive App Mesh to learn how you can implement modern application architecture trends to facilitate transformation regardless of your current situation.
People-First Leadership: Shock, Transition, Transformation
In Navigating Change in Crisis, we explore how individuals and companies are adapting to a “new normal” in order to keep essential services functioning. We provide actionable advice around how organizations, and ultimately the builders of data and analytic apps, are adapting to meet these changes. These insights aim to help you and your team navigate these unprecedented times.
There’s more on the line today than ever before — for people, businesses, and their leaders. A steady hand navigating uncharted waters is a must. Leaders who prioritize people first can mean the difference between success and failure.
In the COVID era, human connections have become even more vital. People-first leadership means bringing positivity to a world where we are all experiencing countless challenges. This leadership style can lead to increased productivity, performance, employee retention, and an overall positive work culture.
In our recent Sisense webinar, People-First Leadership During a Crisis: Shock, Transition and Transformation, Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, joined Amir Orad, Chief Executive Officer at Sisense, and Nurit Shiber, Chief People Officer at Sisense, to discuss the keys to building a robust people-first leadership strategy when companies are faced with new and unexpected challenges.
Managing during crisis: Focusing on the human
People-first leadership means acknowledging that we are all human and experiencing a generation-defining trauma right now, regardless of position. Being honest and transparent about what’s happening throughout the business is essential.
Successful leaders understand that during a crisis it’s crucial to be:
- Human
- Optimistic yet Realistic
- Vulnerable
- Empathetic
- Decisive
“As leaders, we can share that we are going through these challenges as well. For example, everyone has experienced a bad wifi connection and it’s easy to feel embarrassed. But it’s important to remember that it’s ok because it’s showing a vulnerability that we all have and are experiencing.”
Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight
Become the “Chief Empathy Officer”
As a people-first leader, your job isn’t to be the “Chief Cheerleader” but to understand that everyone has unique situations and perspectives. Being empathetic about where your people are at right now is key to your success as a leader. You have to be conscious of how you deliver information and how people perceive it. Emphasizing the need for your workers to engage in self-care and leading by example is necessary for the future of the business.
“We owe it to our customers and employees to give our best, so we need to be successful at balancing extreme work/not extreme work. For our sanity, we implemented ‘Self-Care’ days across the company to balance the extreme work efforts that Sisensers naturally obtain, so we don’t burn ourselves out.”
Amir Orad, CEO at Sisense
Balance your decisions and consider key trade-offs
With people’s wellbeings and livelihoods at stake, it’s important to understand the “trade-off” of being empathetic, while still setting your company up for business success with extra preparation. Having open discussions with your management team on how to push their teams to perform at their highest potential, while being cognizant of the personal issues that everyone might be dealing with is important.
“The trade-offs are always challenging because what’s at stake is people’s livelihoods, long-term and short-term success, and balancing people’s well being and health without being overburned with what’s going on.”
Amir Orad, Chief Executive Officer at Sisense
Maximizing performance during crisis
Understanding that there are things you can and can’t control is crucial in times of crisis. While you can control the quality of presentations, the amount of outreach, and the research and preparation going into demos, you can’t control your customers’ and prospects’ new decision processes post-COVID-19.
“We’re doing more account reviews, more celebration of the pipeline, and more all-around around preparation to set ourselves up for success post-COVID-19.”
Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight
Shifting focus: Finding new ways to give back
When approaching new initiatives in the COVID-era, shifting energy to focus on ways you can help your customers survive, and new ways to connect with them in this new reality is vital. With more companies using analytics to pivot during the pandemic, Sisense has taken the initiative to offer a COVID-19 relief package for customers.
“During the COVID-era, we have shifted more energy into thinking about the community and helping institutions fight COVID with free products and offerings.”
Amir Orad, Chief Executive Officer at Sisense
Focusing on the future and innovation, while adapting to the present, starts with people-first leadership. To strive and thrive in times of crisis you need to balance your company’s need for financial durability with a focus on the health and well being of your employees and maintaining customer-obsession.
