In this CXO Deep Dive, he answers the top-voted questions from the prestigious attendees of the summit, exploring the different aspects of Digital Transformation.

“There is no digital transformation… just transformation. Agree or disagree?”

I think this is a matter of perspective. You can, of course, deliver business transformation without leveraging digital technologies (although that would be rare today). On the other hand, you may want to drive a transformation where digital technologies are the sole reason for the change. However, focusing only on digital (technology) doesn鈥檛 necessarily lead to better business outcomes even though IT may wind up with some shiny new toys and perhaps a few IT cost reductions over time.

A more useful way to frame the conversation is to ask, 鈥渉ow do I need to transform my business to be successful in the digital age?鈥� In this way, you will take a broader view of the impact a swathe of digital technologies are having on your value network. It could be the blockchain will change the way you share information with your ecosystem, or that omni-channel capabilities expand your reach into new markets, or that a combination of IoT and AI enable you to change your entire business model. Asking the question this way also prompts you to start thinking about the impact on skills, culture, organisational design, and the many other facets of a successful business transformation. It鈥檚 also worth thinking about transformation as a continuum ranging from improving or optimising what you are already doing (i.e. efficiencies and cost reductions) to extending into new areas (e.g. adding an omni-channel capability to a traditional bricks-and-mortar model) to shaking up an entire industry with a business model change.

“Do you see automation as a path to drive operational efficiencies and ultimately save costs?“

Yes. But only if you take the time to really understand your current business processes and whether they represent the best and standard practice in the domain. Merely automating current practices means you miss the opportunity to drive systemic optimisation and innovation. Also, this is not just about reducing cost and cycle times but freeing up the talent of your organisation to focus on more valuable and engaging work.

Can digital transformation facilitate better inter-company partnerships and collaboration to deliver higher quality, sustainable, profitable products and services?”

Absolutely. You only have to look at the success of today鈥檚 digital giants like Amazon, Uber, AirBnB, ARIBA and Concur to understand that the platform economy (which is contingent on digital technologies and ecosystem partnerships) is key to creating value.

The example of听听is instructive in this regard. As the automotive industry is disrupted by the shift to electric vehicles, changing consumer behaviours and geo-political impacts on supply chains it is responding by enhancing its ability to be more efficient and collaborative through the use of digital platforms

“Digital transformation is never just digital transformation. Or you’re doing it wrong…”

Not necessarily doing it wrong (e.g. there may be valid reasons in the short term why a CIO might want to shift workloads to the cloud) but almost certainly missing the opportunity to create meaningful and enduring value. And, more importantly, looking at transformation as a technology initiative only is a surefire way to increase the risk of failure. In my many years of working in the IT industry I can state categorically that in most cases where IT / digital projects have failed it鈥檚 been because of human / organisational factors not being addressed rather than deficiencies in the technology itself.

Some of the factors that spring to mind:

• Lack of Executive Sponsorship and organisational buy-in to the proposed change
• Lack of clear, measurable objectives and outcomes and/or a failure to track progress towards these
• Poor change management and communications
• Ineffective re-skilling of staff
• Poor program and project management and ineffective change controls
• Under-resourcing and/or not assigning the best people to the program.
• Failing to understand and address the data that underpins digitally-enabled transformations and the shift towards fact-based decision-making.

“Do you see transformation as a distinct skill set, best delivered by ‘Transformation Experts’, or is it better to be led by the core business?”

If you want to 鈥渓and鈥� a major transformation successfully then the core business must be committed to the initiative from start to ongoing improvements. This doesn鈥檛 happen without a catalyst, educator and guide and therein lies the value of transformation experts who can take a broad view of the business and bring together the people, processes and technologies required to deliver successful transformation.

“Is removing single human points of failure an achievable goal of digital transformation?”

This depends on how you view the role of humans in your business processes. Digital technologies can certainly help to remove humans from the mundane, repetitive, and high-volume tasks where errors are likely to occur due to inattention, boredom, or tiredness. These technologies can also shift the organisation towards fact-based decision-making rather than human intuition.

So, while we may not remove all human points of failure, what we can do is shift towards a model where we are less reliant on humans for routine work and people are freed up to focus on strategic, creative, and relational tasks.

