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THE GREAT RETHINK: HOW DIGITAL LEADERS ARE BUILDING TOMORROW’S ORGANIZATIONS

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COPYRIGHT © 2017 FORBES INSIGHTS | 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

5 METHODOLOGY

5 DEMOGRAPHICS

6 IDENTIFYING BEST-IN-CLASS

DIGITAL THINKERS

7 OPERATING THE LEVERS OF DIGITAL THINKING

7 DESIGN THINKING

10 OPEN THINKING

14 PLATFORM THINKING

17 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

3 | THE GREAT RETHINK: HOW DIGITAL LEADERS ARE BUILDING TOMORROW’S ORGANIZATIONS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In today’s digital economy, some organizations succeed by adapting to disruptive threats, moving quickly into new markets, attracting the best talent and maintaining highly regarded brands. Others struggle. They see mar-ket share drain away to upstarts; they respond too slowly to market shifts and suffer employee attrition. They get bogged down in outdated processes and systems. Ulti-mately, many of these laggards fail.

Enterprises that are swiftly moving forward on a digital transformation journey are seeing a range of benefits, including higher-than-average corporate earnings, in-creased agility in adapting to changing market condi-tions and greater customer loyalty.

What separates the winners from the losers in this rapidly changing environment—and why are some enterprises adept at adopting digitally savvy practices and seeing results, while others seem decades behind? This report, based on a comprehensive survey and interviews with top-tier executives, examines characteristics commonly held by organizations that continue to outperform others as they seek to establish themselves as digital disruptors in the markets they serve.

Survey results reveal that digital success is consistently powered by the efficient movement of information and content through business processes—connecting custom-ers, employees and suppliers across departmental and op-erational boundaries quickly, securely and intelligently. In leading organizations, information flows when and where it should—to the right people, at the right time—unencum-bered by rigid systems or organizational silos.

In order to best achieve an optimal flow of information, our research concludes that there are three levers busi-ness and IT leaders can employ for successful digital transformation, which catalyze a rethinking of the way or-ganizations embrace the power of business technology:

• Design thinking—where a relentless focus upon optimizing user experience and customer experi-ence guides all business technology decisions.

• Open thinking—in which innovation from both inside and outside the organization is encouraged to drive new initiatives.

• Platform thinking—where the desired outcome of systems and solution deployment is to build an ecosystem of partners and customers that exchange capabilities and data in a manner that creates added value.

It’s important to note that the path to digital success is best realized by activating all three of these levers. While organizations actively applying at least one of these levers are seeing greater success in their growth plans and marketplaces, those that excel across all three categories represent the most forward-looking organizations examined in the survey and are identified for this report as Best-in-Class.

Best-in-Class organizations lead the way in design, open and platform thinking—and differ from organi-zations still struggling with digital transformation in the way they approach management, corporate cul-ture and expectations. They perform better in their markets and, by a wide margin, achieve higher an-nual revenue growth than their lagging counterparts. Indeed, as the survey reveals, 64% of Best-in-Class firms report significant annual growth (defined as ex-ceeding 10% over the past three years), compared with 43% of those still developing their capabilities across one or two of the three key areas. Only one-fifth (19%) of the lagging organizations—those who have not yet embraced design, open or platform thinking—are experiencing such growth.

The good news is that design, open and platform thinking can inform the development and evolution of any organization, no matter how long it has been around. The survey identifies the key lessons of digital thinking that provide Best-in-Class enterprises with competitive advantage:


BEST-IN-CLASS ENTERPRISES ARE WELL AHEAD OF THEIR COUNTERPARTS IN DESIGN THINKING For Best-in-Class organizations, what the customer wants comes first. Just look at the goals of their digital initia-tives: expanding into new markets, protecting market share and honing the brand experience. Best-in-Class enterprises identify desired outcomes, such as increasing customer engagement, as target business objectives. For developing and lagging organizations, the mission of digital initiatives is often more inward-focused, even though both sets of respondents cite IT systems modern-ization as a top priority.