For more tips on people-first leadership during crisis, watch the full on-demand webinar.
Nurit Shiber leads our organizational strategy, operations and developing our people and culture. Previously, Nurit was the VP of Human Resources at NICE Actimize where she helped double the employee base worldwide while building strong leadership and organizational foundations. Nurit is best known for cultivating strong company culture, building human-centric people functions and building teams to help companies scale.
API Success: The Journey to Digital Transformation
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Application programming interfaces, or APIs, enable external and internal consumers to seamlessly access, interact, and engage with a company’s data and functions. APIs essentially bind different parts of a value chain together even though the underlying components may be based on different systems, technology, or supplied by different vendors.
The use of APIs can be easily seen in the marketplace through the web of interconnectivity developing between popular SaaS and PaaS providers, along with partners and the developer community. For instance, the customer service management platform Service Now can interact via APIs with the customer master data in your NetSuite customer relationship management (CRM) system so when a customer calls your organization, all of the caller’s correct details are readily available. You know who they are and you don’t keep them frustrated on the phone for 10 minutes while you type in all their information.
APIs make the needed information readily accessible, promote the rapid development of new capabilities, and even greatly reduce the amount of rework required should you switch to a different vendor or datasource. Or, another example of the power of APIs is how your corporate travel site can “talk” to Trip Advisor (via APIs, of course!) to help manage your itinerary, share feedback on the hotel or airline, and help you sync travel plans with colleagues or customers.
The Power of APIs
When companies have access to data and functions via APIs, it empowers them to make smarter decisions, improve customer satisfaction, drive innovation, and identify new areas of business. In fact, many businesses have identified APIs as their largest enabler of digital transformation strategies. According to Harvard Business Review, Expedia.com, for instance, generates 50% of its revenue through APIs and eBay, 60%. The benefits of using APIs are many, including enabling new digital products, reducing time to market, opening new partner opportunities, enhancing customer experiences, and preparing for the future.
To reap the full benefits of all that APIs have to offer, your organization’s API strategy should reflect the key business drivers and goals upon which you are focusing in the market today. Say, for example, you supply a network of large companies with components. And they use an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system like SAP. Ideally, you would provide them with API endpoints so their order management system can talk to your order management system without any manual intervention, leading to automation and a lot of time saved. But how do you build an API strategy that will enable this digital transformation?
Developing a Successful API Program
Developing an API program is a significant undertaking that can have a profound impact on your organization. Because it can drive new products, new innovation, new customers, and new revenue streams, it’s not a task to take lightly. Even though APIs are important, many companies still struggle. We have found that it’s not enough to just start using APIs. In our experience, organizations that establish a comprehensive API strategy, whether the APIs are being consumed internally or externally, are the most successful.
For starters, you need to plan your API strategy like it’s a new business. That includes:
- Aligning to the business goals
- Identifying supporting technology
- Measuring performance
- Engaging your ecosystem
Aligning the business goals with the API program is important, as is identifying the appropriate use of technology and supporting architectures. KPIs are for measuring the success of the API program and ensuring that it is meeting the goals of the business. And engaging the ecosystem is important, whether this is for external API consumers or even internal API developers. It is important to know and understand your audience, what capabilities they need, how to support this audience, and how to build an effective communication plan for your program.
As you can see, building a successful API program is not just about technology. You need to define the foundation of your API program in terms of its strategy, monetization approach, target audience, goals, etc. And then evaluate and find an appropriate technology upon which you can execute the API lifecycle. Think about it. It’s like any other product that you produce. You wouldn’t launch a new product without a go-to-market strategy, would you? APIs are the same. They need nurturing and support to grow into their full potential.
In his new, easy-to-use book, “API Success: The Journey to Digital Transformation,” API and tech expert Nelson Petracek sets out the criteria, questions, and thought processes you need to consider to build and deliver a successful API strategy that is technology-agnostic. Petracek draws on his decades of customer use cases and interactions to layout a guide that your company can use to create and run a successful API program.
