HFS Highlight: OneOffice Emerging Tech is the nervous system to make transformation real

The gap between concept and reality in enterprise-wide digital transformation is finally closed – by OneOffice Emerging Tech

Until now, we lacked clarity on the detail of how to engineer the move from the idyll of a strategist’s vision of digital transformation to a visceral, living and breathing reality. The brilliant brain of the Idea had no nervous system through which to make the body of the enterprise get up off Its atrophied butt and build its better future.

Now It does.

We’re finally being forced to put theory in practice – and fast

The desire and need for enterprises to become super-connected, Insight-driven and rapidly responsive has never been greater.

The challenge has not been to achieve buy-in for the vision. What’s not to like about the idea as the rate of change and the level of uncertainty rises around us? The challenge has been making it a reality.

The vision – of the organization that welcomes, learns from, responds towards, and ultimately benefits from change is enshrined in popular ideas such as Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragility (Taleb suggests the classic example is the Hydra – cut one head off and two grow back instead) and Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset – which emphasizes the value of constant effort, persistence and the desire to learn.

Every enterprise leader has seen for themselves how each new system shock shifts the context in which customers experience their lives. The more those contexts change, the more the needs the enterprise must serve change, too. The thicker and faster they come, the greater the urgency to transform – to operationalize toward keeping pace with customer needs and enhancing their experience.

Exhibit One: Transformation to benefit from change is easy to map. Less easy to operationalize. Until now

Source: HFS Research, 2021

Enterprises adopting OneOffice Emerging Tech are enabled with the rapid-learning power to leave their rivals standing

The concept of such a responsive organization Is captured In the requirements of the HFS 2025 Vision of OneOffice, bringing together customer experience and employee experience and expanding on people, process and technology to include data, change management, and ecosystems of partners.

It is in this OneOffice Emerging Tech Platform that the nervous system for the transformation resides – the automation, learning systems, platforms, and processes that get the organization’s muscle moving with increasing flexibility toward Its change-hungry future. The alternative is to be, literally, left standing still.

With this platform, we close the gap between the transformation dream and the super-connected, Insight-driven, rapidly responding organization the Enterprise must become to thrive.

The Emerging Tech Platform HFS is defining is both medium and message. It is the way towards the future mindset – and the organizational experience that delivers that mindset. It is a digital enabler, tutor, and coach.

As organizations embrace each element, connecting each to the others, they will experience for themselves the capabilities of:

• Native Automation – enabling the design of processes in the cloud which get better and better from exposure to data and human Interaction;
• People and Processes which are assisted by automated systems of Intelligence;
• Insights to act on new opportunities, anticipating and forecasting the changes to relevantly and positively respond to, at pace

The effect will be to train the organization. Just as AI-powered systems of learning will enable the organization to gain from the data of change, so the people and processes that define the organization will operate in new and shifting contexts of their own – empowered and learning from doing.

They will create the future they intend rather than being side-lined by someone else’s version of It.

Exhibit 2: HFS Emerging Tech Platform is the nervous system to make digital transformation real

Source: HFS Research, 2020

The $2.3tn opportunity: Systems Integrators and Service Providers step right up

The HFS OneOffice Emerging Tech Platform reveals extraordinary new opportunities for technology, process and change advisory, implementation service providers, and systems integrators.

Those that get to grips fastest with this new and straightforward route to operationalizing digital transformation will claim the most significant stake in a market that is set to double to $2.3tn in the next two years.

To take advantage will require rapid development and deployment of new services and capabilities aligned to deliver across Native Automation, People & Process, and Insights.

Clients will expect their providers to demonstrate that they have their own version of the HFS OneOffice Emerging Tech Platform nervous system in place, that their own digital transformation muscle is being rapidly developed – that their learned experience of digital transformation is more than slideware or how projects are being tagged this year.

To win – they must lead by example. Those that do so will establish reputation and expertise that will unlock not only tech spend but also gain access to rapidly growing design, marketing and people and organizational change budgets.

The Bottom Line: If you thought things were hectic in digital transformation in 2020 – hang on to your hat. Now, this thing gets real.

For the first time we have a technology platform to deliver the visionary benefits of digital transformation. Senior executives aren’t going to be holding their breath. SIs and Service Providers should be ready with a response when they rush to your door seeking first-mover advantage. It’s time to make digital transformation real.