MARKET VIEW 40
Felix Schachter
INSURANCE ADVISORY LEADER
What are the most important considerations for organisations planning to accelerate digital transformation?
It is essential that transformation leaders have sight of the trees as well as the forest. There are three key things you need to track to accelerate transformation: the business strategy, the organisational culture, and the organisation structure.
First, your technology strategy needs to be aligned with the business strategy. This means tracking what is available, how it’s evolving, and understanding how technology plays into your overall business strategy and goals.
Second, our organisational culture must be built around effective communication with employees. You need to make sure that employees are on board if you want to have effective process and change management. Acceleration programmes often fail because nobody thinks about the employees and how in turn, this change is transferred to the customers.
Third, it’s essential to think about how you will achieve the right structure. Without that, you can’t get the decision-making, budget, location or speed of decision correct. It may need to be changed to allow for acceleration.
I work in a regulated industry, so we are also very aware of risk management. As an industry we must talk about how any acceleration creates risk. That could be political, technical, human, cyber-risk, or something new. In acceleration, you must understand the different facets of risk, and understand how to address them, to mitigate them, and to manage them. Regardless of the industry, you need an appropriate risk management framework.
In acceleration, you must understand the different facets of risk, and understand how to address them, to mitigate them, and to manage them. Regardless of the industry, you need an appropriate risk management framework.
What are the most effective strategies to help clients to enhance their customer engagement and generate new revenue?
Number one is understanding your client, and that’s rarely as simplistic as you think. It’s going back to basics and looking at the industry, the business strategy and what activities they need to engage in across the value chain to get where they want to be. It’s also critical to understand the client’s clients. How are they segmenting customers, how do they reach them, how do they work with consultancy and distribution channels?
Second, and this is specific to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) because we are a global organisation, but I think it’s important to validate similar business cases from other geographies of how things do and don’t work. Share that information and knowledge to understand the value of where the client is. This type of benchmarking helps you understand how to do things, or not do things.
Third, what is the client’s appetite for innovation and disruption? When you talk about digital acceleration and creating new things with clients, some people are substantially risk averse. Some are exactly the opposite. What do they prefer to do? Do they like to rock the boat, or do they foresee a new generation of customers that require more innovative solutions?