Global Supply Chain Management For A Rapid And Dynamic Transformation Environment
Large corporations with global operations define their global supply chains with the intent to match supply with demand. More importantly, they consider material flows, established manufacturing and co-manufacturing sites, storage locations, cash flows, technological advantages and restrictions, regulations, tax benefits, and market opportunities.
These supply chain operations run in technology systems of record, planning and analytical applications, and global trade management systems that support solutions to resolve a complex set of regulations to maintain compliance with export and import processes.
Many use global intelligent transfer price supply chain (GITSC) business processes to:
- Optimize the landed costs for every product to the customer destination
- Define the total costs of ownership
- Define the relationship with the market and customers in terms of customer acceptance
- Understand and manage customer satisfaction and market share
Here is an example of a GITSC that represents the flow of a product manufactured in China, reprocessed in the European Union, and finally sold in the United States of America.
The transfer pricing strategy in this model shows how the product flow gains tax advantages by using operational ports in Singapore and the Netherlands to offload the tax revenue.
In this example, the GITSC model shows that the total global tax accumulated is $ 29.50, for a total accumulated profit of $ 611.50. If the same supply chain did not use the tax advantages of Singapore and the Netherlands, the estimated tax rate would be $ 192.30, with a net profit of $ 448.30. This example GITSC offers an 85% reduction in tax payments and 36.30% net revenue increase.
The following figure shows the GITSC transfer pricing model in blue and the standard supply chain transfer pricing model in yellow.
Companies running GITSC models implement business processes supported by IT systems that allow the execution of transactional operations to comply with tax, foreign trade, and customs regulations.
Areas of opportunity for global intelligent transfer price supply chains
The first area of opportunity is the inclusion of an intelligent business system that supports decision-making to manage changes in the supply chain. This is both a challenge and an area of opportunity. These business-intelligence systems rely on the ability to collect transactional data across the supply chain. The objective of increasing the current analytical capabilities of the supply chain is to maximize global after-tax profits by determining the flow of goods and the transportation cost allocation between each of the supply-chain actors. The inclusion of simulation models is the first attempt to stabilize the decision making, with the changes inflicted on the supply chain elements, and the addition of artificial intelligence heuristic expert systems.
The second area of opportunity is to enhance current GITSCs based on lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic. The opportunity lies in managing the supply chain ecosystem, not in an isolated and disintegrated industry ecosystem model.
This industrial ecosystem integration is considered the most important priority to enable supply chain ecosystems to efficiently operate in this new reality characterized by fast, dynamic changes.
Join us in our exclusive webinar session on May 19 to get an overview of the SAP Readiness Check tool, which gives a first analysis of your existing SAP ERP application, highlighting key project activities.
Digital Culture And Enablement In Finance Transformation Journeys
Part of the “Digital Finance Transformation” series that provides a framework for CFOs to move forward confidently on the journey toward digital transformation
In finance transformation journeys, one of the hardest parts is to create a positive climate that supports an innovative environment for change. This is one of the most mentioned key issues within the area of finance transformation. Digital innovation in business areas like logistics or sales is promoted much more heavily and therefore they serve as attractive role models for finance. Creating a tailored change-management plan that considers the organization’s culture is crucial for all CFOs.
Elements of a digital culture
Norms, values, and symbols are key indices that shape decisions, actions, and the behavior of organizational members. An organizational culture can be defined as a shared pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. Thus, a digital culture evolves in digitally transforming companies. It’s a constant change process as part of a vision, especially for CFOs. The elements must be specified for financial departments based on the maturity of their digital culture.
The key elements of digital cultures are:
- Leadership in a digital culture fosters autonomous working conditions for accountants, which encourages self-reliance, initiative, and self-management, as well as creating an environment where explorative working is desired.
- An organization focused on entrepreneurship, digital technologies, and agility. It is also influenced by aspects of the leadership culture that support more flexibility to run digital projects.
- Performance combines elements like entrepreneurship, innovation, and learning. Furthermore, it includes a culture of failure that supports employees trying out new ideas and approaches.
- Cooperation within the organization is the main characteristic. It comprises knowledge-sharing and interdisciplinary and inter-divisional working. Collaboration and joint development with customers are also part of it.
- Innovation combines entrepreneurship and learning as well as agility.
- Change is related to the culture of innovation and contains the four elements of entrepreneurship, agility, innovation, and learning.
- Growth, new business, and brand relate to agility as the keys to the use of digital technologies and digital processes.
- Stakeholder and relationship are main characteristics of a digital culture leading to innovation and learning. In addition, customer orientation is key for a successful stakeholder and relationship culture.
- Communication in a digital culture is enhanced by digital technologies and digital processes. They allow a new type of collaboration and cooperation within the organization and with interfaces to customers.
Changing existing into digital cultures
In a fast-changing environment, companies can stay successful if they change their holistic ways of working – if they change their culture into a digital culture. This insight can only be obtained by creating urgency for everyone. Providing digital tools in the finance area – for example, tablets – is an important requirement of today’s job market, but it also helps to lead a company into a digital behavior. Going one step further and in the context of financial IT projects, an agile methodology is essential to reach the right degree of innovation.
Alongside this, the measurement of success has changed. A classical sequence approach with one big “go-live” at the end of a project must be rethought. In addition, the requirements for project members, including the leadership team, have changed. They must enjoy the trust of all concerned stakeholders and pursue the same goals. This can be achieved only if employees of different departments and stages are united.
The vision and strategy must be communicated well. When all involved parties can muster a common understanding for an agile way of working, the risk that a transformation project will be canceled decreases. The motto here is: high tolerance for failures. Those who fail early learn faster. Therefore, a unified vision with a suitable strategy must be developed. At best, it has a motivating effect on employees and acts as a support during the first steps of change.
For a smooth transformation, the leadership team needs to remove potential obstacles. This ensures a higher commitment within all stakeholders as well as trouble-free business continuity. To keep all necessary stakeholders involved, short-term successes should be communicated and celebrated. This illustrates the transformation progress and keeps all parties in a good mood, which increases their commitment. Change is a constant companion in times of digital businesses. Therefore, a mindset of a steadily changing business environment needs to be established within the company. Only then can the company adjust to changing market demands and business requirements.
Takeaway
Changing a corporate culture to one of digital transformation is certainly not an overnight process. Every cultural change takes time – from the initiation to the moment when the culture shapes the action – and can only take place step by step. In summary, it’s best to carry out cultural change in areas where technological change is particularly relevant to business activity or for reasons such as cost optimization. It is important to focus on the corresponding quick wins, which in turn contribute to reinforcing cultural elements.
Dig deeper into “How CFOs Are Successfully Navigating The New Reality Of Uncertainty And Change.”
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Starting A Digital Transformation Project
It seems like no day goes by without me hearing the word “transformation” tossed around, usually with the prefix “digital.” At a deep level, I think everyone knows and understands that transformation of any kind is not only difficult but, in most cases, has an extremely low probability of success.
The term digital transformation is a misnomer that has quite a lot of people confused. It is first and foremost transformation enabled by digital technologies. But people confuse this by making “digital” the operating word rather than “transformation.” This is probably where most of the trouble starts with all digital transformation projects.
And yet, everyone talks about digital transformation as if they are pretty sure that their project will not only see the light of the day but also be very successful.
In the past, people used terms like “innovation” and “disruption” so much and in so many different contexts with so many meanings that they lost relevance. It looks like digital transformation is going the same way.
Acceptance
I believe that to have even a shot at success, all {digital} transformation projects need to start from accepting the current reality or state of affairs. And true acceptance can only happen if we own the role that we have played in creating and shaping the current reality.
The questions that need to be answered at this stage are:
- What is our current reality?
- What was our role in creating this?
- Are we happy with this reality?
If we are happy with our reality, there is nothing much to do except to continue doing what we have been doing. No transformation is needed. You can’t force-fit this onto a set of people who are happy with their reality.
If we are unhappy with our reality, the question then is: Does it hurt? And how much does it hurt? Does it hurt enough for the people to want to change? Change is difficult in and of itself, and it becomes a lot more difficult if it is done without wanting to change.
