TWINS* n° 2: A take away from my digital journey

* TWINS (The Way I Note Subjects) is a short personal note about a topic I learnt, worked on or have a thought about.

I started digital transformation journey five years ago joining a team in charge of digital transformation of our operating center in Paris. I had this new and interesting opportunity just after my presentation of a digital use case in transport engineering and logistics deployed for a multi-billion € mega project which I was involved in as technical manager. This successful use case (not the only one in the enterprise) presentation was a tangible example of digital using IoTs, real-time data storage, automatized planning, data analytics and strong visualization features; a tangible example of digitization where enterprises in my sector of activity have had just started their global digital transformation. Having this first experience in digital, and knowing how the artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms work (since my Ph.D thesis using a subset of AI) I joined the team.

My digital journey started by defining a framework of digital transformation with my manager and teammates for Paris operating center. I developed a work-stream on data & artificial intelligence. I started to roll out acculturation sessions around data and artificial intelligence. My small team started to involve business domains (with different level of digital maturity), to identify potential use cases, prepare the business plans with domain experts, and validate the budget through an innovation process. We did regularly mapping of data & AI companies, working with IT hand in hand, and launched a portfolio of initiatives sticking to the global road-map we defined in this new department for our digital transformation. I organized the first AI event called AI Corner in 2019 showing internal digital use cases at our tower building in Paris La Defense inviting 7 business domains, 10 internal data & AI experts, and 2 student projects from an engineering school (part of my scope in enterprise-universities relations). The AI event attracted 250 visitors and was a success at enterprise level with congratulations from SVP of the operating center. With the team we had opportunity to work on digital strategy of whole enterprise at corporate the year after involving all operating centers, many talented managers and experts. Today, our enterprise is a leader in digital-enabled energy project EPCI execution and provides also digital solutions and services to clients; strong, talented teams deliver these digital solutions and services in an agile manner. Furthermore, an exciting part of this job (besides the transversal activities), was the contact with the digital ecosystem, from clients (internal and external) to digital startups, data development companies and IT.

My objective here in this note is not to write about the parameters for a successful digital transformation (there are today many references for this topic). However, if I pick only one take away of this journey which is one of the keys for a successful digitalization; detailed work processes through business process management (BPM). A business work process is a specific activity or series of related activities that accomplish a specific organizational purposeful goal and produces consistent outcomes.

An enterprise which has more aligned and simplified documented work process in details (not only at high level) will have more acceleration in digitalization. Detailed, aligned, simplified work processes mean also to secure enterprise data, eliminate content silos, and speed up the processes. Enterprises with heavy legacy due to diversity of geographical zones, business units, merges and acquisitions, spin-offs, different legacy ERPs, CRMs systems have usually more challenges to align in detail their work processes, where a governance and alignment is vital.

Hence a prerequisite for teams before involving in a digital development is to review group work processes with BPM team and business domains to identify bottlenecks and improve and align on work processes in detail. BPM team can work on existing business procedures and functions to conclude and complete the work processes with business domains. They can use tools to measure success of a business work process, track the completion of different steps within the work process and evaluate the quality of it.?This activity helps also to boost business operations efficiency and gives better visibility to enterprise into how the business works. Therefore, this exercise of alignment and adoption is crucial for scale up, roll out and run of a digital solution at group level of an enterprise.

In conclusion, the game changer for enterprises today is go faster in digitalization in an agile way, predict accurately the resources they need, focusing on development phase, and lower the risk of disruptions in development having beforehand detailed and simplified work processes.

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January 2023, Reza Armand AHMADIAN