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Task Automation or Digital Transformation?

Task Automation or Digital Transformation?

Jun 19, 2019 | Application Platform, Data Management, Digital Ecosystem, Digital Transformation, Digital Transformation Platform, Digital Transformation Software, Enterprise Software, Software Development, Uncategorized

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork? Stanislaw Jerzy LecIs

Task automation: Are SaaS and RPA tools distracting you from true progress in your digital transformation?

Task automation is a critical aspect of digital transformation

It’s a funny thing. When leadership teams get wrapped up in software app selection discussions, the PURPOSE of technology can get so easily lost. It’s as if, the more technology options and possibilities come into the foreground, the more they become the SUBJECT, not a CONTRIBUTION to the desired outcome.

Particularly when enterprises are considering a digital transformation, this technology ‘target fixation’ is a real issue.

Leaders have to be technology aware these days – DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION is too big for the CTO alone.

Businesses today live on data and their relationships with customers and suppliers exist as data flows through a software conduit. The technology organizations use defines them to their customers. It also makes a huge impact on profitability (i.e. how efficiently an organization translates its customer value into shareholder returns).

I am always surprised by how many experienced sales and marketing leaders say they are awash with software apps and robotic solutions for task automation. Each of these tools had been selected for doing a particular task or job really well – and I’m sure they do – but the unintended consequential impact of using all of these tools was a paucity of technology that did little more than distract from their core agenda.

The world of business computing has shifted from a discussion around best-of-breed apps to solve particular needs, to looking more holistically at business models and how enterprises can maximize customer experience and shareholder returns with a single, unifying platform.

How to tackle task automation

There are several ways leadership teams can tackle the automation and ‘digitalization’ of their enterprise.

One option is to start from the ground-roots, looking at the task-related problems of work activities and lever in new tech-tools like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to make improvements one task at a time. The challenges this ground-up approach fosters include a lack of control afforded to IT and compliance teams over data, the increased risk of silos of data and activities being created, and the probability that any step-change in workflow design (or new tools and mechanisms) could obviate the need for these low-level tasks completely! There is a big risk that internal (and external) sponsors of technology tools will FIND more and more task automation opportunities to justify the time and spend on solutions, distorting how resources are being used to achieve departmental ends not enterprise level outcomes.

How to tackle task automation

There are several ways leadership teams can tackle the task automation and ‘digitalization’ of their enterprise.

The Bottom Up Approach

 One option is to start from the ground-roots, looking at the task-related problems of work activities and lever in new tech-tools like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to make improvements one task at a time.

The challenges this ground-up task automation approach fosters include a lack of control afforded to IT and compliance teams over data, the increased risk of silos of data and activities being created, and the probability that any step-change in workflow design (or new tools and mechanisms) could obviate the need for these low-level tasks completely!

There is a big risk that internal (and external) sponsors of technology tools will FIND more and more task automation opportunities to justify the time and spend on solutions, distorting how resources are being used to achieve departmental ends not enterprise level outcomes.

Digital transformation drives data re-use

Another task automation option is to explore your current use of hard-copy documents and any document workflows.

With document and business process management solutions, enterprises are able to turn their traditional paper-based workflows into a digital (superior) alternative, sometimes installing machine-to-machine processing and eradicating the need for humans to take on the role of ‘sub-processors’ or ‘glue-ware.’  

Getting task automation right 

How is your enterprise moving ahead with its digital transformation? And is it starting at the right level?

Unless organizations have established a digital transformation governance team, the probability is that task automation falls to departmental managers and portfolio holders that are rewarded on the performance of their silo.  Inevitably, when in search of quick-wins, the likely consequence of this lack of top-down control is that middle-managers will focus on plugging gaps and short-terms economies rather than step back and revisit the big picture.

Equipping teams and individuals with the SaaS apps they need (or like to use) might well be creating far too many rabbit holes for leadership teams to get lost in.  Re-visiting business model designs and then considering a digital orchestration using a unifying applications design and deployment platform may sound like a longer-term agenda but the alternatives may just turn task automation into a task itself.

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About Ian Tomlin

Ian Tomlin is a management consultant and strategist specializing in helping organizational leadership teams to grow by telling their story, designing and orchestrating their business models, and making conversation with customers and communities. He serves on the management team of Encanvas and works as a virtual CMO and board adviser for tech companies in Europe, America and Canada. He can be contacted via his LinkedIn profile or follow him on Twitter.

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Two-Speed IT Or Not, That Is The Question

May 23, 2019 | Digital Ecosystem, Digital Transformation, Digital Transformation Platform, Digital Transformation Software, Low Code Development, Uncategorized

It’s no secret that creating digital platforms and ecosystems demands a faster paced-IT capability.  But is moving to a two-speed IT model the best way to go?

IT leaders are challenged to keep innovating while over 60% of IT budgets remain focused on keeping the lights on.  Consumers and workers alike expect apps that ‘just work’. They expect IT innovators to rapidly source always-on, powerful, and instantly intuitive solutions to capture, access, manage, and share information.

To keep pace with the need for near-constant digital re-invention, a new kind of IT rapid DevOps team is needed and a ‘fail-fast’ prototyping approach that in itself requires a high-productivity applications platform to support it.

Management teams recognize that they can’t ignore the importance of digital technologies and their influence on markets and business models. Organizations have a stark choice; to embrace digital, or die.

Buy or Build

In this new digital market reality, enterprises are faced with the option to buy an existing digital platform and ecosystem to support their business model orchestration, or build their own. In most cases, the only way for organizations to achieve a competitive edge is to do the latter.  Recognition of this change makes IT an intrinsic core competency of any business, not a support department only there to keep the lights on.

