Although the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital innovation and adoption by businesses of all types and sizes, pre-pandemic, many companies had already started their digital transformation initiatives – harnessing technology to drive operational efficiencies, business change and deliver lasting performance.

Unfortunately, not all technology investments have delivered or are delivering the desired benefits.

Rather than take an enterprise approach, companies are deploying technologies in pockets, or silos, of their organizations without effectively scaling them across the enterprise.

This is according to a recent publication by Accenture Future Systems research which has found out the gap between investment and value is widening.

Pivot to Value With Living Systems makes some interesting points. Here are some excerpts with my commentary.

  • As the pace of change has accelerated so has the need to quickly embrace new technology. The best way to respond to change is by transforming the finance organization’s culture to be more agile, flexible, risk tolerant, and experimental. A sole focus on identifying, selecting and implementing the right technology, for instance, customer predictive analytics, is not likely to lead to success. Instead the organization’s people, structure and processes are also essential ingredients prerequisite for success.
  • Companies that can release new technology capabilities faster than their competitors are at a distinct advantage. New technologies such as AI, Robotics, IoT, Smart Devices, Data Analytics, and Blockchain are transforming the competitive landscape, providing new ways of delivering value to customers and new service opportunities. The factors, tools and systems that made you successful in the past may no longer be correlated with your future success. Therefore, don’t wait for your business to be disrupted first before you can act.
  • Businesses have taken innovation into their own hands, such as directly experimenting with new technologies and cloud services in “pockets” instead of across the whole company. Investment decisions are not tightly integrated with business priorities, and most companies have no easy way to measure the return on investment. The challenge today for many organizations is contending with too many priorities, a plethora of disjointed systems across the business, unnecessary costs and more than one version of the truth . The result? Inefficient data availability leading to less informed and intelligent business insights.
  • Simply investing more in technology won’t necessarily deliver the business flexibility that organizations need. Put simply, technology is an enabler of business performance. Only when the essential components of a business – it’s culture, people, structure, systems, and processes – are closely aligned can the company achieve powerful results.
  • Organizations that want to unlock the full value of technology need a growth strategy that is unified across business and technology. The focus is on exploring how technology can make the business strategy a reality and identifying greenfield opportunities in products, services and competitive positions. Before investing in new technology start with ‘Why’ then identify and understand the opportunities and threats that new technologies pose for your organization. Does the investment enable the achievement of the organization’s stated objectives?
  • Instead of acquiring new technology for one-time projects, leaders fund persistent value streams measured by business outcomes. Focus on the value case of the investment. Digital transformation is only partly about technology; it is also, and more importantly, about using technology to improve the way finance creates and delivers value across the business.
  • Realign the organization to put technology at the heart of every business. Many new technology implementations fail due to poor or lack of collaboration between business and IT teams. Reinforce collaboration between business and technology teams. Business subject matter experts play the critical role of defining operational requirements, leading process design initiatives and monitoring performance, while technologists focus on ensuring effective data security and governance, systems integration as well as monitoring identity and access and control.
  • Adopt new practices for agility and experimentation. Hire and train people to be more risk tolerant, creative, and develop a big picture and growth mindset. Also, create a culture where individuals and teams are encouraged to play and experiment with new ideas and business models, including with other parties such as universities, entrepreneurs, industry players etc.
  • Empower people to innovate with technology. Investing in new technology is not a matter of Humans vs. Machines. Instead, it is about Humans and Machines working together to drive business performance. Therefore, provide employees with opportunities to develop skills for working in a new digital environment.
  • With a culture of innovation, an agile mindset, and continuous learning, employees are equipped to capitalize on new and changing opportunities as the business evolves. Mere adoption of the latest technology will not improve your finance organization’s and business prospects. You also need to apply the time or resources necessary to make the sort of organizational changes required to benefit from the possibilities the technologies offer. Empower people to see, think and do differently. For example, anticipating and understanding changing customer behaviours and being prepared to respond accordingly. Never stop asking, ‘How can we get even better?’

I recommend business leaders to read the full report and hold a discussion with their teams on its key points and recommendations.