Every Enterprise is a Digital Enterprise going forward. How Digital Technology will work in each Industry is what Businesses need to adapt and lead. The Future is a Platform Economy and every enterprise must Create / Use a Digital Platform for Connecting the Creation to Consumption of Products / Services that is Frictionless and Unique to their Industry. The Platform therefore becomes a means of Access for Businesses to Configure Product, Processes and Projects (Services) to be delivered On-Demand.
The Enterprise is the Platform enabling Engagement & Experiences through Solutions that are Innovated for Life and Business Operations are the means of Personalizing them through Applications.
The Scaling of Ideas and Concepts to Products and Services is a Straight Through Process (STP) that will be driven through the twin engines of Innovation and Personalization;
Innovation that is fueled by Intent.
Personalization that shapes the Organization (Strategy) to Operate to Realize the Aspirations (Intent).
The structural relationship between Enterprise and Business demands a Transformative rather than an Incremental Change approach. The Enterprise Platform as an Intelligent Infrastructure converging Content, Computing & Communications in realtime will become the Vehicle / Bus to Transport Intellectual Property (IP) through its stages of:
Hypothesis converted to Models.
Models converted to Engineered Solutions.
Engineered Solutions Personalized for Glocal Consumption.
Configured Products / Services Configured On-Demand as opposed to the conventionally Canned Ones.
Where Enterprise Creates Value (Aspiration / Potential) and Business Sustains it through Delivered Performance (Expectations / Key Performance Indicator).
In a modern enterprise this is a Straight Through Process (STP); where both Business and Conventional IT need to Inquire, Explore and Discover together evolving Digital Technology that can be employed for business. Conventionally business passes on requirements to technology without understanding the Human Machine Interchange. Now there is the opportunity to collaboratively workshop, experiment and Accelerate customers from Education to Ownership to Commitment through Engagement and Experience (Institutionalizing the New).
The Flow of Work (Value) with Intelligence is the Premise and Promise of Digital Technology. And this must be reflected in the Enterprise Transformation initiatives flowing Intellectual Property (IP) (Conceptualization & Engineering) to Products / Services (Personalization / Consumption) in a Continual Manner organized Workforce, Workplace for Innovating & Operating without friction.
Conceptualization
Is the Process of constructing new ideas / concepts into a hypothesis and testing them through a process of Involving and Immersing Alpha Customers to Model and prove the concept. The Intent must therefore conceptualize value to the five dimensions of :
Functional Value: Addressing the Aspirational. Not just the stated Expectations but also the unimagined Aspirations.
Economic Value: That reduces the Technology & Strategy debt and passes that value to the customer.
Lifetime Value: Solutions that create Access and Inclusion bringing a greater adaptation transitioning into a new Socio Economic norm.
Brand Value: Solutions embedded with Autonomy, Privacy and Trust that is part of the engagement and experience.
Emotional Value: The Involvement and Immersion of Customers Institutionalizing Solutions through the Process of Education, Ownership and Commitment.
Engineering
Is the Process of developing Solutions as Engines, Components and Connectors addressing a Life Aspiration. Here Customers are advanced from the Alpha to the Beta State to engage and experience the Future State in Controlled Conditions.
Personalization
Is the Process of advancing the Customer footprint from Alpha to Beta to Theta states; where the Products and Processes created are Institutionalized with minimal dysfunction to the Status Quo while Scaling with Risk Assurance addressing the right Customer Segment and Cohorts.
Commercialization
Is the process of actualizing the Intent in Production and measuring the delivery through the five dimensions corresponding to the Intent:
Quality: Getting the Aspiration right the first time in the delivery of Products / Services. (Example Metric: Reduced Cost of Goods Sold — COGS)
Cost: Affordable to the respective segments and cohorts without compromising on the other dimensions of Value. (Example Metric: Premium Earned)
Delivery (Time): Delivering to the life context of the Customer with Anticipated Agility (Example Metric: Mind / Time to Market)
Service (Empathy): Alternate and Exceptional Process handled with Intelligence (Example Metrics: Customer Attrition)
Flexibility: Device, Channel and Medium Independent delivery bringing down the conventional Geo / Socio / Economic and Technical biases / Barriers (Example Metric: Happiness Index / Ease of Access).
The modern construct of the Enterprise & Business relationship demands the flow to be organized serving Customers with On-Demand Productized Service. The level of maturity of the enterprise across the five dimensions as shown in the following Illustration must be at a Minimum 3 on a Scale of 0 (Innocence) 1 (Awareness), 2 (Understanding), 3 (Definition), 4 (Competence) and 5 (Excellence).
Giggr Technologies has developed a patented Diagnostic that is self-administered and provides an enterprise a Precise View of the Status Quo, a Compass for the Desired State and recommendations for Scaling Performance.
Organizing Work
No matter which industry a business may be in, there is a need to organize work to the relevance and demands of the modern society. We need to essentially rewire our minds to find new ways of working with resources, materials and energy that are Value Creating. And therefore the twin engines of Innovation and Personalization organizes Workforces and Workplaces to deliver Value.
The Innovation Engine
The Innovation Engine is one that Powers an Individual, Industry and Institution to Continuously Scale the Journey from Innocence to Excellence. With the Machine Learning (ML) Technology, Conceptualization & Engineering can be enriched by People’s Involvement & Immersion as Alpha, Beta & Theta Customers advancing success with the Assurance of Learning.
