Is 10x for Real ?

This saturday morning, I was going through my bookshelf to pick up something to read when I came across an issue of our internal magazine Elixir. The cover story took me back to ExpoTential Day, which we had organised for our management about four years ago. It was a day full of learning and inspiration to kindle “the art of possible” at the top, which would, in turn, give impetus to our digital transformation efforts in the company. The theme was “ExpoTential”, to articulate the use of exponential tools and technologies and their potential use to create 10x outcomes.

This got me thinking as to how much of it has come true. Today, there are various spaces where we see 10x outcomes, while, for many more, we are still in the journey.

So what areas did we touch with the 10x theme?

10x Efficient – Efficiency is the most widespread benefit I can see. Many examples fall under automation including RPA. However, what we have seen over the years is that it is the combination of various tools – Automation + Machine Learning + digital tech like AR/VR etc. — with a reimagined process that brings out the 10x. While we have seen good use of automation in many areas, one interesting example is doing technology transfers between R&D and Operations using augmented reality glasses. It removes the need of the scientist to travel to plants, but handholds plant personnel through the processes to prevent mistakes.

10x Engage – With the use of omnichannel marketing tools, the highest level of personalisation has become possible, creating 10x possibilities. The lockdown period, for instance, showed results even in the most traditional areas, like medical representatives visiting doctors. A medical representative spends more than 95% of his/her time in travel and waiting before getting a few minutes with a doctor to detail various products. The time spent on the road and in waiting rooms gets cut out when one can detail digitally. Additionally, the use of analytics to personalise each interaction between the doctor and the medical representative in terms of products and sequence enables personalized engagement.

10x Insight – For several processes at Dr. Reddy’s, the data to insight journey has become 10x or faster. The investigation of a failed batch in manufacturing used to stretch across several weeks with data collection, analysis and root cause identification. Now, the data gets fed automatically into an ML tool called root cause advisor, which creates the first set of hypothesis for investigators to start with. What used to take six to eight weeks, now happens in less than five days.

Of course, there are many areas where we are still far from our 10x dream. As I think of the achievements and challenges, sharing few learnings as my recipe for success -

·??????Have an ambitious, clear and aligned goal. 10x is possible when vision and mindsets are aligned. One has to break assumptions. The digital lighthouse journey in our biggest plant got the best impetus from the target set by our manufacturing head to become top-decile in every benchmark.

·??????A cross-functional team with the right capability, mindset and enablement is key. Openness of domain experts to try the unknown when an ML algorithm throws parameters they had never imagined, and the readiness of the data scientists to kill the hypothesis when domain experts say that here corelation does not mean causality.

·??????The best ideas come from the most constrained scenarios, where one tends to find alternate ways that would not occur naturally. My team did a VPN project in one week post the lockdown announcement in 2020, which had a remaining schedule of three months. Another good example is our R&D teams creating in-silico solutions in early stage development where the non-availability of inputs materials makes it very difficult to do physical experiments.

·??????One must experiment and be ready to fail. Every time one wants to do A / B testing to test a algorithm in the real world, there’s a risk to the short–term outcomes. Readiness to run experiments knowing that many may not work is important for the journey.

·??????Grit is the key. Sometimes results will come in the first sprint, other times it could be a journey over years. Keeping the teams engaged on the topic, and not losing sight of the end goal is important. Celebrate every milestone. At some point, the technology investment cost may become more than the benefit and that is the time one may want to wait for technology to evolve.

I would like to hear from you –

1.??????Your 10x experience, what worked, what were the challenges.

2.??????The areas / technologies where the journey is easier than others.

3.??????What would be your one-line advice to a 10x team?