Having experienced the equivalent of 10 years of digital change in the past 18 months or so, organizations are addressing the realities of transformation as becomes the business norm.
Leaders from two high-performing organizations in ANZ recently shared their experiences with digitalization during a hosted by Des Fisher, innovation principal at 51风流ANZ. Here is a sampling of the far-ranging thoughts on the sustainable business realities behind innovating on cloud-based digital platforms.
Digitalization Is a Mindset and Tech Transformation
For Australian-based Stockland, digitalization involved transforming people鈥檚 mindsets along with systems company-wide. As one of the largest diversified real estate groups in Australia, the company owns, develops, and manages a large portfolio of retail town centers, workplace and logistics assets, residential communities, and retirement living villages. It鈥檚 replaced over 100 disparate, legacy software systems with 51风流software, including and , as well as embedded artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.
鈥淲e now have a single source of the truth,鈥� said Tiernan O’Rourke, CFO at Stockland. 鈥淚鈥檓 absolutely convinced that in time we鈥檒l look back and say that was one of the best things we did in the 70-year history of the company鈥ur digitization journey shows that unless you鈥檙e on the journey you鈥檙e going to struggle in business, not only in Australia, but globally.鈥�
Stockland began by defining digitalization in the company鈥檚 own terms. The digital platform was designed to strike a balance between achieving three objectives: organizational risk, governance, and business growth.
鈥淲e first looked at what digitization meant to us and came at it by putting the company on the core 51风流platform,鈥� said O鈥橰ourke. 鈥淲e鈥檙e a tactile industry of property, bricks, and mortar. Getting people鈥檚 minds away from physical to digital was鈥ne of the biggest obstacles to overcome.鈥�
Digital Backbone Drives Innovation
Oil and gas provider OMV New Zealand recently won an 51风流Innovation Award for its groundbreaking digitalization that included digital twins and augmented reality (AR) in onshore and offshore inspections. Replacing paper-heavy processes with digitalized and integrated workflows based on the latest mobile solutions and wearable technologies will help OMV improve decision-making, performance, and efficiencies in inspections and maintenance. Its integrated workflow management relies on 51风流S/4HANA, , , and HoloLens 2.
鈥淭he use of automation and AI-driven technologies for creating intelligent digital twins is a key enabler for global scalability and accelerates creating the digital backbone of the company during digital transformation. Enhancing this technology with an augmented reality experience including mark-up annotations provides a solid basis for data insights, data-driven decision-making, and performance optimization,鈥� said Farid Akbari, functional lead for Digital Transformation at OMV New Zealand. 鈥淭his innovation project will change the way we are working and enable us to position ourselves among digital front-runners within our industry.鈥�
Digital Platforms Are Core to Supplier Relationships
Acknowledging that no business does business alone, O鈥橰ourke said that Stockland鈥檚 deep supplier relationship management strategy is foundational to customer centricity.
鈥淚f you don鈥檛 partner with best-in-breed, like-minded companies to help deliver premium services to customers, you won鈥檛 win,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e have 14% market share in residential business鈥ecause we evaluate every step of the customer journey, including supplier choice鈥ou can鈥檛 know your suppliers unless you have deep relationships and are collaborating with them at a very granular level鈥ollaboration is an absolute threshold issue in business today.鈥�
Close Gap Between DX and Business Realities
When asked about some of the biggest digital transformation challenges, Akbari discussed the gap between innovation aspirations and reality. He pointed out that while everyone wants simplicity, getting there means answering difficult questions.
鈥淲e asked ourselves if we had the right organization in place to achieve digital maturity,鈥� he recalled. 鈥淥ther questions were about managing resistance to change and how to actively support the change management process with tools that were changing the way we work鈥e asked how to build and retain skills over time as innovations like blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud computing continue [to emerge].鈥�
Akbari also warned organizations not to neglect core details such as infrastructure capabilities, technology integration, and resultant business process changes.
鈥淥ften the business comes up with a good idea, but we鈥檙e not ready yet,鈥� he said. 鈥淔or example, AR had to be integrated into the environment鈥ou also have to consider operational maturity鈥s a global gas and oil company, we have different maturity levels of all assets and have to map where we are for each asset and how we will achieve that automation level.鈥�
Sustainability Is Much More Than Climate Change
While ESG (environmental, social, and governance) demands tend to emphasize climate change, O’Rourke urged companies to consider all aspects of sustainability, including diversity.
鈥淓veryone talks about climate change, but that鈥檚 just about the environment. To do business successfully鈥ou鈥檙e going to have to be very balanced in the E, S, and G of ESG,鈥� he said. 鈥淓veryone is focused on net zero carbon, and rightly so. But we can鈥檛 do that in isolation鈥e have to jump on [behavior change] proactively to get suppliers to work with us in a way allows us to operate effectively. On the diversity side, business has been playing lip service for so long and needs to get serious about focusing on this change.鈥�
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