You break silo by fostering collaboration
Published on : Tuesday 22-10-2019
Digitalisation is imperative, but enterprises are still struggling with implementation. How can an organisation begin the process?
If you ask me, the process has already begun. Every organisation is, in some form or the other, already embracing digitalisation. The whole objective of digitalisation, however, for most organisations is not clear – and that is exactly a starting point. So, in my mind, organisations need to define their objectives before they go digital. It is very important to have in mind what they want to achieve out of a particular initiative. The KPIs need to be very clear in this regard so that you know what to expect once you digitise a particular process or a particular function. So, fundamentally, there are two things to look at: one, is there value in a digital initiative for a particular process, where it would impact the top line or the bottom line, or impact the revenue or the cost. And two, to locate if it is going to make that particular process or function more efficient and effective. For example, let’s consider order processing, or reducing the error rate for improving compliance, or improving employee morale by taking away the mundane things and providing more experience-oriented capabilities. All of these are processes that get significantly impacted by going digital, and thus, they serve to play important roles in terms of both revenue as well as efficiency.
For many organisations, the stumbling blocks are the silos, which ironically, digitalisation seeks to break. Is this a classic chicken and egg story?
Let me ask you a counter-question here. How do you break a silo? You break silo by fostering collaboration. So now the question becomes: how do you foster collaboration? And my answer to this is that collaboration is based fundamentally on the function of two core things. The first thing is people-to-people interaction, so the question becomes – how do you create an environment where people are able to comfortably talk to each other, in the context of an organisation. Then the second thing is – how do you create opportunities for people to have a collaborative function? I’ll give you an interesting example: we were working with a fairly large engineering products company for process automation, across their order to cash cycle. Much to our surprise, we were able to work with multiple departments, right from sales to back-office order management, even going from production environment and production planning to reach purchasing and invoicing teams. So all of these teams that were working to some extent in a silo, had to share a significant amount of data with each other. Thus, they had to create a process which ended up impacting lots of the functions across the board, and it created a lot of room for people to collaborate and to break silos. Now, our objective as an organisation was not really to work on change management or to work on silo breaking, but to improve process efficiency. And in the process of doing that, we realised that there are so many things that automation and digitalisation can bring to an organisation, bringing a positive change to it.
Is joining one of the digital platforms the only way for an average enterprise?
This is almost like saying that you can swim only if you jump into the river. It’s not exactly wrong, but it certainly limits the options. I would disagree with this idea since there are multiple avenues for a company to go digital without signing up with a platform. Let us consider a very simple example here. Let’s say you deal in a lot of export-related business, and you create a tool which would give you the forex exchange rate at an hourly basis. With this, you can baseline the rate for every single invoice that you raise and every single payment that you make, and you can do it at the rate at which you have baselined. I think that is a great digital initiative to start without actually jumping on to any digital platform per se. In fact, I would like to reiterate again, going back to my first point, that it’s important to look at what is the objective of any digital initiative that you want to carry on. This is what would fundamentally drive the kind of digital capability that you need to build and realise the value that you intend to.
Often, companies get bogged down in discussing technologies rather than outcomes. How should an effective CTO deal with this?
The term ‘CTO’ has technology at the centre, so I don’t blame them. But the perspective I use to think of this is a slightly outside-in view. Consider the following questions: What is your organisation into? What is the end objective that it meets? How can your organisation do it more effectively? What are the kind of initiatives that you need to make your products better, faster, and cheaper? How can you improve customer satisfaction? How can you improve employee morale? Once you have arrived at answers to these questions, then you can fundamentally look at things from a vantage point that is outside-in. This will allow you to be able to realise what is the value you intend to add over a period of time through all the investments that you are doing – it could be in technology or in any other area. And that is what, in my opinion, is the premise of a digital organisation: how are you able to add value to every single interaction that you have with your customers, your employees, and your partners? In my mind, it is not about the technology itself, but rather it is really about the value that can be added. And to understand this, one has to look at the question from the perspective of the business value that one works towards, end to end, and what gets created as a business outcome. If all of this is considered well, then technology will automatically follow as a process.
Finally, is a multiplicity of vendors creating conflict in the process?
My answer to this is both yes and no. Yes, because there are too many vendors with a similar set of capabilities and, more often, an overlapping and confusing set of capabilities, which makes it difficult for an organisation to zero down on exactly what capabilities to add and how to add them. And here is the secret sauce – one really needs to focus on evaluating the capability that the vendors bring from three lenses: one from the process lens, the second from a cultural standpoint, and third, from the perspective of an overall roadmap. The first lens makes us take a closer look at the process of delivery of the capability – is it really aligned to how we, as an organisation, work.
Secondly, from a cultural standpoint, the organisation or vendor that you are going to deal with, consider your cultural similarities – would you be able to work with that particular vendor for a longer period of time, or will it only be one-time transactional engagement that you want to have with them? And the third thing, which is by far the most important, is the roadmap. When you are talking about any capability build, from any of the vendors, the most important thing is how robust their road map is and where will it be three to five years down the line. If you are able to look at your needs from the perspective of the three lenses, I am certain that most organisations will be able to eliminate clutter from the market and arrive at the right vendor for their capability.
Mayank Jain is working with several leaders to establish digital blueprint for their organisations and execute on the digital technology driven transformation agenda. He is passionate about helping organisations add digital workforce into the mix, thereby automating the tasks which BOTs can, and amplify human potential. He is currently working with ITC Infotech as VP – Global head of Automation.