McKinsey & Co. suggest companies with digital platforms enjoyed an annual boost in earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of 1.4 percent, compared with the 0.3 percent gains of non-players.  They go on to state that performance effects are cumulative, with EBIT improvements adding to early-year gains, so over a five- year period, platform players may capture an additional 10 percent in EBIT growth—a company’s 2 percent EBIT growth, for example, would increase to 2.2 percent in year five.

 ‘The right digital-platform strategy’, Insights Report, McKinsey & Co, May 2019

DevOps – The Right Approach?

Enterprises are creating DevOps teams to support and speed up their digital transformation, embracing digital innovation, enabling them to reduce operation costs.  Sometimes, these teams are carved out of existing in-house resources and continue to report to the IT department, but in other cases, Chief Digital Officer (CDO) roles are appointed to ensure a new culture is stitched into the design of this key enabling team.

Which Route? Two-Speed or Integrated?

It’s only an opinion, but my experience of two-speed team structures for digital transformation hasn’t been satisfactory. There’s a risk that some great people get left in the ‘slow-speed’ IT team that end up feeling disenfranchised. Also, the leadership of the two teams can end up squabbling. creating disruption and distractions that are at best unhelpful.  That said, if both teams accept that their roles are important, and the right personalities are placed in the right seats, perhaps it could work.

The Third Way

My preference is a third project structure. It’s what German companies call the ‘Organization Department’.  It’s a department responsible for managing change – a continuous improvement team that includes IT, analysts, legal, HR, marketing,and program management competencies in a single unifying team that sits within the body corporate led not by IT but the CEO. 

Why this structure?  Because agility in business these days is a process.  It has a life-cycle like any other process. Organizations must accept that change is not an intervention, it’s an always-on aspect of organizational performance.

Use Encanvas AppFabric to supercharge your Digital Transformation

%

88% of businesses say they are already under-going a digital transformation

%

On average middle-managers spend a quarter of their time searching for information... only to find that 50% of the data they find has no value

%

47% of job categories may be taken over by machines in the next two decades.

%

85% of businesses believe that cloud technology will transform their business or industry

%

On average over 60% of enterprise budget is spent on 'keeping the lights on' technology

%

40% of business managers cite a lack of urgency in the company as the biggest barrier to digital transformation

Source:

1. Altimeter Group Digital Transformation Survey
2. University of Oxford
3. Gartner (2112)
4. Gartner (2112)
5. Oxford Economics and SAP (2012)
6. MIT Sloan Mgmt. Review

 Tool Kits Matter

Without the right tool kit, it’s not sensible or practical to consider in-house development of the technology you’ll need to orchestrate your business model.  When businesses continue to use manual coding of apps, they inevitably fall foul of its inherent weaknesses.

Encanvas software, and similar tools like Mendix, ServiceNow, and OutSystems equip businesses with the ability to design, deploy and run their own self-authored apps.  Encanvas is specifically engineered to support the project process for orchestrating business models through a series of software developments modules.  This way, it removes the technology obstacles of creating enterprise-scale applications, such as coding, integrating, and testing new applications.

Live Wireframing Make Fail Fast Prototyping Affordable

a fundamental principle of rapid app development is that it’s best to start small with the minimum set of requirements and get something working so it starts delivering value.  The alternative to this is building a mammoth software requirements specification (SRS) document that conjures up so many ‘nice-to-have’ features that it becomes impossible to economically produce.  When creating a best-fit app module, involving stakeholders (ie Customers, Partners, Users) directly in the design process always works better.

Removing code and presenting WYSIWYG results in a workshop environment is the best way to do this.

A Live Wireframe is a fully functioning application prototype (pre-UAT) that proves the red-flag issues that the project team determines as being the biggest risks to project success.  The task of producing a Live-Wireframe is performed by having stakeholders work ‘across-the-desk’ with a business analyst who creates the resulting live-wireframe design in near-real-time.

As soon as line-of-business stakeholders get presented with a screen of code, they shy away from feeling they should contribute to the development process – it’s just too overwhelming.  With Live Wireframes, stakeholders get to see during the design workshop, the live system they’re going to be using in all of its glory.  Seeing instant results makes an enormous difference to project success, but it requires built-for-purpose development tools; a unifying design and deployment ecosystem that removes the need for IT to master a dozen different technology components before they can produce any outcome.

Two-Speed IT is unnecessary when enterprises create an Organization Department and install a culture of prototyping by employing Live Wireframes. This way digital platform design and management becomes an embedded capability of the enterprise, ensuring agility is seen as a constant (and is appropriately resourced).

How To Run Live Wireframing Projects with Encanvas >

Ian Tomlin

Ian Tomlin

Author

Ian Tomlin is a marketer, entrepreneur, business leader and management consultant. His passion is to help make great ideas happen. Relentlessly optimistic about the potential of technology for good, Ian’s 30+ year career has focused around the intersect of strategy, technology and marketing. He writes on subjects including enterprise computing and organizational design. He also works as a consultant and advisor to the executive teams of PrinSIX Technologies, Answer Pay and INTNT.AI, helping to rethink their marketing in order to tell their brand story.

Ian has founded a series of successful businesses including NDMC Ltd (2003), Encanvas (2006), and Newton Day Ltd (2019). He has written books, articles and guides on brand, digital transformation, enterprise applications, data science, workforce management, and organizational design. He can be reached via LinkedIn or Twitter.