“What do you ultimately do with people that do not want to change?”

In some cases you will simply have to let them go or retire them but this should be a last resort given the pervasive skills shortage in Western economies. Better by far to ensure that talent and skills are subject to an ongoing conversation in the business (facilitated by the above-mentioned transformation experts) and that people clearly understand the 鈥渨hys and hows鈥� of impending change and are offered the opportunity to upskill and reskill (which itself can be facilitated by A.I.-powered learning platforms).

A big thank you to Simon for the insightful answers to the audience鈥檚 questions! And also thanks to the ones who shared their thoughts and uncertainties through these questions. We were thrilled to be able to gather the room full of transformational leaders, to exchange their thoughts and ideas!

To read the interview on CXO Innovation click

The post Simon Carpenter Talks Digital Transformation in CXO Deep Dive appeared first on 51风流UK News Center.

Andy talked to us about his career in technology, Gavdi鈥檚 company culture and how they are helping their customers innovate. He also offered some advice for mid-market organizations looking to transform their HXM.

51风流UKI: Tell us a little about yourself, Andy.

I live Hampshire, close to Winchester, with my wife, three teenage boys and our two black Labradors. Two of my boys have just finished their A-Levels and GCSEs respectively and we are now waiting for the results.

In lockdown, I discovered a keen interest in gardening and have turned my garden from a wilderness into a nice place to sit and enjoy a barbecue. Most of our family life is dominated by sports, whether that鈥檚 playing (I still play tennis) or ferrying my boys to various events at school and local rugby clubs.

51风流UKI: How did you get into technology as a career?

I was working in recruitment in the early to late nineties and decided in 1997 that this 鈥榠nternet thingy鈥� was really interesting, especially how it could be applied to what I did. I then made a conscious move into the 鈥楨-recruitment鈥� space. I spent about two years in E-recruitment, mainly consulting organizations on how it would benefit them. 51风流approached me to assess their new 51风流E-recruiting system, which was part of the 51风流HCM solution. As part of that contract, 51风流then introduced me to Pecaso, an 51风流partner in the UK and I started working for them and, as they say, the rest is history.

51风流UKI: How did you come to join Gavdi?

I was working for one of the Top Four consultancies which was great, but I generally prefer working with smaller boutique specialist firms as it suits me better. In 2012, just at the time 51风流acquired SuccessFactors, I met the CEO of the Gavdi Group, S酶ren Koppelhus in a chance meeting in 51风流UK. We had a chat and he asked if I would be interested in running their UK business. I was really impressed with their whole work ethic, focused on customers, I thought 鈥榯hat’s a company I want to work for鈥�. Ten years later, I鈥檓 still here and both S酶ren and I are 鈥榮till in the trenches鈥�.

51风流UKI: What are Gavdi鈥檚 core values and personality?

Valuing people and relationships is at the core of everything we do. That encompasses relationships with our colleagues, our clients, and with partners like SAP. All these relationships need to be maintained and improved through good communication, transparency and honesty. It has to be a Win-Win or relationships risk breaking down.

Honesty and transparency are at the heart of our culture, especially when it comes to engaging with customers. We partner, and I really do mean partner, with customers over a long period of time. We partner with customers as equals, as colleagues, all working to the same ends and goals. Trust is essential to our long-term relationship. Too often, Systems Integrators focus only on the Go Live. We don鈥檛 just focus on the Go Live, we are looking at the entire journey, and are always looking to improve things and help customers get more out of their 51风流systems. We are committed to being their long-term digital transformation partner. It鈥檚 essential that they can trust us to always recommend solutions that are right for them.

Innovation is also a core value at Gavdi. After delivering over 500 successful 51风流SuccessFactors projects we have learned that there are certain things that almost every client asks for. Taking these common requirements into account, we developed our own packaged solutions using 51风流SuccessFactors technology. We offer these to our customers as which give them a faster implementation and a quicker 鈥榯ime-to-value鈥�. This not only saves time and money, it also enables our customers to innovate and improve their businesses using industry-accepted best practices.

