The Most Common Business Process Improvements From Digital Transformations

business process improvement is one of the biggest drivers for digital transformation it's a pretty vague word so what exactly does that mean what are the biggest business process improvements that organizations typically see with digital transformations that's what i'm going to talk about here today [Music] my name is eric kimberling i'm the ceo of third stage consulting we're an independent consulting firm that helps clients throughout the world reach the third stage of their digital transformation journeys and when we're going through digital transformations inevitably most of our clients that we work with are doing it because they want to improve their business processes they want to automate they want better visibility they want to be more efficient more effective provide a better customer experience better employee experience manage their supply chains better all those different reasons why organizations go through digital transformations so what i want to do today is talk about the most common business process improvements as well as the business process improvements that have the greatest opportunity for business value within digital transformation the reason this is so important to understand is that so you don't lose sight of the potential value that you could be getting out of your digital transformation [Music] the first and most common improvement that organizations expect to see in digital transformations is automating manual processes this is oftentimes the first thing that comes to mind when organizations think about their digital transformations and it's oftentimes the lowest hanging fruit it's the easiest thing to address as part of your transformation which is why it's the most common so when we think about automated business processes and getting rid of some of those manual processes that you have in place now that applies to a whole host of different functions and business processes within your organization it can apply to your marketing automation the way you manage and track your sales force your supply chain management your manufacturing your warehouse management inventory management procurement all those different components of your business can be automated and you can take away some of those manual processes those spreadsheets that you're using to track data and manipulate data all that stuff can go away and so you can start to look at ways to get rid of those manual processes so that your employees can spend more time managing exceptions and doing more strategic work as it relates to their day-to-day business processes now if we look at any sort of enterprise technology whether it's an erp system or crm human capital management supply chain management manufacturing execution a lot of those different types of technologies are starting to use machine learning as a way to further automate manual business processes so in other words they're taking highly repetitive redundant business processes and using automation to automate those processes and to do some of the thinking behind some of that more mundane work so that employees don't have to manually transact all the stuff that they're transacting today so for example if you're in the accounts payable department of your organization instead of processing each and every single purchase order that comes in it may be the machine learning can learn what the common normal purchase order processing might be so you can process those for payment and it also knows when there's an exception or an anomaly that needs to be flagged for human intervention and that can eliminate 70 80 or even 90 or more of the manual work that maybe humans were doing prior to automation so this is just one example of many that organizations are doing to enjoy the benefit of automation as one of their key business process improvements [Music] another key business process improvement that organizations often realize from their investments in digital technologies is centralized visibility to information so rather than having to manually go search for data go into different systems or ask people or go look in spreadsheets or manipulate data to get the data you really want now you can have centralized visibility into a whole host of business processes and outputs from those business processes and this is something that can be a game changer for a lot of organizations not only because they're spending less time manually going to search for that data but because now they have easier access and more real-time access to that data and they can make better decisions and just have better visibility and understanding and insights into what is making their business run what's working well and what needs to be improved some of the specific technologies and functions that technologies can provide in today's enterprise technology space is the world of dashboards and business intelligence you look at tools like microsoft's power bi or tableau those are two business intelligence tools that can bolt on to other systems to provide that sort of visibility you also have enterprise resource planning or erp systems that provide end-to-end business processes but also provide centralized reporting and business intelligence to consolidate all the data being captured in their systems and these are just two examples of the types of technologies that are enabling the sort of visibility into enterprise-wide data [Music] another common business process improvement is improved financial consolidation which is partially based on the efficiency gains that i've already talked about but it's also based on just being able to consolidate data across the enterprise to get the financial results that you need and if you look at some of the larger organizations out there in the world you find that they spend a lot of manpower a lot of horsepower on closing the books every period whether it's every month or every quarter every year they have large teams of accountants that are oftentimes doing very manual processes and journal entries and going to manipulate and find data that they need to be able to provide that financial consolidation so having that efficiency and effectiveness and accuracy to your data is important from a business value perspective and it's also important from a regulatory perspective too for a lot of organizations that are publicly traded or have investors that expect real time and accurate information this can be very important from a regulatory perspective as well so financial consolidation and better financial consolidation