The Personalization Engine
The Personalization Engine is the one that drives Innovation through the Creation of Solutions with the different Roles of Client, Associate / Team Member, Stakeholder, Business Partner, Vendor, Shareholder, Society (Authority, Regulator) and Technology. Managing Human Capital will be one of the Key Success Factors of the organization that distinguishes the Creation of the Value from Individual to the Collective of an Industry and Institution.
The Discipline of Innovation is missing in most enterprises. Without this Mobilization / Preparation, it will be well nigh impossible for Transformative Success of Businesses; whether they are established incumbents, SME’s or Startups.
Humanizing Digital
From an On-Premise, Technology has shifted clearly to the Cloud. Both for Developing and Distributing the Products and Services Created. Incorporate inclusion, privacy, and sustainability into Products / Services in addition to assuring Core Functions is an added dimension Creators need to contend with.
The Cross Ventilation of Data, Talent, Materials, Capital and Infrastructure must be embedded with Intelligence. This is the basic requirement for successful business enterprises in the evolving New Era. To overlay the Engine of Innovation to operate with the Engine of Personalization to drive the Value Across In-Bound, Operational and Outbound Processes.
Product, Process and Project (Services)
The enterprise and Business must Collaborate to Create New Products and Services and bring them to the market with Assurance for Customers to realize their Aspirations faster.
The below illustration drawn from McKinsey’s Research reveals lack of Product Development & Management discipline in most Industry. The Osmotic Process between Creation and Consumption must become a Straight Through Process with a Recursive Learning Loop (RLL). Google (Alphabet), Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon have the ability but will not overturn the Industrialization to Personalization which will be the hallmark of the new era. And the Opportunity for Platforms to compete and play an aggregator’s role in Industries is still very much open.
Here are seven tenets that every enterprise must emulate in Creating a Platform to Create and Deliver Value:
Redefine Product Management to be driven by Aspirations. Create ten times the value for customers than what is derived from them.
Shorten time to value for customers.
Don’t ask customers what they want — observe what they need.
Look beyond the expected to identify unintended outcomes.
Focus on holistic impact, not just product adoption.
Don’t stop at product–market fit to ensure success.
Test a feature’s full value proposition before writing a single line of code.
Bringing Relevance to Life
C.K. Prahlad & M.S.Krishan’s theory in their book “The New Age of Innovation” published nearly two decades ago postulated: N=1 states that “value is based on unique, personalized experiences of consumers.” That is, even companies serving 100 million consumers need to focus on individuals. R=G, meanwhile, argues that since no company can hope to satisfy the varied expectations of so many consumers, it must diversify how it operates. “All firms will access resources from a wide variety of other big and small firms — a global ecosystem,” In other words, companies’ internal focus should be on gaining access to resources, not necessarily owning them.
An Enterprise is the Undertaking of Ideas / Concepts while a Business is Operationalizing the proven concept; transforming the solution to application. The lifespan of the Customer Journey has changed Scope from conventional Information Technology to the modern Digital Technology (DT).
Not every business can create a platform but those who do must clearly understand that a Platform must operate at the level of wheel of life as the following illustration shows enabling Industry and Businesses to operate on them to Create / Innovate and Operate / Realize. This is the promise of Digital Systems. And of course, this is not something that can happen overnight. It will go through a process of Simplification, Modernization and Disruption. Without the integrity in these three steps, any investment is a tremendous waste that will never see a dime’s worth of Return On Investment (ROI), leave alone Return On Assets Deployed (R.O.A.D.).
Per McKinsey research from June 2022, nearly 70 percent of the top economic performers, compared with just half of their peers, are using their own software to differentiate themselves from their competitors. One-third of those top performers monetize software directly.
The term enterprise software popularly referred to operational management of Customer Acquisition, Relationship, Orders, Service, Procurement, Logistics & Fulfillment and Loyalty / Satisfaction Management are today slowly turning legacy as the Customer Access & Engagement (CX), User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) are sourcing data from sources including Devices where Inputs may be captured or through Internet of Things (IOT), Wearables, Sensors, Scanners automatically and computed. The above quote from McKinsey Research only refers to Online & Mobile commerce and not digital commerce.
While Technology itself is a Key Station in the above wheel of life that works to the context of Personalization, Industry should uniquely employ this Personal Insight to Innovate and Distribute Products, Processes and Projects (Services) mutually inclusively.
Takeaways
Organizing for Work that mutually includes Innovation and Operation demands a new construct of Workforces and Workplaces. This is the first Infrastructure that must be created with Intelligence for growth. Retirement and / or Replacement of Legacy & COTS Software must be addressed with Clarity clearly plugging into the narrative of Critical Success Factors (CSF).
Flow of Data (Work) from Source and its Conception to Creation will assure faster growth cycles. A way to work with Unstructured Data and across the four types including Video, Audio, Graphics and Text overcoming the barriers of Language and Socio Economic Factors will be Key.
A Unified Ecosystem that thrives on the Journey of Life to draw Inspiration for Engagement & Experience modeled for Configured Products and Services is the pathway to generate Value Capital.