Close to 90% of leading organizations say they expect to increase their investments and resources significantly in design-thinking-related activities over the next three years, three times the level of their less digitally advanced counterparts. Best-in-Class enterprises are more highly engaged than their less-developed counterparts in efforts to improve customer experience and user experience. They lead the way with customer focus groups, rapid prototyping and user-centric design processes. Best-in-Class enterprises often exhibit their adoption of design thinking principles through such actions as embedding user-experience experts in product design teams and in creating customer personas to drive the mapping of on-line journeys.

OPEN THINKING IS SECOND NATURE TO BEST-IN-CLASS ENTERPRISES Best-in-Class enterprises actively pursue open thinking, which fosters innovation from both inside and outside their organizational boundaries to drive new initiatives. Executives with these organizations indicate that they expect a great deal more innovation in the days ahead from outside parties, as well as from employees not in traditional innovation roles, such as R&D or product de-velopment. Best-in-Class enterprises are anticipating sig-nificant increases in the flow of ideas through their orga-nizations from all corners—including customers, partners and vendors. Open-source technologies are also a key part of Best-in-Class enterprise infrastructures—more than nine in

10 report that open-source platforms and frameworks are “extremely important” to keeping the flow of ideas and concepts moving inside and outside of their organi-zations, given the interoperability they provide. Best-in-Class companies also are more inclined to view digitiza-tion as an effort that draws in the entire enterprise, versus one-off or departmentalized efforts.

BEST-IN-CLASS ENTERPRISES LEAD THE WAY IN PLATFORM THINKINGThe survey also demonstrates that Best-in-Class organiza-tions have a very strong and powerful vision that guides their digital initiatives. They don’t simply set out to sell products and make money—their efforts are guided by values that see digital transformation as a way to bring their organization together and, at the same time, to de-velop platforms within their markets.

To executives in Best-in-Class enterprises, sharing tech-nology and codeveloping ecosystems with partners is the key to ongoing success. A majority expect exposing core competencies as a set of programmatically accessible services to outside parties will increase significantly over the next three years. In turn, they also report the intent to consume more external services to accelerate their digi-tal initiatives. Best-in-Class enterprises are also far more likely to report their systems and processes as being (by design) more agile and adaptable than their less-devel-oped counterparts, enabling them to quickly launch new products and service offerings without placing an undue burden on precious IT resources.

BEST-IN-CLASS ENTERPRISES FOCUS ON BUSINESS-TECHNOLOGY ALIGNMENT, NOT TECHNOLOGY ISSUES Once an enterprise learns to operate the levers of de-sign, open and platform thinking, technology becomes an ambient force, and decision makers can devote their full resources to tackling business opportunities. The survey shows that those organizations still behind on the design, open, platform thinking adoption curve are more likely still wrestling with technology-related issues. Best-in-Class organizations are no longer concerned primarily with technology implementation; they’ve moved on to focus on the task of aligning their business and IT leaders to further innovation.


of executives are with organizations with

annual revenues exceeding

(U.S. dollars); represent companies with

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in revenue.

METHODOLOGY: DEMOGRAPHICS

BEST-IN-CLASS ENTERPRISES HAVE AN EXPANSIVE DIGITAL VISION

Best-in-Class organizations understand that transformation is a holistic endeavor that weaves together the needs of people with the possibilities of technology. And they un-derstand that a business must be centered on people—col-laboration among the breadth of their stakeholders, from

internal teams and partners to the end customer. Ultimately, digital transformation is about the end-to-end engagement with a brand, both inside and outside the organization.

The tipping point from “going digital” to true digital transfor-mation is as much about profound cultural change as it is about technology, an evolution in mind-set that unites people in their journeys across a brand’s world. It enables business; it opens new digital and physical territory.

senior-level executives,

representing a range of job

functions and industries.

328

14%

72%$10 BILLION

$10 BILLION$1 BILLION

54%

46%

The survey includes responses from are from North America

are from Western Europe

The most prominently featured industry sectors represented in the survey include:

The survey incorporates the views and experiences of practitioners within leading enterprises on their adoption of digital thinking.

In addition to the survey results, this report includes excerpts from a series of individual, qualitative interviews conducted by Forbes Insights.

