Most CEOs have understood the importance of automation led renovation in their organization. Using data driven insights, they would like to see 15-20% EBITDA gains in sales, marketing, R&D, manufacturing, & supply chain.
However, becoming data-driven is becoming a challenge for all the CEOs. They want it, but the initiatives & actions to embed and assimilate data in operational excellence at an enterprise level mostly fails. This is because they
- Plan to see the benefits of embracing data too soon – without proper sanitization, cleansing & curation
- Try to reinvent the core IT systems – that can be strenuous on the budget & can take time
- Have no sustainability plan in mind
One thing to keep in mind when planning such large transition & transformation plan is that the current market is very dynamic and the rules of the game are changing very frequently, so what they need is an agile model, focused upon results, and action items, which are manageable. They need a roadmap that can give them security about the future, not kill them during the process.
The most important key driver for such initiatives to succeed is – cost effectiveness, manageability & sustainability.
Three simple ways that mitigates the risk of the future and the outcomes of the renovation are:
#1: Start with Proof of Concepts (POCs) & Pilots
Identify routine activities, low hanging fruits as the first cases for POCs & Pilots. These POCs & pilots should be finished off in either weeks & quarter, and no longer. The experience from these initiatives will give an overview of how ready is your environment to proceed with automation of other simple/complex use-cases and rolling out these automated use-cases to the complete enterprise.
In this step, it is also important to start building plans for talent acquisition, enterprise learning and capacity enhancements.
#2: Communicating the larger picture
This activity can start while the first step is still underway.
Though the enterprise readiness for a complete automation is still distant & depends upon the results of the POCs/Pilots, today or tomorrow, the enterprise has to align itself with the automation roadmap. Hence, it is pertinent that some initial hypothesis & governance are ready for building the portfolio of automation: identification of departments, prioritizing units amongst them, finding out use-cases in those units. These activities needs to be accepted by the concerned teams, therefore, communicating and getting their buy-in is important. This also helps to understand and plan for the ground level challenges which leadership have to ponder over for an enterprise wide automation-acceptance journey.
#3: Structuring for Sustainability
This step comes into picture when the other two activities are in place – enterprise is ready to rollout automation and necessary funding & buy-ins from relevant stakeholders is in place. Now is the time to start planning for the culture change in the enterprise. Employees working in silos have to come together (because now routine works that were performed in silos are over & more collaborative, knowledge driven work is expected); way-of-work has to change & the leaders have to make necessary organizational level change to sustain the automation: maybe change management program to inculcate new mindset, behaviors etc.
There are other important processes as well which needs to be undertaken – building operating model, procuring infrastructure, deciding on legacy systems (phasing out).
Executives are motivated to use automation to reduce costs, improve efficiencies & performance of the system. Adopting automation at small scale is good, but devising & formulating an enterprise wide roadmap & strategy is the key for sustaining the business in today’s world. Their renovation journey to adopt automation will be successful by being agile, structured, disciplined and pragmatic.
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