Digital dialogue: 6 transformation insights

Closely linked to this shift in culture is the skills gap issue - and it’s a global one. With many employees having worked within the same organisation for decades, they are ill-equipped to help their company leverage next generation technologies.

Mark Ardito explains: “Through no fault of their own, many workers don’t possess the skills they need. There just hasn’t been a lot of focus on internal learning.” And since hiring tech talent is next to impossible in the current market, that means organisations must invest now in training programs to enable their workforce.

Société Générale has embarked on an ambitious digital literacy program targeted across all areas and levels of the bank. “It’s really important for employees who are not technology native to acquire new skill sets that didn’t exist 10 years ago. They need to understand why we’re talking about cloud, API and what impact those technologies will have on their jobs tomorrow,” says Sarah Kandil, ”We also need our senior leaders to understand what they need to know in order to proceed in a data-driven company. It’s back to that cultural shift.”

Likewise at Michelin, where learning is a top priority. Romina Guevara explains: “If employees have trouble learning or adopting new technology, the most important pillar supporting our transformation will fail. So we created a digital passport program, in which role-based passports with specific sets of courses are available.” The uptake on this initiative was significant. Course completion rates increased 20 times year over year compared to the original elearning platform. Intelligent automation was used to send out course lists and gamification was built in to encourage participation.

Shifting from data-rich to data-driven processes requires up-levelling of skills and opens up new employment opportunities, dispelling the myth of potentially high levels of job displacements.

So far this year, tech industry jobs grew by 207,000 positions and there are still over 200,000 unfilled jobs in the U.S. IT job market (Computerworld, December 2022).

By making data more widely available, it can be used to inform decisions, encourage collaboration and drive innovation, resulting in better outcomes for organisations and the people they serve.

“Most enterprises are data rich because they have been in ‘store and hold’ mode for years. The challenge now is to make that data available in a way that it can actually be used to advance the business,” says Mark Ardito. He goes on to cite this powerful example of what can happen when data is not shared: “During the pandemic, we saw supply chain breakdowns, which in large part was due to data not being shared across the many teams that are part of a company’s supply chain.”

The idea of democratising data is a great concept, yet it is easier said than done. While advanced technologies - like data mesh - offer the means to make data widely accessible, discoverable and secure, enterprises require expertise to execute. Since in-house digital skills are often in short supply, engaging an experienced technology partner to lead the way is often the best path.

Romina Guevara explains Michelin’s approach: “We’re working on a huge transformative project that has the purpose of bringing all sources of information, internal and external, into a single corporate data lake. This is more than 200 sources of information, including information that lives in peoples’ brains or on paper, so it’s not all in a digital format. We are eager to learn and implement new technology, which will help us continue to provide the best customer experience.”

Banks have traditionally been data rich and insight poor. With evolving customer needs and expectations, it’s more important than ever to transform the way data is used, governed and secured. “It’s not a question of not having data, it’s having data that is structured enough to extract insights so that we at Société Générale can make informed decisions,” says Sarah Kandil.

As technology and platforms become more mature and datasets become more robust, we can rapidly enhance our capabilities. Machine Learning (ML) services, such as pre-trained models like Azure Cognitive Services are examples of how organisations can leverage AI technology - and within a matter of weeks be closer to advanced analytics and a prescriptive domain.

A few decades ago, CIOs were responsible for governing IT operations and services. Today, it’s a different story. Along with their C-level peers, CIOs have a seat at the boardroom table, talking business and operational strategy. In these days of digital transformation, the IT department itself has transformed; it is now an enabler, helping the business achieve goals, enter new markets and create new products and services.

• Take Walmart as an example of how IT has played a strategic role in creating an entirely new product line. Most people think of the company as a bricks and mortar retail giant - and it is. But Walmart is more than that; it now supplies small and mid-sized retailers with online, fulfillment and pickup technologies to aid in their digital transformation.
• Goldman Sachs, a well-known bank and investment firm, is another case in point. The company is now selling transactional data (such as commodities bought and sold) to other trading firms, so that they can run their own analytics.

Without forward-thinking CIOs and advanced technologies, these initiatives would not be possible.

CIOs now play a vital role in helping their organisations understand the overall cloud economics landscape. Only by empowering leaders across all departments to embrace technology as a strategy will companies remain competitive, especially amid economic uncertainty.

Recents research underscores the strategic role CIOs play in today’s organisations:

• 53% of CIOs are being asked to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives (PwC)
• 60% of execs list digital transformation as the "most critical growth driver in 2022" (PwC), and
• 80% of business execs said the CIO is the key stakeholder in driving innovation (Deloitte)

Creating a test and learn culture is the best way to rapidly realise the benefits of digital transformation. Some practical tips to achieve this include:

• Think big, start small: Build something small and meaningful, a minimum viable product (MVP), a 6 - 12 week project.
• Assemble a cross-collaborative team: Seeking others outside of the core team will help you avoid bias in the way you go about modelling and architecting your solution. As you encourage other voices to be heard and involve SMEs and stakeholders in the process, you will get buy-in inherently.
• Leverage your partners, technology platform providers and business partners to learn about what works well and what doesn’t.
• Constantly iterate, just as you would develop software in an Agile way.

A significant amount of progress can be made by moving and maturing your organisation along a spectrum of transformation… one project, one use case, one thing at a time.

Technology is evolving at a rapid pace and, while our panelists mentioned several that hold promise (including blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and metaverse), the following three were of particular interest:

• Low code platform capability is something that businesses all over the world can leverage to bring application experiences to light very quickly. By establishing a Center of Excellence and building in security and governance, this capability can be extended to citizen developers - those who are not traditionally tech-oriented people. “This is a very exciting opportunity. Microsoft is developing these products and services, so that you can feel comfortable unleashing this capability into the wild within your organisation,” states Priya Gore.

• Intelligent automation has a wide variety of efficiency-boosting applications, including data analysis, process optimization, and intelligent bots with conversational AI capabilities for customer interaction. By automating time-consuming and tedious tasks and reducing human errors, employees are freed up to focus on higher value work. “Organisations are using intelligent automation to accomplish more with less in today’s hyper-competitive world and economic climate,” says Romina Guevara.

• Application innovation is a key element of digital transformation, providing an environment and tools to improve workplace collaboration, increase the speed of innovation, improve competitiveness, increase productivity and reduce infrastructure costs. Mark Ardito states, “Technology partners and cloud providers can provide strategic advice and technical expertise to help identify the best use cases for your enterprise.”