20%technology

16%healthcare

19%manufacturing

13%banking/

financial services

16%government


METHODOLOGY: IDENTIFYING BEST-IN-CLASS DIGITAL THINKERS Forbes Insights, in partnership with Alfresco, has developed a Digital Thinking Maturity Model that measures varying levels of adoption of the three essential pillars of digital thinking noted above—design thinking, open thinking and platform thinking. Our goal: discover the practices and processes that make a digital leader great.

DEFINING THE THREE KEY BUILDING BLOCKS OF DIGITAL THINKINGDesign Thinking: Thirty-nine percent of organizations have shown leadership in design thinking, defined as a human-centered approach to innovation that integrates the needs of people, the possibilities of technology and the requirements for business success. Design thinking fosters an iterative approach in which collaboration with the customer or user leads to a superior brand experience, one that has optimized the customer experience (CX) and the user experience (UX) in their end-to-end journeys throughout the value chain.

Open Thinking: The second component of success in today’s digital economy is the ability to employ new technologies and recharged processes to open the gates of innovation. To that end, 20% of organizations are leading the way in open thinking, defined as ensuring access for employees, partners, suppliers and customers to content and data within an open, well-architected platform. Open thinking creates a multiplier effect that leads to an environment that is continually growing and expanding, and enables platforms and networks to flourish.

Platform Thinking: Another 31% of organizations are top performers in platform thinking, defined as enabling both external and internal stakeholders to more easily do business with the organization, opening up digital resources to all stakeholders. A platform is a plug-and-play business model that allows multiple participants (producers and consumers) to connect in a shared

environment, interact with one another, and create and exchange value. It involves building out services and processes to offer key functions and data sets that are accessible at any time to participants across an ecosystem.

To gauge the acceptance and progress of digital transformation within enterprises, the survey examined the depth of involvement in—or commitment to—the three essential levers of the digital transformation process: design, open and platform thinking. We identified the leaders within each of the three categories (shown in the accompanying chart) and extracted from this the “Best-in-Class” organizations. These are defined, for purposes of this report, as those that meet the top criteria across all three categories.

Twelve percent of organizations meet these criteria, identifying them as those in the best position to successfully navigate their way along the digital transformation journey. As shown by this survey, these are also the companies that are performing best within their markets in terms of annual revenue growth. In contrast, 43% of respondents’ companies can be classified as “developing,” meaning they are activating at least one or two of the three levers cited above. Another 45% are considered to be “lagging,” as they fail to lead across any of the pillars.

As discussed in the pages that follow, successfully engaging the three levers explored in this survey report—design, open and platform thinking—defines the leaders in today’s digital markets.

Lagging Organizations

Developing Organizations

Best- In-Class

45%

43%

12%


Figure 1. Average EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, Amortization) Growth Over the Past 3 Fiscal Years

Total Best-in-Class Developing Lagging

20%+ increase 10% 30% 12% 3%

11%-to-19% increase 26% 33% 32% 17%

Increase >10% 36% 64% 43% 19%

OPERATING THE LEVERS OF DIGITAL THINKING

The survey reveals a range of differences between the approaches and results achieved for Best-in-Class organizations—those successfully operating the levers of design, open and platform thinking—versus those still developing their capabilities. Corporate performance is a key area where these distinctions show up. Among Best-in-Class organizations, 64% report annual earnings growth exceeding 10% over the past three fiscal years. By comparison, 43% of developing organizations and only 19% of lagging counterparts do so (Figure 1).

DESIGN THINKING

OVERVIEW: In this survey, 39% of the entire sample of organizations have adopted the key precepts of design thinking. Design thinking has the strongest adoption across the three levers explored in the survey and will continue to gain traction within enterprises. Leading design thinkers have dedicated user experience/customer experience (UX/CX) teams in place, as well as an intense commitment to customer experience and interactions; internal user experience and interactions; and nurturing an ecosystem of partners and contractors that provides continual feedback on systems and solutions. Customer experience thinks holistically about how to best align to the customers’ desired outcome, while user experience looks at how applications are designed.

