Intelligent operations to reshape businesses

Companies told to keep pace

CEBU, Philippines — Companies' business processes must shift to 'intelligent operations' to keep pace with digital disruptions and customer expectations.

Benedict Hernandez, Accenture operations lead in the Philippines, said it is imperative for companies to look towards migrating into intelligent operations to drive superior business outcomes.

"Companies need to invest on human capital development and upscale their workforce as they move towards intelligent operations," Hernandez told reporters yesterday in a roundtable discussion in the company's facility in Cebu IT Park.

The official presented the key highlights of a new report by HfS Research and Accenture on how intelligent operations are going to impact businesses in the future.

Based on the research, he noted that companies that leverage intelligent operations to make decisions and act in real-time will be best placed to thrive in the future amid the emergence of various digital disruptors such as artificial intelligence and analytics, among others.

The report also found that organizations which harness the combination of innovative talent, diverse data and applied intelligence will be in the best position to overcome digital disruption and utilize data-driven insights to drive superior business outcomes and enhance the customer experience.

Hernandez pointed out that investing into talent development should be a primary priority among companies that are looking into integrating intelligent operations in their businesses.

"They must start investing and scaling up their talent," he said.

The company executive believes the nature of work is continuously changing so it becomes imperative to scale up the workforce to make them adept to the changing environment driven by digital disruption.

According to the Accenture study, which surveyed 460 companies across the globe, the move to intelligent operations is fast becoming a make-or-break proposition for companies, with 80 percent surveyed saying they are concerned with disruption and competitive threats, especially from new digitally savvy entrants.

"To win in today’s market and ensure future viability, it is essential that organizations capture value quickly, change direction at pace, and shape and deliver new products and services. Organization also need to maximize the use of ‘always on’ intelligence to sense, predict and act on changing customer and market developments,” said Debbie Polishook, group chief executive for Accenture Operations.

“Our research suggests technology alone is not a magic bullet. To successfully transform their operations, organizations must take a holistic approach that integrates business process and industry expertise, human ingenuity, and intelligent technologies. This enables the agility, flexibility and responsiveness needed to drive superior decision-making, business outcomes and customer experiences. It’s about responding swiftly to change and how to steer a new course with confidence,” Polishook added.

A robust customer experience strategy is identified as the most significant driver of operational agility.

Intelligent operations identified by the research include innovative talent, which Hernandez cited as very important.

"The talent of the future will need to bring creative problem solving in addition to digital expertise. Organizations will need a more agile human resources function and a recruiting approach that heavily leverages an open talent marketplace," Accenture said.

It also includes data-driven backbone where organizations need to capitalize on the explosion of structured and unstructured data from multiple sources to gain new insights for the innovative talent to use in order to achieve stronger outcomes.

Another is applied intelligence where using integrated automation, analytics, and AI-based solutions, organizations need innovative talent who can understand the business problem and then apply the right combination of tools to find the answer.

Another essential component of intelligent operations are leveraging the power of the cloud and smart partnership ecosystem which entails companies to develop symbiotic relationships with start-ups, academia, technology providers and platform players to achieve their goals.

The research is based on the responses of 460 participants from Accenture enterprise clients involved in buying decisions related to technology and services. (FREEMAN)