The velocity, quantum and certainty of change is more defining in this new age of business. How companies embrace these new dimensions of change will determine their future. Intelligence is what ensures the evolution, growth and survival of any species. The same principle applies to business. Intelligence is necessary to outcompete. The “Intelligent Enterprise” will lead the competition in these times of change.
Introducing the Intelligent Enterprise
- Globally Effective
The intelligent enterprise is able to address different markets and run operations most optimally.
The demographic shift between emerging and developed nations now impacts demand, buying power, intellectual capital and talent supply and drives incredible changes in product design, market infrastructure and value chains.
An intelligent enterprise builds scale based on opportunity or uncertainty offered by each market. It then outcompetes by tapping the best intellectual resources globally in the most cost efficient and effective manner.
- Connected
The intelligent enterprise has the vision to anticipate evolving stakeholder needs, continuously and to meet those needs.
Globalization and disruptive changes in technology have replaced the traditional workplace, creating global networks of virtual organizations. The smart organization harnesses this connectivity to anticipate and satisfy stakeholder needs.
This is done by building visibility, access and the ability to transact from anywhere in the world. The intelligent enterprise is adept at creating end-to-end visibility of its global processes and driving a seamless flow of data and decisions. It also creates and delivers hugely differentiated value for its end customers by intelligently leveraging complex partner ecosystems to innovate, develop and deliver.
- Innovative
The intelligent enterprise finds novel ways to address both opportunity and uncertainty for competitive advantage.
Today’s networked world spawns complex flows of capital, goods, information and people into a complex interconnected spider web of business touch points creating a need for new business models and accelerated innovation.
The intelligent enterprise focuses on both breakthrough innovation as well as applied innovation on a daily basis. It invests in a funnel of new products and offerings, and continuously improves value delivered by focusing on productivity improvements. It uses variable cost business models for better preservation of cash and working capital.
- Adaptive
The intelligent enterprise responds to change with agility and fosters a culture of change through agile operating teams of passionate people focused on delivering maximum value to internal and external customers.
Flexible business models using variable cost structures are the hallmarks of the adaptable organization. They help vaporize organizational clutter by identifying core versus non-core processes and eliminating redundancies and inefficiencies. They allow deployment of modular investments supported by smarter analytics that increase predictability and readiness for change.
Through the Continuum of Process, Analytics, Technology
Every enterprise is a collection of common processes strung together by technologies that help deal with massive and mutating amounts of data from an increasingly complex and interconnected world. The intelligent enterprise differentiates itself and outcompetes by turning common processes into smarter processes with superior analytics and class-leading technology and in turn, delivering superior business outcomes.
Process
Companies structure themselves using functions and organizational policies; people and culture tune themselves to this functional view of the organization. Companies across all industries have a set of common, core enterprise-level processes that determine how they acquire new customers, retain them and grow existing relationships, hire and retain their workforce, develop and distribute their offerings and manage their supply chains. What differentiates the leaders from the laggards is how they view processes as a key component of business outcomes. For example, many organizations focus on driving process efficiencies - saving money within the process - and not effectiveness, which means setting enterprise-level strategies for processes to achieve desired business outcomes.
Intelligent Enterprises understand very well that while efficiency of business processes is a necessary condition, effectiveness drives better business outcomes and allows them to outcompete in global markets.
Analytics
The emergence of big data, regulatory changes and social media developments are causing a big shift in the way businesses operate. Most companies know data is an asset and yet, even as a majority of this data sits within their organization, they have not been able to tap its true potential. How one company harnesses this data compared to others, makes all the difference. Intelligent enterprises innovate with data and employ analytics to identify trends and issues, uncover new insights, identify and prevent future risks and fine-tune operations to meet business goals.
Technology
Technology has become a clear driver of flexibility and innovation in all business models. New technology and social connectivity are creating a deluge of opportunities, paving the way for cloud and other collaboration tools to transform internal operations, customer relationships and industry value chains. Intelligent enterprises must move quickly to seize the technology dividend. When applied intelligently – using insights from existing operations and emerging opportunities, with minimal capital expenditure along a variable cost model, and delivered in a scalable fashion using new mobile, SaaS and social media-based channels – technology can have an exponential impact on outcomes.