BEST-IN-CLASS ENTERPRISE ADOPTION: Design thinking is one of the key levers employed by Best-in-Class digital enterprises—the 12% of enterprises that also demonstrate leadership within this category, as well as across open and platform thinking. That means they closely embrace CX and UX as key to their success, and have committed resources to enable this. In addition, digital leaders will continue pouring more resources into their CX and UX, as well as partner experiences. Close to 90% of leaders say they expect to increase their investments and resources significantly in this direction over the next three years, close to three times the level of their less digitally advanced counterparts. For purposes of this survey, a “significant” increase is defined as 10% or greater (Figure 2).


Figure 2. Change in UX/CX Investment Over Next 3 Years

Increase by more than 25%

Increase 10%–25%

10% or greater Increase 1%–10% Remain constant

Best-in-Class

Developing

Lagging

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

34%

53%47%

30%

87%

63%

34%

13%

28%

49%

8%14%16%

3% 0%

By a wide margin, Best-in-Class enterprises are more likely to be seeing the fruits of their efforts to improve customer experiences (CX). Close to two-thirds, for example, are seeing a strong impact through traditional research methods, such as surveys and focus groups, which help them better understand how customers are interacting and prefer to interact with their applications and services. In contrast, fewer of their developing counterparts (37%) and only a small handful of lagging organizations (8%) benefit from such research. While a majority of Best-in-Class executives work closely with customers on rapid prototyping for continual improvement of interfaces and experiences, only 9% of their less-advanced counterparts conduct such activities (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Impact of CX Improvement Activities

Customer surveys, ethnography and

focus groups

Lead/rapid proto-typing with users

to deliver continual improvement

Customer journey mapping

User experience team embedded

in the design process

Customer persona creation

Best-in-Class

Developing

Lagging

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

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66%

37%

8%

55%47%

37%

12%

53%

31%

14%

55%

26%

6%

35%

9%

Percentage Reporting “Strong Impact” (5) on a Scale of 1 to 5


Similarly, leading organizations have a laser-sharp focus on researching and continually improving their user experi-ences (UX). UX is a core commitment seen among Best-in-Class organizations: Sixty-eight percent of executives in this group say user surveys and focus groups are having a strong impact on helping them develop more responsive interfaces and processes; only a handful of their less-developed counterparts are getting anything out of such user research. Likewise, Best-in-Class organizations are supporting teams dedicated to UX that are playing a key role in their design processes, something not seen at the vast majority of less digitally inclined organizations (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Impact of UX Improvement Activities

User surveys and focus groups

User experience team embedded in the design process

User persona creation

Lead/rapid prototyping with users to deliver

continual improvement

User journey mapping

Best-in-Class

Developing

Lagging

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Percentage Reporting “Strong Impact” (5) on a Scale of 1 to 5

68%

35%

7%

68%

28%

11%

50%

26%

6%

47%37% 39% 37%

10%10%

Design thinking is front and center, as reflected quantitatively in survey results and qualitatively through the thoughts of the leaders who shared their perspectives in this report. “When you think about design from the get-go, people fall in love with your product,” says Praveen Chopra, chief information and transformative innovative environment officer of Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health. “That’s the emotional connection. The secret sauce is providing an experience that is simple, meaningful and beautiful.”

“When you think about design from the get-go, people fall in love with your product. The secret sauce is providing

an experience that is simple, meaningful, and beautiful.”

PRAVEEN CHOPRA, CHIEF INFORMATION AND TRANSFORMATIVE INNOVATIVE

ENVIRONMENT OFFICER, THOMAS JEFFERSON UNIVERSITY AND JEFFERSON HEALTH


“Both as consumers and as business customers, we only really sense that the future has arrived when our experiences and interactions change for the better.”

MIKE WALSH, CEO, TOMORROW

Ultimately, embracing digital technologies is viewed by many as more of an opportunity than a response to a threat. “People talk a lot about disruption, and worry about whether an Airbnb or an Uber might come along and fundamentally change the basis of their industry,” says Mike Walsh, CEO of Tomorrow. “But I think all the talk distracts from the more profound opportunity that faces every single company, industry and leader.”

Best-in-Class organizations focus their digital engagements on addressing the customer experience and customer satisfaction first. “We have a customer focus that is second to none,” says Gary Cantrell, chief information officer at Jabil. “The customer is at the center of everything we do. As we’ve started to get into the digital aspects of this, we’ve been focusing on getting our teams to understand the value of analytics. Analytics plays a huge role in what we’re doing on the supply-chain side, what we’re doing in the factories, what we’re doing around optimization and getting people to make data-driven decisions. That transformation is well under way, but we’re still on that journey.”

The role of IT is evolving from a back-office function to a leadership position as organizations increasingly embrace digital. “For our IT organization, success is being a valued business partner that helps our internal customers leverage information and technology effectively,” says Terry Lenhardt, vice president, chief information officer for Steelcase. “One measurement of our success is the significant increase in IT-related initiatives.”

Direct engagement with client stakeholders allows his team to better understand their requirements: “We’re also much more involved in cross-functional teams tackling our biggest challenges,” he says. Steelcase’s IT team is working with product experts, interior and product designers, and the operations team to understand how people are using technology to improve their work spaces, as the demands of work evolve. “Each function brings their expertise to the solution,” he says.

Opportunities are not necessarily born out of new technology, smarter devices or even faster broadband, Walsh explains. “It is the innate human desire for novel experiences. Both as consumers and as business customers, we only really sense that the future has arrived when our experiences and interactions change for the better.”

OPEN THINKING

OVERVIEW: In this survey, leading open thinkers report they are growing faster than their counterparts. Open thinking is still a work in progress across most enterprises, as it has the lowest adoption rate across the three levers explored in the survey. Here, only 20% of the entire sample of organizations have adopted the key precepts of open thinking. In this survey, leading open thinkers report that substantial levels of innovation come from either sources outside their organizations, including adoption of open-source technologies, or via nontraditional internal sources (outside R&D or product development, for example).


BEST-IN-CLASS ENTERPRISE ADOPTION: Open thinking is still relatively new to many corporate environments, but Best-in-Class companies are leading the way. Leading digital organizations consider it essential to open their doors to innovation, regardless of origin. Best-in-Class enterprises are six times more likely than laggards to foresee significant increases in the flow of ideas through their organizations in the digital race. Seventy-four percent indicate that they expect a great deal more innovation from outside parties, and from employees not in traditional innovation roles such as R&D or product development. By contrast, 41% of their developing counterparts expect such a significant burst of ideas from the outside, along with only 12% of lagging enterprises (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Expectations for the Flow of Ideas or Concepts From Outside Parties Over Next 3 Years

Increase significantly

Best-in-Class

Developing

Lagging

100%90%80%70%60%50%40%30%20%10%0%

74%

41%

12%

The value of a digital thinking approach is realized when enterprises start looking outward, and even rethink what business they are in, says Sangeet Paul Choudary, founder of Platformation Labs and industry thought leader. “Once you’ve digitized something, who are the other stakeholders getting impacted in larger ways? If you digitize your car, how does that change the way insurance works? How does that change the way people learn to drive a car at driving school for the first time? Now that all these new questions start coming up, how do the flow of people and the decisions they take, how does all of that change, because of the ability to create these new flows?”

“Once you’ve digitized something, who are the other stakeholders getting impacted in larger ways? If you

digitize your car, how does that change the way insurance works? How does that change the way people learn to

drive a car at driving school for the first time?”

SANGEET PAUL CHOUDARY, FOUNDER, PLATFORMATION LABS


Working closely and collaboratively with customers to spur innovation is a best practice seen among successful companies in their markets. Best-in-Class enterprises are much more welcoming to customers’ ideas than their less-advanced counterparts, the survey shows. More than seven in 10 of the Best-in-Class enterprises in this survey strongly agree that their customers have easy access to their internal systems, and six in 10 agree that there are few or blurred boundaries between themselves and their customers, especially when it comes to exchanging information. A majority of these leaders, 58%, also strongly agree that they welcome input and ideas from customers to help improve processes; only 37% of developing organizations and 15% of lagging organizations can concur (Figure 6). Likewise, there is a similar pattern seen for partners and vendors. More than six in 10 executives with Best-in-Class enterprises state they have easy access to their partners’ or vendors’ systems, compared with only 37% of developing organizations and 8% of laggards (Figure 7).