Vision
Once we decide that the current reality is hurting us enough and that we want to do something about it, we need to come up with a vision of what the future looks like. This is where taking on a leapfrog challenge would be a good start.
Leapfrog challenges, according to Porus Munshi, are challenges that force you to rethink the way you do things. This is your aspiration. The bigger and bolder the aspiration, the more you are talking about transformation.
A good example of digital transformation was the onset of ATM machines. They fundamentally changed how we interacted with banks. The same is happening now with peer-to-peer lending and the revolution that fintech firms are bringing.
The goal of any transformation project is to reimagine work, not to do the same thing faster or cheaper or better. There is a place for doing that; these projects are called continuous improvement projects.
Even if we are trying to make things better, faster, and cheaper, we need to look at the scale of impact. In his book Making Breakthrough Innovations Happen, Porus says it is better to take on 10x challenges rather than 20% or 30% challenges. When you are trying to do 20%, 30%, or even 40% improvement, you tend to do more of the same: work harder, reach out to more people, get more efficient, increase your sales conversion ratio, etc.
However, the moment you are attempting a 10x improvement, you know right away that doing more of the same is not going to help. You are forced to think differently, explore newer ways of working. You tend to look for completely new opportunities; you get permission to challenge the assumptions that the entire business or even industry is operating in, Therein lies the true opportunity to transform.
Alignment
Then comes the need to share this vision and get the teams rallying around the vision. This is not going to be easy. By definition, a 10x improvement project will sound too difficult. It will look improbable.
This will bring out all kinds of excuses from the team:
- This is just impossible
- No one has ever done this
- We don’t have the ability or the talent to do this
- We don’t have the budget for this
- Our partners will not agree
- Our margins don’t support this
- And many more
This should tell you, the leader, that you are on the right path. If you don’t get these kinds of responses, it means that you haven’t aimed high enough.
However, it is now your responsibility to get the teams aligned and agree to the vision you want to aim for. Two ways to do this are:
- Burning platform scenario: Show the team the grim reality of the present course of action and what that means for all. Make them feel the pain the team will have to endure if everything remains as-is, then show them that the only option is to burn your ships and march forward toward the new reality. The idea is to scare them enough about the current course that everyone wants to change and move toward the new vision.
- Garden of Eden scenario: Talk about all the great things that the new reality can bring. This is when you motivate the team with a vision that is so much better than their current reality that there is no doubt in everyone’s minds that the new reality is where their future lies. This is all about enticing them with the gifts that the new vision will bring them, once realized.
It’s easier to use the burning platform, as humans typically react much stronger to negative than positive emotions. However, leaders need to be careful about which strategy to use, as people are not dumb and can easily see through any kind of deception. So, if you are not on a burning platform, don’t use one, or find a way to create one that all can agree with, then use it to kickstart your transformation project.
In conclusion
Two of the most important success criteria of a transformation project – digital or otherwise – are the scale of transformation you’re aiming for and getting buy-in from the people who will be working on the project. These are necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for any transformation project to become successful.
Strong execution is another necessary (but not sufficient) condition for successful transformation projects. I will talk about execution in a future post.
Want To Transform Your Business? Transform Your People
This post first appeared on Musings of a Neo-Generalist and has been republished here with permission.
Where does “digital transformation” meet your customers? Usually in your sales quotes.
It’s no secret: Microsoft is keen on digital transformation, “reimagining how you bring together people, data, and processes.”
And while many companies are implementing best practices in Microsoft digital transformation (we’ll call it MDT for short, here), just as many customers of those companies are greeting MDT with a collective shrug, saying, “Well, that’s great for you: what’s in it for me?”
They’re right. Because while we focus on MDT for ourselves or for companies we’re equipping with D365 CE, Azure, and Office, the people on the other end — the customers of OUR customers — don’t typically realize the benefits of MDT (or, more often, don’t realize that they’re realizing the benefits of MDT).
But when you put a quote in their hands — a professionally designed, vertically-targeted sales proposal with optimized product and pricing configurations — you are, in effect, also delivering the benefits of MDT to them as well.
