Is digital transformation really impacting the way that we work? Is the digital experience for internal employees on par with that of external customers? Does an internal focus on digital transformation have a positive impact on customer experience, brand identify and loyalty? The answers to all of these questions are important to understand as we evaluate and define the impact of digital transformation on how we work and the ability to shape the employee experience.
To understand digital transformation begins with providing a working definition of it supported by examples of the reach and impact on work and productivity. Digital transformation is an executed vision to use innovative technology to introduce new business models, change the way that we work and interact and how value and experience can be optimized across the various touchpoints throughout the journey. Those touchpoints are critical enablers of productivity to shape the speed at which we work, efficiency gains that we can achieve and the outward experience we project to customers.
Arthur Mazor, Workforce Experience Principal from Deloitte, framed it perfectly in his 2019 article, “The digital workforce experience.” In that article Arthur states that, “The seamless digital experiences to which we have become accustomed in our personal lives have created an expectation for better experiences, with near-flawless technological enablement, in our work lives as well.” Consumerization of technology and services has increasingly raised the bar of a seamless and engaging customer experience that has created parallel expectations in the workplace. Those expectations translate to ease of use, greater agility and single point, highly integrated systems that can facilitate intelligence and automation to transform workstreams and patterns and add value back to the business.
According to Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends survey, less than half (49 percent) of the responding HR and business leaders believed that their organizations’ workers were satisfied or very satisfied with their job design. The represents a large opportunity to reconcile the workplace experience to the consumer. As employees are able to benefit from digital strategies that improve experience, organizations are able to reduce waste, increase productivity and fully leverage the investments they have made in their workforce.
Robotic process automation, autonomous workforce, virtual agents and chatbot, AI facilitated by deep learning, natural language processing and IOT, just to name a few, are fundamentally changing the way work, the information available to us, the speed at which we can move and places us one step closer to realize the promise of doing more with less. According to a December 16th, 2019 Forbes article entitled, “100 Stats on Digital Transformation and Customer Experience, 56% of CEO’s saw increased revenue from digital initiatives while 23% were more profitable. The continued growth of these technologies and the organizational maturity to develop and execute on a transformational vision will be critical to support enterprise proliferation and adoption to realize the full benefits and potential.
A Gartner 2020 Tech Trends report predicts by 2022, application integrations delivered with robotic process automation (RPA) will grow by 40% year over year led by hyper automation using AI and ML. The increase of sensory data to collect information via IOT is changing how we structure traditional networks and increasing the importance of edge computing to capture and process information. Gartner predicts that by 2023, there could be more than 20 times as many smart devices at the edge of the network as in conventional IT roles. The rise of autonomous devices and technology leveraging AI to supplement or replace manual labor is continuing to grow, by 2023, Gartner predicts that over 30% of operational warehouse workers will be supplemented by collaborative robots.
Leading by example, Banco Popular, a large financial institution, is transforming its operations to introduce better process to reduce overhead. With the help of IBM’s Robotic Process Automation, Banco aims to improve efficiency, reduce cost and focus staff on higher value and more strategic activities for staff. The result, 90% decrease in process time and the transformation of over 100 critical business support processes.
As part of their global IT transformation program, Experian, an information services company, has moved from point tools to the ServiceNow enterprise cloud platform to transform, modernize and consumerize its IT service delivery across its lines of business. As a result, Experian was able to leverage an integrated platform to increase collaboration, information sharing and automation to shift employees from low to higher value work.
What does all that mean for the way we work? It is continuing to change in ways that we could not imagine a decade ago. Digital transformation is promoting smarter, better and faster ways to perform work, while empowering the workforce through greater autonomy and efficiency. This in turn is driving an increase in employee productivity, reducing touchpoints and enabling more fluid engagement to shape the employee experience and ultimately, the consumer in all of us.