Leading change with the trend map to business transformation

Take a look at the on-demand webinar “Achieving and measuring value from business process transformation” and learn about generating return on investment (ROI) from business transformation projects.

Given the accelerating pace of change that has become common in many economies, it can often be difficult to find your path to success amid these disruptions. Organizations, their management and individual employees will all face the challenge of keeping pace with these rapid innovation cycles.

Proactively querying and adapting business models, ecosystems, value chains, offerings and communication structures can be a key to success for many organizations. It is important not to sink into detailed knowledge and analysis, but maintain a holistic view from above.

Our trend map, Business Transformation and Operational Excellence, outlines the most important trends and their dependencies in the areas of strategic transformation and optimization. This trend map can aid practitioners in identifying important themes and deriving strategies for their own organizations.

Key trends of business transformation and operational excellence (Source: Software AG)

These are the trends that shape the overall picture:

• Business model innovation requires redefining strategic positioning and provides the basis for guiding the long-term orientation of a business.
• Business resilience defines an organization’s ability to adapt quickly and respond to disruptions, while ensuring continuity in business operations and safeguarding employees and assets.
• Connectivity refers to an organization’s ability to network through digital infrastructures and communication technologies. Connectivity enables fundamental changes in the way we work and do business.
• Customer-driven business puts customer needs at the heart of the corporate strategy to attract customers and retain their loyalty to achieve long-term profits.
• Industry 4.0 is the fourth major technological breakthrough in the history of industry and combines production processes with state-of-the-art information and communications technology.
• New work is a collective term for alternative models of work that are shaped by the progression of knowledge and understanding.
• Process automation is defined as the use of digital technology to perform routine business processes and functions with minimal human intervention, freeing up staff to work on more complex and demanding tasks.
• Process excellence encompasses all initiatives, methods and technologies to optimize the performance in terms of elements such as times, costs and quality of an organization’s core processes.
• Regulatory compliance is the set of processes, policies and governance structures that ensure that an organization is operating within the bounds of the rules and standards set for its industry.

The primary trends and subtrends:

Software AG trend map (Source: Software AG)

The following intersections are particularly interesting, as they connect many of the above trends together:

• Digital transformation
• Enterprise management systems and digital twins of organizations (DTO)
• IT and OT connect
• Customer touchpoints, customer journey analytics and customer experience performance

Conventional change management procedures can fall short in times of exponential change and to keep up with rapid shifts in industry trends, organizations should combine strategic transformation with operational implementation.

Successful companies proactively manage change in the face of uncertainty and success in uncertain times is driven by efficient implementation of innovative business models at the organizational, process and technology levels. Organizations can apply the above trend map as a GPS system to understand the potential of the business.