By Shalini A. Nair, Associate Vice President, Corporate Transformation Initiatives, Quality, Infosys
Be it a technology leader like Intel, a non-profit organisation like Code for America, or any large and mid-sized enterprise, companies across the board are adopting a digital operating model that is oriented around products and platforms for accelerated go-to-market and extracting tangible business returns. In other words, organisations are arranging their technology investment to pivot around products (built for consumers) and platforms (for supporting end-user experiences).
Among these are traditional enterprises eager to take on the digital natives on their turf and unwilling to be slowed down by obsolete/legacy systems and practices. They are not letting fragmented value chains and disparate functions impede their transformation journey.
What makes an enterprise transformed and digital-ready
Enterprises must become future-ready by laying the foundation for an AI-infused digital core and making effective use of the latest technologies to drive sustainable innovation and derive business value in no time. Harnessing the best of technology will come easily to enterprises that are embracing Agile, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) at scale in their operating model, with a robust engineering ecosystem with advanced practices, tools, and platforms, to accelerate time to market. However, only a few have been able to go beyond enhancing IT outcomes to derive meaningful business outcomes.
The real game-changer is an operating model that focuses on product and platform thinking to bring in customer-centricity, agility, and evolvability.
Switching to a product-centric mindset
A digital-ready enterprise essentially relies on product-centric value delivery. Thanks to this holistic approach, it can shape strategies, processes, resources, and capabilities across business lines that rally around to bring personalised experiences along a customer journey, from start to finish. The focus is less on the product itself and more on the customer value at every touchpoint. It enables quick deployment of features and solutions that help enhance customer experiences, acquisition, retention, and loyalty – the essentials of a forward-looking approach.
For sure, this kind of turnaround in the operating model will require ground-breaking transformation – from fragmented, siloed units to collaborative teams that operate in sync across the value streams to orchestrate the customer journey. Business outcomes must be a measure of objectives and key results (OKRs) so that the enterprise can track the flow of value and make sure all stakeholders are aligned and engaged in achieving these measurable goals.
An organisational culture that favours and nurtures continuous experimentation and innovation helps product teams focus persistently on value creation. Data scientists, engineers, and product managers at enterprises with product-thinking at the core – the likes of Airbnb, Tesla, and Apple – thrive on the freedom and opportunity they have to experiment and innovate, discard the ideas that do not relate to customer needs, and find funding for the successful ones.
Unlocking value from digital and establishing a roadmap for growth
With a product centric foundation, enterprises are able unlock value from digital. It seamlessly brings together the critical elements that lead to digital success. Human-centric experiences, responsible design, connected data ecosystems, MACH-driven digital architecture, and AI-led engineering, provide the necessary edge for businesses to survive and thrive through intense competition and market uncertainty.
It also unlocks the pathways to a wider platform ecosystem while bringing down traditional barriers to innovation. Core capabilities can be brought together from across the ecosystem onto the platform – meant for business or IT infrastructure/data – to accelerate and fortify product launches, innovation, and stability of systems and processes.
The enterprise gets a far more extensive market reach and stronger collaboration possibilities that help produce new products/services/business models with enhanced efficiencies and scale. This proved to be the case for an Asian shipping giant that opened its internal data and analytics capabilities as-a-service to clients seeking crucial insights on shipping routes, whereabouts of cargo and containers, and more.
These are some key differentiators for enterprises pivoting to the product-centric value delivery model from the conventionally structured functions that support the production and operations of the business by wearing a project lens.
Starting on a digital route is a far cry from being digital and future ready. A cultural shift is required to be more data-driven, diverse, and flexible. A recent report found that a work culture that takes responsible, considered risks, backed by live data, is more effective than the competition.
A product-led and platform-driven strategy gives enterprises a shot in the arm by equipping their business objectives with a clear roadmap and measurable goals that trickle down to teams and then steering engagement across these teams towards developing experiences, products, and services that increasingly return more value.