If you’re serious about digital transformation as a cornerstone to driving more revenue and optimizing your overall business, then the way you put a quote into their hands is by extending Dynamics with a configure, price, quote (CPQ) solution.
D365 + CPQ = connecting people, data, and processes
The point of MDT is to connect all three — people, data, and process — through your tech. But let’s talk about simply connecting people, first.
Connecting people
When you digitally transform your proposal process by (whether it’s CRM or ERP), you empower your own salespeople to create more effective, more professional sales proposals in about .
Where does this part of MDT reach your customers? In both the process and content of the RFP response they receive from you.
Process-wise, you’ll be able to send a proposal more quickly and cleanly to each prospect, and also be able to more quickly and completely follow-up on each step of the process.
An MDT approach can help transform the content of your proposals as well via a that ensures only optimal pricing and product selections or bundles are presented to your prospect.
As CPQ is a centralized solution, the improvements it delivers are enterprise-wide. No matter what rep might be sending a quote, you’ll know that the look and feel are professional, that the pricing is optimal, and that it made it into the right hands at the right time.
Connecting data (and processes)
helps you collect critical sales proposal data that you might not otherwise be able to capture. And that data can have an immediate impact on process improvements that drive more business.
First the data piece: while most CRM systems, for example, offer metrics around quotes sent and quotes closed, there are many other “moving parts” in the process that should be noted: replies, revisions, etc. When you apply MDT to your sales quoting process, you create the opportunity to uncover new data streams that can give you actionable insights to impact your bottom line.
Sticking with CRM as an example, when you connect this data to the rest of your sales funnel data, you get a clearer picture of what might be the most critical juncture in the process of turning a prospect into a customer: the timeframe when they move from receiving a quote to signing it.
MDT and ROI
When you digitally transform your sales quoting process by adding CPQ to Dynamics, you quickly empower your people and can uncover more data to fuel better processes. And as you’re applying MDT to the closing process, there may be no faster way to realize ROI on digital transformation.
Learn how digitally transformed its sales proposal process and saw quotes times reduce by 50%, errors reduced by 50%, and sales rep onboarding time reduced by more than 90%.
5 Strategies for Digital Transformation in Banking – Strategy 5
There are 5 strategies banks can use to overcome challenges with the help of Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Strategy 5: Modernize and strengthen lead generation
Historically, banks have used “push marketing” to drive leads but this is becoming less and less effective. Direct mail, cold calls, and email can be intrusive. The last thing you want is a prospective consumer opting out of all further bank interactions.
Social media should be a lead-generation tactic for every bank. Social selling is considered “pull marketing,” and it often results in warmer leads that convert at a higher rate.
The buying process is changing and banks need to connect with prospective customers by serving them in the customer’s channel of choice. Doing so illustrates a bank’s sophistication and focus on customer experience.
How Dynamics 365 can help: Introduce social selling into your lead-generation strategy
In the age of social selling, researching the companies and people you are about to call is invaluable to the prospecting process. Social media such as LinkedIn and Customer Insights integrations allow for integrated research beyond current bank information.
The tight integration between Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn allows seamless access to LinkedIn profiles, prospects, and leads. Company details infused with social information allow you to drill down into related connections and pull lists of potential targets.
“Today ‘s highly digitally engaged financial services customer has 4.4 products, compared to only 2.7 for the digitally unengaged.”
Source:
Social selling amplifies your ability to reach warm prospects. According to Corporate Executive Board (now Gartner), referrals, including social networking leads, rank highest in their qualification. And company news, recent posts, and promotions can all serve as great icebreaker conversation topics.
helps banks score and prioritize leads, track referrals, monitor social insights and record every customer and employee interaction in one place.
“Nearly half (47 percent) of U.S. social media users today actively seek customer service through social media”
Source: NM Incite Social Care Survey
Interested in more strategies? Download the full white paper:
Learn how banks can use Microsoft Dynamics 365 to help improve the customer experience, streamline processes, optimize opportunity management, build relationships, and modernize lead generation.
