The Dawn of Sustainable Enterprise

Experience, innovation, and resilience will define our pathway to a sustainable future for all

The past twelve months have played host to a rapid acceleration of the sustainability agenda. The COP26 and G7 conferences concluded with significant progress on the pathway to net zero, and just last month, 173 nations endorsed a historic United Nations resolution to move to end plastic pollution by 2024. Meanwhile organisations across the continent continue to make sustainability a keystone of their operating models. No one doubts there is much more to be done, though I believe this will come with great opportunities for businesses and their wider communities across Europe and beyond.

As we now navigate our way out of the biggest health crisis in a generation, in which we saw society and businesses deal with fundamental disruptions, we need to focus on building sustainable enterprises that will shape the future of our wider society.

At TCS, we believe that organisations governed by purpose will drive sustainability in this new economy. The human experiences of employees and customers, and a better understanding of ecosystems, will define how we do business. As we curate these personalised experiences, we will need to rapidly innovate by harnessing these ecosystems and unite them through the power of digital technology. However, these efforts alone won’t be enough. Alongside a policy framework such as the European Green Deal, the last two years, defined by the pandemic and recent troubling geopolitical developments, have shown us that building resilience must become a vital operational practice.

It’s these tenets of doing business – experience, innovation, resilience and governance – that will shape a sustainable future for Europe and the wider world.?

Creating experiences for sustainable business

There are two stakeholder groups at the heart of any successful business – customers and employees. Digital ecosystems, e-commerce and online platforms have empowered people in the ways in which they can earn and spend their money.

According to a survey of almost 3,000 adults around the world, more than half of consumers (57%) expect the brands they do business with to understand their needs, preferences and wider social and environmental values. Businesses with such personalisation capabilities can now create a formidable competitive advantage.

Therefore, delivering a seamless digital experience consistently across the purchasing journey should be the priority for business leaders. To support these customer experiences, companies need a real-time presence across various customer touchpoints, whether mobile apps, chatbots, smart home assistants or websites. Benchmarking and assessing their CX maturity with services like TCS CX Assurance Platform Services will also enable them to adapt to changing expectations and lead the way in experience engagement.

As for employees, their priorities are changing, too, and millions are voting with their feet in what has become known as the “great resignation”. With work values fundamentally changing as a direct impact of the pandemic, intangibles such as wider purpose, wellbeing, reputation, and trust must now be considered an integral part of the employee experience.

At the intersection of the individual, the workforce and wider society, we believe are 21 elements that are key to informing holistic future experiences.

The 21 Elements of Employee Experience

A critical component of designing future experiences is appreciating the ‘individual as a whole’. Each employee has multiple role identities and competing priorities outside of work and those must be recognised. The new age of digital experience should therefore be human-centric, persona-led, and deeply contextual.

To attract and retain the best talent, sustainable companies will need to focus on the employee experience to build a loyal and motivated workforce.

Our own policy of constantly upskilling and reskilling employees to ensure they stay ahead of the curve is key to their satisfaction – which I am pleased to say has seen us awarded #1 in Europe by the Top Employer Institute. Even at a time when there are half a million unfilled IT vacancies across Europe, TCS has the lowest employee attrition rates in our industry. In the third quarter of 2021 alone, a third of openings at TCS were filled through upskilling and cross-skilling efforts.

Innovation driven by experience

To drive innovation at speed and scale, organisations require a structured framework.

At TCS Europe, we have identified several key imperatives for leaders who want to make innovation a key feature of their ways of work.

Placing empathy at the heart of innovation is key to creating personalised customer experiences through innovation. Companies need to identify with customers in order to best understand their problems, needs, and broader priorities. Coupled with an accelerated speed of learning, businesses can adapt to changing expectations by using emerging technology in a shifting business landscape.

To this effect, we have developed PACE? Sprints to help businesses learn faster and minimise their risk on investment. These immersive sprints are designed as distinct interventions across the life cycle of an initiative, and incorporate design-thinking, lean UX and agile methodologies.

In many companies, innovation has been compartmentalised, delegated to small teams with minimal visibility across the business. We believe the most successful and sustainable companies involve as many people as possible in the process so they can innovate at scale and address the defining issues of the day. To remain relevant and competitive, leaders need to give employees ownership of change – and truly empower them to deliver it.

Even so, in our always-on world, it’s unlikely one individual or company can offer all products or services that address their customers’ needs, nor the wider issues facing our planet. Innovation is best deployed when organisations collaborate and leverage ecosystems. Our Co-Innovation Network, COIN? is just one example of us bringing together a network of experts from the start-up, research, academic and corporate sectors to partner on collaborative innovations for all.

Being bold on vision underpins the ethos of our beliefs in innovation. Leaders need to clearly communicate where they want to go and then take a ‘future-back’ approach to bring this plan to life. A bold vision will help ensure the decisions you make today offer you the agility to navigate the unexpected tomorrow.

Resilience must be ‘designed-in’

It is inspiring to see so many companies investing in experiences and innovating for a sustainable future – but organisational resilience is critical if they are to avoid putting any of this at risk.

At TCS Summit Europe 2022, our CEO & MD Rajesh Gopinathan urged businesses to look deep into the DNA of their organisations as they seek to foster resilience, recover from the pandemic, and face an uncertain future head on.

?“Sustainable growth is no longer a choice, but it is almost mandated on all of us,” he said.

“Resilience requires elasticity at the core of the organisation – our ability to quickly reconfigure ourselves, quickly scale up and down to be able to take on the shock of unexpected change. In many ways the pandemic actually showcased the power of this adaptability”.

Organisational DNA must reflect characteristics that enable success in disruptive times. At TCS, we believe purpose-driven, innovative companies that are adaptable, agile, and collaborative will emerge as the most resilient.

But, in many of today’s companies, long-held legacy policies, practices and systems are serving as barriers to resilience and can be surprisingly difficult to shift.

To overcome this, our Business Resilience Assessment Service leverages a three-stage approach focused on the operating model, business process services and the role of technology. The outcome is a detailed roadmap with key action plans that enable enterprises to prepare for emerging challenges with minimal disruption.

In conclusion, the sustainable enterprises we are building today will define the way we live and work not just tomorrow, but in decades to come. They stand to create a more equitable world, where more people will share the opportunities and rewards inclusive businesses can bring. Sustainable businesses will drive economic growth while protecting the world’s natural resources.

Hybrid work patterns facilitated by technological innovation will allow many of us to become the best versions of ourselves, both at work and at home; while purpose-driven businesses that are human-centric, agile, and adaptable will be best-positioned to successfully navigate the changing and uncertain times ahead.

This new approach to business, defined by a focus on experience, innovation, and resilience and governance, will be at the heart of a sustainable economy that best serves the planet and all of us who call it home.??