Seven secrets of successful transformation

In today’s fast-moving and globalized business world, it’s all about change fitness. You snooze, you lose. Constant customer expectation shifts require constant adaption of business operations – including people, processes, systems and data. Without change fitness as a response, you gamble “va banque” or “all in” for disruption, as the fast adopters eat the market share of the slow ones. Reasons enough to introduce special guest Tobias Unger, VP and Global Co-Head for Strategic Customer Transformation at SAP, sharing his seven secrets of successful transformation. Let’s dive right in.

1. Transformation has many FACES

It puts people first, not technology. Unlocking employees' collaborative superpowers is the key to sustainably change and adaptation. Technology capability is an enabler, human ability the determining factor and only multiplier in the change equation. People scale technology to augment their execution power - it never happened the other way round. Thus, if you invest in technology invest in your peoples' ability to use it at scale first. And in their motivation, as every change needs purpose. Directions change as requirements shift, purpose prevails.

2. Transformation means DELIVERING VALUE

It's about your customer's and shareholder's WHY. Operations don’t transform for efficiency only but for effectiveness to deliver on the peak promise of customer value. Great customer experience and satisfaction are the result of well-orchestrated value chains and operations, which will require "band-aid level" fixes on the frontend as well as more sophisticated and integrated change on the backend application side to achieve speed and impact. Still, value realisation will require sustainable and native solutions at a certain point. "Unlocking" bottlenecks only goes as far as pothole fixing where new motorways might be required.

3. Transformation speeds up with CONTENT

In a Cloud world (and on the way there), easy to consume business content is king and queen. Software capability is essential as it defines WHAT you can do, but content is the secret sauce on HOW to cook a happy meal fast. Analytical power is great to drill-down on your past shortfalls, but to shape the future with wisdom and precision across Business and IT, you can't simply start on a blank page. If you are not a cook (and so few of us are), the cook's receipt does the trick. Looking at your spaghetti (diagrams or process flows) is as good as trying to read your "tea leaves" for figuring out the IT change required to get where you want to be. And as restaurant owner's know: learning by iteration is only as good as your client's inclination to play guinea pig. So: the clearer the target design and state, the faster and safer the transformation journey and outcomes.

4. Transformation favours SMALL STEPS

If you are in a hurry, walk slowly. Speed on the impact scale is the result from continuously delivering change in small steps. The sum of increments is the new disruption and the power of small wins are vital to innovation. Transformation is a never-ending marathon thus change fitness levels matter. Disrupting above your corporate fitness levels is risky for results and motivation. Agility has not only solidified as an organisational discipline but has taken the name of "composability" on the software side. Solution and content composability has only one goal: support the agility of Business user driving change. So plan for change. Not for disruption.

5. Transformation runs on CODE

Transformation is not a Business game. It's a Business/IT team sport where only team performance wins. Accordingly, team setup matters: offensive positions need speed and agility, that's where LCNC (low-code, no-code) plays. Defensive positions need stability and resilience, that's why you love your core (backend) applications. Both have to play (and transform) in synch or the team is set to lose. In other words: Business execution automation is intelligent when aligned with core application change. It's about the right approach. Not the right (single) solution. "Business speed boats only" is an offensive game strategy based on the golden carpet fallacy: throw it over the legacy stack in the expectation that what's below will not smell ripe one day. Business "execution" codes are like bees swarming the core application hive. Any lack of coordination wreaks havoc and endangers the survival of the tribe. Real game tactics mean: acting intelligently, not labelling a solution intelligent to cover its shortfalls. And real fitness is not about band-aiding your gap-to-execution pain away forever. It's about using technology wisely by truly mastering code game tactics.

6. Transformation needs COLLABORATION

As people are the only change multiplier, scaling their contribution is key to success. The same goes for constantly tapping their brains in the process. After all, change is made by people for people and everybody loves playing an active part in transformations that matter. Contribution is the key to generate involvement, excitement and adoption. Involvement makes transformation stick. So why not declare change a collaborative exercise and empower "the user" to actively participate? Governance is required as a quality gate to de-risk publishing and releases. But isn't Governance more fun with an engaged and active crowd?

7. Transformation has ONE LANGUAGE

Like English is the leading Business language, processes are the lingua franca of Business transformation. They are not native to everyone, but you can speak them across Business and IT, with your business partners and employees. If it's not spoken in process, it's not actionable (like BI) and may lead to misunderstanding or the need for translation. On the level of processes and tasks, you can discuss change in "me work" and "we work", map it to IT capabilities and system templates and have an optimal discussion for both. So, before you speak change with IT, make sure you have spoken process change on the Business side.

About Tobias

Tobias performs as VP and Global Co-Head for Strategic Customer Transformation at SAP. He is passionate about supporting key clients to transform with impact, most notably in the areas of continuous business transformation as well as business strategy execution.

About Westernacher Consulting

Talk to us at?Westernacher Consulting?and learn more about how the powerful solutions from SAP Signavio can bring your business to its next level.

Johannes Strasser, CoE Lead | Business Process Intelligence at?Westernacher Consulting