Business Digital Shaping
Helping organizations embrace the digital revolution: digitization and automation of processes, but also changes in business models.
How to transform yourself
Rethinking your strategy
Strategic analysis
The digital revolution is impacting organizations in many ways:
- Technologies, knowledge sharing, communication
- Operational processes, production processes, sales processes, recruitment processes…
- Consumers’ and customers’ lifestyles and needs
- Partner ecosystem
These are Darwinian times for organizations: while some players are preparing to emerge and take center stage, others will gradually, or abruptly, disappear from the landscape.
To deal with this situation calmly, a fresh analysis is needed. These methods have been around for a long time (360° analysis, SWOT, market analysis, BCG matrix…), but we need to (re)apply them in this new context, learning to think outside the box and questioning ourselves in depth.
Strategic action plan
Today, many organizations are completely overwhelmed by the scale and number of projects they have to manage simultaneously. Recruiting new staff (project managers, business analysts, Agile coaches and scrum masters, etc.) may be the answer in some cases, but it won’t be enough. This is also a source of fixed costs.
Thanks to strategic analysis, it is possible to assert and push forward the development of new business models. These new models will temporarily coexist with the old ones. To take advantage of opportunities in a period of ongoing technological revolution, you need to know how to integrate uncertainty: move forward without rushing, while remaining agile.
To reduce risk, on the other hand, you need to know how to accelerate and catch up. But followers have one advantage over pioneers: they can benefit from best practices and capitalize on the simplest solutions.
Digital strategy
Implementing a digital plan can have several objectives: strengthening online presence, improving the customer experience, creating new business models or simply digitizing internal processes. These are action plans that will mobilize the entire organization: from the business lines to the IT department. Such a plan will be based on a definition of clear objectives, stages, milestones and resources.
Digital Business
Successful digital and industrial transformation
The value chain represents all interconnected activities within a company, from design to delivery to the end customer. Defined in 1985 by Michael PORTER, the value chain defines a company as a chain of activities transforming inputs into outputs.
Digitization opens up two new lines of work:
- The digitization of processes, with their attendant automation and robotization.
- Value chain transformation
Process digitization and robotization
Electronic document management, business intelligence, process robotization tools, systems integration, low-code development tools: there’s no shortage of examples of process digitization and robotization.
Together with their IT departments, organizations need to define a comprehensive target vision, supported by a clear strategy and methodical means of execution. Individual initiatives, which are often haphazard and out-of-focus, create redundancy, consume time and energy, and fail to create the necessary added value.
Transforming the value chain
In addition to digitization and process automation, the value chain itself will also change:
- As businesses become more complex, cross-functional functions are being created or reinforced, particularly in services;
- Disintermediation is changing customer relations;
- Innovation, research and development and IT are gaining in importance;
- Integration of supplier and customer value chains.
Numerous sectors have been, or will soon be, totally transformed: the music industry, the logistics industry and the last mile, telemedicine, education and higher education, recruitment, consulting, and so on.
Some examples :
Not all industries can plan for the long term. Certain market conditions therefore require a dynamic production plan that offers the following advantages:
- Industrial efficiency
- Monitoring changes in demand
- Absorption of logistical contingencies
- Organizational resilience
“Integrated Business Planning”, for example, involves coordinating or integrating several forecasting processes: financial, market and production forecasts. Over and above the information systems aspect, the implementation of these methods requires significant change management, with reinforced collaboration between departments.
With the dematerialization of expense reports, supplier invoice processing is a classic for any organization. The processes are well known and standard, the tools mature and the productivity gains easy enough to achieve. Nevertheless, in this case too, a review and standardization of purchasing processes is necessary, including stricter application of internal rules and governance.
However, it is important to note that for certain industries or certain customer/supplier relationships, the implementation of a supply chain integration portal is more appropriate.
In both their professional and personal lives, employees expect online services that are intuitive and secure. Deploying a new employee experience will not only deliver significant productivity gains for human resources, but also enhance the company’s “employer brand”.
Going a step further, the robotization of administrative tasks is a major source of productivity gains. These are departments which produce a large number of documents and certificates of various kinds. These activities are well covered by modern tools.
Price catalog review is a tedious and sensitive exercise. Statistical algorithms can easily be used with data analytics tools to create fast and reliable pricing systems, for example.