is one of the more common business process improvements that we see within organizations going through digital transformations [Music] now the first three business process improvements that i've already talked about are i'd call them more incremental business process improvements they can be very significant very material but they're only scratching the surface of what technology can do and what the potential business process improvements could be so now if we shift gears and sort of work our way up maslow's hierarchy of needs and get into some more of the strategic benefits from a business process perspective we can now start to look at real innovative ways that we can restructure our organization and one of those ways is through a shared services model larger organizations that have grown through acquisition or organizations that have multiple locations often in times have built up redundant competencies throughout the organization in other words they have multiple departments doing the same thing and if they were to consolidate those functions and have more of a centralized shared services model they could save time and money and have a more consistent way of doing business for example many organizations find that functions like accounting hr and i.t and procurement as well those are four areas that organizations often find are redundant throughout the organization they're spending too much time and money on people doing the same exact thing and even though they may be doing the same exact function they have different ways of operating so what organizations are doing in many cases is saying we're going to move to a shared services model where we're going to centralize and consolidate our hr or i.t or our finance department or whatever department it may be and we're going to have a common operating model we're going to use the same tool set we might reduce our workforce and and have less people doing more because you're centralizing that function but that can be a big game changer in terms of saving time and money as well as becoming more effective in the way they conduct these business processes [Music] with the advent of predictive analytics and artificial intelligence and other sorts of quantitative technologies that can help provide more meaning behind the data that you're capturing as an organization you're also finding that organizations are able to plan and predict for the future better because they have better accuracy of data and they have these tools like ai and machine learning that can help them make sense of that data and even cast their minds forward to the future to better anticipate what will happen as a result of what's already happened in the past that allows organizations have better planning processes so when you look at things like financial planning or demand planning trying to figure out what your sales and revenue might be your manufacturing planning your procurement planning managing your inventory all the stuff that requires you to make decisions into the future before you have a hundred percent certainty of what's going to happen in the future that can be automated and that can become streamlined to become more effective as a result of ai machine learning and other sorts of enterprise technologies that are providing that sort of visibility another example that's extremely relevant here in the 2020s is supply chain management when you look at broken supply chains and supply chain bottlenecks and the unpredictability of supply chains right now having better access to data and better tools like ai and machine learning can help you navigate that uncertainty a lot more clearly than if you didn't have that tool set and quite frankly that's why so many organizations are struggling with their supply chains right now is partially because of macroeconomic disruptions but also because they don't have the proper tools and data to help them plan for the future so look to this area as a potential business process improvement that can be a total game changer that can deliver a huge amount of value in your digital transformation [Music] at the end of the day one of the business processes that can be most improved with the digital transformation is just better data management and it may sound sort of mundane and sort of a back office sort of function or a real technical function but if you think about it the troubles that a lot of organizations have are related to data in inaccuracy of data in some cases it's because they don't have the right tool set to make use of the data like the bi and the machine learning and some of the other stuff we've already talked about but on the other hand it's also because the data itself is not accurate in other words we're not tracking data accurately we're not putting in place the data governance controls that are required to make sure that our data is accurate and the better data we have the better we're going to be able to take advantage of ai machine learning predictive analytics business intelligence and some of the other stuff i've already talked about so master data management and overall data management as a whole even transactional data management is something that can be a critical business process improvement that can deliver a lot of business value and a lot more effectiveness to an organization as part of its digital transformation so in addition to some of these business process improvements i have talked about i also want to share with you a few different resources that will help give you some ideas on how to better manage your digital transformation and also make sure you get more business value out of that so below i've included a link to a number of different resources including our annual digital transformation report that features a number of best practices and lessons learned from digital transformations throughout the world as well as independent software rankings for all different types of softwares that you might be considering whether it's erp or crm or hcm or whatever the case may be so i encourage you to download that report as well as some of the other resources that have included links to below so if you found this information useful and hope you had a great day [Music] you

Channel: Digital Transformation with Eric Kimberling

Views: 10,063

Keywords: automate manual processes, centralized visibility, financial consolidation, shared services, better planning, improved data management, Business process management, Business process improvement, Digital Transformation

Id: 9QDl3W8aNf4

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 09 2022