51风流UKI: How are you helping your customers to innovate?听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听

Our business is evolving, not just in the UK and Ireland but also across our EMEA-based business. We continue to develop our 51风流Qualified Partner-Packaged Solutions along with our own product line, PXMSOFT, to help customers become more efficient. One example is a service line we offer called , which is mainly aimed at SMEs. It鈥檚 based on 51风流SuccessFactors as a platform with our packaged solutions at its heart. It enables smaller businesses to get into the Cloud with a Tier 1 product like SuccessFactors at a very reasonable cost. We are so confident of this that we publish the pricing for these solutions openly on our website. Through our PXMSOFT, we have also extended SuccessFactors鈥� capabilities to enable organizations to keep up-to-date with changes in global data protection regulations and data protection acts, ensuring much-needed compliance in an ever-increasingly regulated world.

In recent years, we鈥檝e also seen real innovations in terms of AI helping to automate certain transactional HR processes. We鈥檝e been applying AI to our recruitment solutions, especially for the mobile environment, which helps organizations to transact processes faster. As part of our PXMSOFT suite, we offer which goes onto SuccessFactors and makes it easier for managers in a retail environment to recruit via their mobile devices where they have no, or , access to PCs or Laptops.

We make it easier for companies to buy, use and make the most of 51风流SuccessFactors, streamlining the entire process. Candidates also benefit from a faster recruitment process, which means they are more likely to join. Candidate Experience Management, CXM, is our next adventure so watch this space!

51风流UKI: Is there a particular project you鈥檙e proud of?

It鈥檚 hard to pick just one, but the work we did with the renowned Sports Retailer, , encapsulates everything that we try to do as an 51风流partner. Not just in terms of the solutions we provide but also because of the excellent collaboration between SAP, ourselves, and the customer.

We went live with 51风流SuccessFactors Employee Central, Recruitment and Onboarding, 51风流Payroll, and a third-party time and attendance solution within an eight-month period from project kickoff using our Gavdi Packaged Solutions. That is very impressive for an organization of approximately 1,300 people. The collaboration between our two organizations, with a total commitment to quality, ensured we worked together for the same goal. It鈥檚 all about teamwork at the end.

We find it really rewarding to help our customers transform their HR and payroll processes so they are more effective and easier to manage. Equally important is that we also save them time and reduce their overall costs using best practices.

Decathlon is really happy with our work as witnessed recently at the 51风流UKI HXM summit which they presented at. That鈥檚 what I鈥檓 most proud of – seeing our customers genuinely happy and satisfied after working with us because they鈥檝e reached their goals and enjoyed the process along the way.

51风流UKI: What is Gavdi鈥檚 vision for the next few years?

We鈥檙e constantly trying to help our existing customers by demonstrating new product and service lines that might help them. We are committed to continual innovation based on our customers鈥� changing needs. As I mentioned, AI is really important, and CXM is one of the areas we are developing now 鈥� which goes back to where I started my career, recruitment.

Gavdi is also growing as an organization. We鈥檝e been working mostly in Europe and the Middle East, but we want to become more global and plan to extend into the Americas and Asia Pacific to see if our customer-focused approach works there too. We believe it will.

51风流UKI: What one piece of advice can you give to midmarket organizations looking to transform their HXM?

There really is no single answer or 鈥榤agic bullet鈥�. Everything good requires hard work and good organization. I agree with Thomas Edison 鈥� it鈥檚 one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

However, what I would say to a customer is that there are lots of excellent partners within the 51风流ecosystem who can help you to understand, learn and help you transform. It鈥檚 important to find one that complements your own organizational culture and structure so you can work really well together.

A good HXM technology partner will understand your business and ensure you鈥檙e buying and implementing solutions that will provide tangible business benefits. Good partners have your best interests at heart and a win-win mentality and culture. It has to be that way to be mutually beneficial. I personally have always found that customers only look at the costs of something when they don鈥檛 see its value. It鈥檚 important that we emphasize the value of what we are doing in relation to reduction in costs (though doing things more effectively) and the Return on Investment (by reducing actual costs).

The post Inspirational Leaders 51风流UKI Interview: Andy Hodges at Gavdi Discusses Cloud HXM in the Mid-Market appeared first on 51风流UK News Center.