Crowe CRM for Banking
Crowe works with 1,800 financial services organizations across the country, including more than two-thirds of the top 100 U.S. banks. With , you can get a true 360-degree view of the customer – with a single view into all communications, interactions, operations, and relationships.
For more information about Crowe CRM for Banking, contact us at +1 877 600 2253 or visit .
By Ryan Plourde, Crowe, a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Gold Partner
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Red Thread Transformation: Building Blocks Of Connected Transformation (Part 2)
Part 2 in a 2-part series about the importance of devising a structured and referenceable digital transformation strategy. Read Part 1.
In Part 1 of this series, we addressed the idea of “looking through the right lens” for transformation by moving to an intelligent ERP system. Now, let’s now unpack what needs to be thought through and understand how each of these layers helps connect a logical and rational approach to transformation: “Why do you need to do what?” “What can you achieve?” and “How can you make it happen?”
Threaded thinking
Ambition: Why do you need to do what? Companies typically believe in the value of strategic and vision planning, and these are often deconstructed into corporate and departmental strategies, roadmaps, plans, and programs that can be referenced to create a lighthouse articulation of where the business wants to go.
Business capability modeling enables a clear articulation of the business ambition: what capabilities are needed to support the strategic intent. Once constructed and agreed upon with the business, this is the framework to help position the potential “pains and gains” in relation to capabilities.
Organizations need to know where they are going and for everyone to understand how to plot a way forward and measure success. This intent should be then further elaborated with experts from the solution provider in focused sessions sharing real experience from other customers on how to achieve this.
These sessions identify the pain points that can be alleviated and the gains to be achieved, informed by the “art of the possible” into a consolidated view from which to create tangible business value.
Value: What can you achieve? At the heart of any successful business-change program is a true understanding of the opportunities and challenges. This is where the light bulbs start switching on and the program starts coalescing.
Business and IT must engage in content sessions with experienced consultants and architects to detail how to close the gaps in current business capabilities to resolve the pains and make the gains. At this point, the business innovation opportunities are explored in light of the solution provider’s product and innovation roadmap for priority areas of the business capability model.
In these sessions, a common understanding is defined on the opportunity and the solution though the explanation of strategic gaps, pains and gains, and demonstration of product capabilities and innovations, product roadmaps, and pragmatic customer experience.
Essentially, this helps share an understand of the challenges and the potential solutions to establish solution fit, and get buy-in by demonstrating the business value in a more hands-on way. Furthermore, it establishes confidence in the ability to deliver business value.
It’s then a classic process of defining opportunities, validating performance through benchmarking, and articulating the value potential. “Must-haves,” “quick wins,” low- hanging fruit,” and “forget it’s” are prioritized into a set of focused opportunities.
Direction: How can you make it happen? Up to now, the focus has been on a forward-thinking view of business potential, prioritizing value. The challenge now is to design a successful transformation program to achieve this potential. This is where ideation hits the reality of how to make it happen.
A straw-man future solution model can then be built embedding all the capabilities into an architecture showing how the strategic intent is delivered by business capabilities, and what application services will be employed.
Early-stage opportunity potential will be identified that needs further evaluation as proofs of concept or co-innovation with product teams. Roadmaps will be developed for each function area, describing the business opportunities aligned to the core product roadmap to secure a future-proofed functional roadmap, taking advantage of the standard product. This then needs to have been consolidated into a single roadmap to show how the business can deliver future business capabilities in an integrated platform.
The challenge now remains to plot dependencies around the business priorities, other programs, product roadmap, and technical dependencies. A review of implementation approach options, pros, and cons will then help define the best implementation approach. The outcome is then a firm and trustworthy transformation roadmap and plan as the foundation for a business case.
The final step is to summarize this work into a case for change and to make recommendations to the board with a robust business case and proposition. This will make clear how the proposed plan supports the strategic business intent, the true business value potential, the cost of viable options and plans to secure the investment, and the recommendations for immediate plans and resources needed to make this a reality.
