Why transformation requires a process-first mentality

Add bookmark

Ian Hawkins
01/02/2020

In 2020, automation technologies will reach a maturity and price to become much more attractive to businesses that have so far resisted digital transformation.

Charles Araujo, founder of the Institute for Digital Transformation says that advances in automation technologies mark "a shift in power away from organizations and to their customers".

"In the industrial age, it was all about optimizing the supply chain, optimizing the core," Araujo explains. "You created business value by driving efficiency and optimization. Now we're seeing that those organizations that are being disruptive, are transforming the customer experience, and that that's how they are generating value."

Ed Maddock, co-founder at software firm iGrafx, says that "filling in the gaps that exist in your overall process" from strategy to execution is at the heart of any successful transformation.

"Establishing a process-first mentality is important to the customer experience imperative," Maddock explains. "Unless you understand what business processes touch that customer experience, then you really don't have a good chance of successfully transforming your digital environment. You begin understanding your processes, the impact of process change, managing that change effectively, taking into account risk mitigation and putting controls in place."

We recorded a conversation with Araujo and Maddock that covered why some transformations and automation projects fail, how to keep control of changes within a business and how companies should respond to the disruptive competitors who will be a feature of the business landscape in 2020.

Discussed in this exclusive podcast: