Digital Execution: Innovate to Automate to Enable collaborative Experiences

(A snapshot of ADAPT Digi Survey results 2019 - The path to many more perspectives and much more content can be found here - https://adapt.com.au/members/)

For eight years ADAPT has provided unique Australian-based insight and analysis by sourcing local facts and opinions via thousands of survey responses, one-on-ones, round-tables and trusted interactions with the Australian C-suite every year. ADAPT’s local perspective can often make the difference between a wrong and a right decision.

For the last five years ADAPT has focused one of its major Edge events around the opportunities and challenges presented by digital transformation. All IT executives who attend these events are surveyed beforehand to get today’s most accurate and up to date picture of the state of the digital evolution of Australian businesses. Over half the respondents to the latest Edge study have revealed that their employees have difficulty making changes to the way work is done in the enterprise.

Another key finding highlights local digital leaders are striving to move a greater proportion of their IT budgets from back office ‘Run’ activities (currently 55%) to front office ‘Transform’ (currently 22%).

By next year they tell us they would like to free 11% of the funds allocated to run work and invest them in technologies that improve business outcomes for better operational effectiveness.

To realise these outcomes they need to cultivate greater collaboration between their staff. As the deaf-blind American author Helen Keller once wisely remarked:

Alone we can do so little: together we can do so much:

·        Only 35% of Digi Edge delegates reported their digital transformation was advanced.

·        To improve on this more focus needs to be given to boosting employee collaboration. 69% report their staff experience difficulties when working with others across the business.

·        Consider how organisational culture and politics impedes collaboration. The survey showed these were barriers to achieving efficient IT service delivery for two thirds of respondents.

·        Assess how connectivity and collaboration tool sets might assist. Over 60% of the survey respondents regarded such tool sets as a priority technology investment.

·        Be more open to new approaches that seek to create easier cooperation. Only a third of survey respondents described their organisation as innovative in its business practices.

In the current economic climate, if you are not disrupting yourself someone else will do it for you:

·        Recognise that the top reported business priority is better business outcomes. Engage with your executive team to better understand their challenges to see how you could help them.

·        The IT department has a responsibility to be the catalyst for innovation. Technology has nearly always been the source of disruption to established business models. IT must do more in showing leadership to the rest of the organisation about these matters.

·        Don’t be complacent. Nearly 90% of survey respondents recognised that their IT function could do better in terms of projecting a positive, forward-looking culture.

·        You need to pivot the work of IT to the most valuable thing the business can deliver. Three quarters of the survey respondents acknowledged that their inability to do this was a significant inhibitor in getting news ideas and products to market.

By 2020 25% of your IT budget will be spent on transformational IT – Innovate to co-create the technology enabled Human experiences of tomorrow:

·        Make more progress utilising employee experience (EX) technologies. Only 19% of those replying to the survey said they were advanced in this area.

·        Three of the top four Investment Priorities revealed by the pre event survey are in the areas of technology enabled human experiences – Chatbots (82%), Machine Learning (70%) and Natural Language Processing (62%).

·        Two thirds of the survey respondents regard a heightened employee experience as a business priority. Investigate how artificial intelligence could liberate employees from mundane tasks whilst also enhancing the operational effectiveness of the business.

·        Be much more willing to experiment with technology. Over 90% of respondents reported they could do more in utilising innovative technologies. Cloud offers the opportunity to spin up test environments so organisations can cost-effectively assess emerging technologies.

·        Focus on where IT can improve the efficiency of IT service delivery to free up further funds for innovation. Nearly 60% of IT executives acknowledge they could do more in this area.

It’s time to focus on constant Digital Execution to stop today’s Digital strategy becoming tomorrow’s legacy nightmare:

·        Constant digital execution requires your employee’s skill sets to be current. Yet only 19% of survey respondents expressed confidence in their employees’ ability to use all the tools at their disposal. Often the easy answer to a fresh opportunity is acquire a new product rather than better leveraging the tool sets you already possess.

·        Assess how and why legacy processes and technologies have become barriers to achieving efficient IT delivery. Determine how you can avoid this happening with the new digital functionality you are implementing.

·        More needs to be done in the area of workplace transformation. Three quarters of the survey respondents have taken, at best, ad-hoc first steps in this area. Yet the workplace environment is a critical influence on whether the employee work experiences are positive.

·        In a 24x7 world people need to be able to work anywhere anytime. Yet only 25% of IT executives told ADAPT that they found it easy to collaborate with cross-functional teams in a virtual environment. Over 60% advised they encountered difficulties connecting virtually.