Figure 6. Defining Relationships With Customers

Best-in-Class Developing Lagging

Customers have easy access to internal systems/information they need 71% 37% 6%

We have few (or blurred) boundaries between us and our customers to enable

collaboration 61% 32% 9%

We welcome input and ideas from customers to help improve our processes 58% 37% 15%

External customers and third parties can rapidly integrate our systems for their

solutions58% 37% 6%

Our interfaces with customers are tightly integrated to increase speed and innovation

and reduce resources45% 37% 11%

Percentage Responding “Strongly Agree” (5) on a Scale of 1 to 5


“Fresh new ideas, and speed, are important to partnerships,” says Chopra. “We have to learn from our partners. We’re learning continuously and constantly with our partners.”

For the vast majority of executives with Best-in-Class organizations, open-source technologies are seen as the best way to achieve such openness. More than nine in 10 executives with organizations leading the way in digital thinking report that open-source platforms or frameworks are “extremely important” to keeping the movement of ideas and concepts flowing inside and outside of their organizations. By contrast, only 53% of executives with developing or-ganizations and 21% in lagging organizations feel the same way. Another seven in 10 of Best-in-Class organizations place high value on web-based and cloud-based services to deliver innovation (Figure 8).

Figure 7. Defining Relationships With Partners or Vendors


We have easy access to our partners’ internal systems 61% 37% 8%

We welcome input and ideas from partners/vendors to help improve our processes 58% 41% 9%

We have few (or blurred) boundaries between us and partners/vendors to enable

collaboration50% 35% 13%

Partners/vendors have easy access to the systems/information they need 55% 41% 7%

Our interfaces with partners/vendors are tightly integrated to increase speed

and innovation and reduce resources 50% 28% 8%

Our systems enable rapid integration with partners’/vendors’ solutions 45% 30% 10%



Figure 8. Importance of Tools, Processes or Resources to Innovation


Open-source platforms or frameworks 92% 53% 21%

Web-based services 71% 41% 30%

Cloud-based services 68% 49% 29%

APIs 66% 48% 26%

Open-source applications 66% 40% 23%

Vendor services 58% 45% 25%

External collaboration services (Google Docs, Dropbox, Slack) 58% 35% 19%

Internal collaboration tools (Wikis, SharePoint, ECM) 58% 44% 23%

Open data 52% 34% 23%

Open standards 50% 42% 23%

Mobile apps 50% 43% 28%

Percentage Responding “Extremely Important” (5) on a Scale of 1 to 5

“Big companies are not going away anytime soon,” Walsh says. “What they can do is to create smaller, empowered, agile teams, and get them to focus on the kinds of problems and challenges that can redefine the value you create for customers. Once you have that happening at a grassroots level, the next step is to improve the collaboration and com-munication inside your company—so that great ideas and smart solutions move quickly and effectively where they are needed. The future of companies is not really the company model at all, but, rather, ecosystems that incorporate a combination of employees, freelancers, partners, customers and, in the future, non-human cognitive platforms.”

PLATFORM THINKING

OVERVIEW: Platform thinking represents the future of information technology delivery for a majority of enter-prises. Eighty percent of the entire sample of organizations intend to serve up their core competencies to outside parties—such as development communities and business partners—by providing an extensible platform with open APIs, cloud services and open data to use in building their own solutions. Likewise, 78% expect to increase their own consumption of outside IT capabilities to enhance their internal systems. Overall, 31% of the entire sample can be


Figure 10. Plans to Consume External Capabilities/Services/Information from External Parties over Next 3 Years

Consumption/ Use will increase significantly

Best-in-Class

Developing

Lagging

100%90%80%70%60%50%40%30%20%10%0%

61%

37%

14%

Figure 9. Plans to Provision Core Internal Capabilities/Information to External Parties Over Next 3 Years

Provisioning will increase significantly

Best-in-Class

Developing

Lagging

100%90%80%70%60%50%40%30%20%10%0%

74%

43%

14%

said to have already adopted platform thinking as a component of their digital transformation journey. They share—as well as consume—capabilities and services that may originate from outside providers.