Conclusion
It is essential that business challenges and digital changes be guided by a clear line of sight of a thread connecting business ambition, the value, and a carefully thought-out navigation of the direction to get there.
By investing in this structured process, the transformation program is informed, clear, and purposeful. It will demonstrate the benefits of a tightly oriented team that can efficiently deliver its business outcomes.
Why look to SAP for help
In collaboration with the business, IT, and partners, SAP Digital Business Services can provide the glue to help your organization navigate across this “red thread” to articulate how technology solutions in the hands of an empowered workforce can deliver on strategic goals. SAP consultants and architects connect via their own networks to engage SAP product owners and developers in this dialogue. They also advise on using the latest agile accelerators, tools, and methods to design, implement, and support these solutions most effectively.
Discover how SAP S/4HANA can help you transform your business for dramatic results.
AI Digital Document Transformation Increases Business-Critical Efficiencies
According to a study by Xerox, 46% of respondents say their time is wasted by paper-intensive workflows. Despite that fact, almost 50% of businesses have only just begun or are still considering implementing digitization.
The fact is, paper just can’t move as fast as digital files. The same goes for humans. Although we are fast approaching a truly digitized age, many industries, such as law and government, still struggle with paper dependency as a result of legacy business processes.
Luckily, digital document transformation via AI and machine learning can help streamline business-critical processes via automation and the marvel of modern computing. Companies that don’t ride this wave may well get left behind.
How does it make business more efficient?
Automatic and consistent drafting of documents
A lot of time goes wasted by using staff hours to draft new versions of existing documents. Every time a new employee joins, it means going through a process of training on how to use the house style. All of this can be (and already is) sped up by document automation via AI and machine learning.
Or let’s say you sign a new client and log them into the system. A standard agreement can be automatically drafted that uses the client’s name and details within seconds. You can rest assured that there will be no human errors and that the styling will be consistent.
This will allow your employees to focus on their job and not the mundane and repeatable task of drafting documents.
Classification and processing
The amazing ability of AI and machine learning algorithms to extract data has another use. These machines have become remarkably good at reading the context of content. Documents can easily be sorted into document clusters or arranged by date, topic, field of business, etc. Some document management software does this by using optical character recognition (OCR) to read text content.
Not only does this cut down on time to do this manually, but it also has a host of other benefits. Documents are easier to find once they are digitally filed, and this further reduces your dependence on physical copies.
Data extraction and analytics
Being able to automatically “read” information has another important use. AI algorithms can pick up data points or important pieces of information and collate them across documents. Businesses are then able to pull specific data sets from their documents.
This doesn’t just go for what’s in the documents but also the documents themselves. You can get info on how many documents you have according to type, client, etc. It will allow you to track your own document usage and statistics and stay on top of shifting patterns and trends. It can also lead to future integration with automatic invoicing, for one example.
Streamlined digital admin and document management
Document management software suites usually come with an easy-to-use interface that you can access from the computer. Instead of handling physical documents or having to make changes to templates or existing documents one by one, this interface streamlines the process.
For example, a law firm has many different types of documents. However, it might use a consistent header or logo at the same place on each page. Through the software, you can update these graphics, and the algorithm will make the necessary changes across your company document templates.
Business processes can even be built into the AI’s logic. Documents can be automatically sent to the right individual or department according to workflows based on simple rules. In this way, there is no reliance on a middleman to send documents from one party to the next. Signatures can be automatically collected and the document then forwarded to the next relevant party, for example.
Start to embrace a paperless future today
The benefits of AI and automation in document digitization actually boils down to one thing: Allowing your management and employees to focus on their job expertise. This will streamline business across the board by maximizing working hours and cutting down on admin.
The field of AI document transformation is still very new, but progress is being made with lightning speed. Integration with blockchain technology is already happening and will take the verification, security, and redundancy of document management to a new level. Start on a digitization campaign today to stay at the forefront of streamlining your document-related business functions.
Assistant bots are developing so rapidly that they’re quickly moving from business automation to becoming an integral adjunct to the human mind. Download the executive brief “Robotic Process Automation: The Dawn of Unlimited Intelligence.”