DATA DRIVEN - SERVES PEOPLE - MASTERS PROCESS & TECHNOLOGY

We are in the midst of the 4th Industrial Revolution -?AI, Cloud, Digital, Social, Mobile, & Machine Learning technologies abound, and yet all Economic Statistics point to the worst growth in productivity for over 200 years amongst G7 Economies, with the UK bottom of the pile!?How and why can this be?

The Intelligent Business puts People, at the top of the pyramid. Technology is essential, but Data/Insight/Intelligence is the capability that differentiates. Meanwhile, the Process/Function centric design of most organisations harks back to early 20th Century Manufacturing and is altogether inappropriate for the Service based Industry 4.0 economy. Today, with infrastructure on demand available in the cloud and business at the speed of thought, a focus on scale through Process and Function has created diseconomies of scale.

Back in the day, Management 1 0 1 was 'Make sure your people are working on what is Urgent and/or Important!'. Today, with all of the Collaboration Tools, Splunk, GMAil, Outlook, WhatsApp, Telegram, ?Teams, Zoom etc etc it's clear that people are managing the tops of their Inbox, but are they working on what's Important or even Urgent. We need Data powered insight and AI, to release the creativity of our professional people. The lessons I took from the pandemic:

• 'modern offices' had become the professional equivalent of the 'Dark Satanic Mills' of Victorian Engine. People chained to their desks are not very productive;
• looking at some of the Big Tech firms, the workers have become the robots and the machines are making the decisions; and
• many 'non-Tech' businesses that have gone 'Digital', have basically implemented Digital Channels (Web, Mobile, App), on top of decrepit legacy systems, cutting the costs of people powered Call and Contact Centres. In essence putting 'lipstick on a pig' and delivering appalling Customer Service, whilst exposing them further to the relentless growth of Big Tech from Silicon Valley and increasingly China.

Whilst machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI/ML), can outperform humans on point by point decisions, the Intelligent Business, is one which harnesses human creativity, empowered by AI/ML to both meet and predict the needs of Customers and integrate Supply Chains so that those needs are met as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Putting Intelligence at the heart of the Operating Model, allows us to balance Risk and Performance, as two sides of the same data (coin).... Quite simply, the data you need to decide how to best market to and service your customers, is the same data a regulator needs to know that you've marketed and serviced them within the laws and regulations. Likewise if you can provide that incoming and outcoming data across the business, 'Democratising Data', every leader up to CEO will be making decisions based upon the same (correct) data. This dramatically speeds up decision making, improves revenues and profits. Furthermore, the transparency and seamless flow of information up and down the organisation will also allow the business to dramatically cut the layers of middle-management, reducing levels from the CEO to Employee from 6+ to 4 or even fewer. That could reduce headcount or increase the numbers of experienced people to better serve customers.

What about those Processes and Functions. Whilst it's still true that you can't put the engine in a car, until there is a chassis to put it into, and regulators like the FCA require businesses to be able to document processes, there is no reason why that documentation can't be provided by your system (AI) as an output of how it made a decision to best service the needs of a customer. Processes are essential for high volume 'Precision Manufacturing', but counter productive for the highly creative activities that humans are best at doing. Instead, we need to be able to dynamically reconfigure activities to best service our customer needs and that can only be effectively done by Humans and Machines/AI working in harmony, powered by Data!

The Intelligent Business outcome, high performing happy employees and delighted customers.