BEST-IN-CLASS ENTERPRISE ADOPTION: Best-in-Class enterprises lead the way in platform thinking, open-ing their systems and applications to their community of users or developers, while also consuming a sizable share of services provided by third parties. Close to three-fourths of executives in Best-in-Class enterprises say their provisioning of services to outside parties will increase significantly over the next three years, versus 43% of developing enterprises and only 14% of their less-advanced counterparts (Figure 9). These capabilities may be extended to external parties through APIs, cloud services, self-service portals, open data or other means.

In terms of outside service consumption, the gap is narrower, with 61% of Best-in-Class companies anticipating significantly increased adoption, compared with 14% of less-advanced organizations on the other end of the spectrum (Figure 10).


Platform Thinkers also recognize that platforms are part of an ongoing process of opening up applications, systems, data and services to the outside world, and vice versa. “Most companies think that a platform is about connecting multiple participants from day one,” says Choudary. “Rather, it is essentially a road map toward that by digitizing some part of the interaction on day one, and then gradually digitizing and internalizing more of that interaction over time. The question is, what is the minimum part of the interaction flow that can be digitized at the minimum cost while delivering a compelling benefit to at least one stakeholder? If you can identify that, and answer that question, then you have a mechanism by which you can start moving toward a platform-based model.”

Best-in-Class enterprises are more likely to see their systems and processes as being more agile and adapt-able than their less-developed counterparts, the survey finds. The majority of these leading companies, 66%, strongly agree that their platforms enable them to make quick changes as customer demands change. Only 10% of executives with less-developed organizations strongly feel they have reached this point. In addition, two-thirds of Best-in-Class also agree that they can quickly launch new products and services, often without their IT departments needing to get involved. Only 10% of their less-advanced counterparts have such robust agility (Figure 11).

Figure 11. Our Systems and Processes…


Change quickly and frequently based on customer feedback 66% 36% 10%

Enable us to launch new products/services in a timely manner without

substantial IT resources66% 35% 10%

Allow information access from anywhere on any device 61% 32% 6%

Are not dependent on any specific technology or solution 58% 32% 7%

Are highly transparent, end-to-end, to help us identify bottlenecks 53% 30% 12%

Allow us to quickly build new relationships with partners, suppliers, service

providers, etc.47% 41% 10%

Enable us to efficiently address regulatory and compliance mandates 39% 34% 10%



Forbes Insights extends its appreciation to the following executives who contributed their knowledge and experiences to this report:

• Gary Cantrell, Chief Information Officer, Jabil

• Praveen Chopra, Chief Information and Transformative Innovative Environment Officer,

Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health

• Sangeet Paul Choudary, Founder, Platformation Labs

• Terry Lenhardt, Vice President, Chief Information Officer, Steelcase

• Mike Walsh, CEO, Tomorrow

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An enterprise open-source software company focused on driving the convergence of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Business Process Management (BPM) to advance the flow of digital business. More than 1,300 companies rely on Alfresco, including leaders in FSI, healthcare, the public sector and manufacturing. A global partner network and a community of open-source developers are ready to help you use the Alfresco Digital Business Platform to accelerate your digital transformation.

www.alfresco.com

ABOUT ALFRESCO

https://www.alfresco.com/?utm_source=Forbes&utm_medium=WhitePaper


ABOUT FORBES INSIGHTSForbes Insights is the strategic research and thought leadership practice of Forbes Media, a global media, branding and technology company whose combined platforms reach nearly 94 million business decision makers worldwide on a monthly basis. By leveraging proprietary databases of senior-level executives in the Forbes community, Forbes Insights conducts research on a wide range of topics to position brands as thought leaders and drive stakeholder engagement. Research findings are delivered through a variety of digital, print and live executions, and amplified across Forbes’ social and media platforms.

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