We all know how fast the business landscape changes and one area is accelerating that change and bringing huge benefits to businesses. What is it? It’s the Digital Twin of the Organisation (DTO) and it’s revolutionising how companies approach digital transformation.
Understanding the Digital Twin of the Organisation
Traditionally associated with physical objects in industries like space and engineering, Digital Twins have now found value in a wider range of business operations, and they are being used as part of Smart Cities, infrastructure, and major manufacturing projects.
There is another digital twin initiative driving massive benefits for organisations. The Digital Twin of the Organisation – the digital representation of how an organisation operates. It encompasses various aspects, such as the interplay between people, technologies, processes, and information to create and end-to-end model of the work required to deliver business outcomes and generate organisational value. Adopting a Digital Twin approach, businesses can gain unprecedented insights into their operations, allowing for informed decision-making and strategic planning faster than ever before.
“Within a day we had a view of our organisation which allowed us to identify how we could do things differently. After we built our future state, we were able to understand the business impact of a change and take that to leadership for sign-off.” Jennifer Petit, Senior Director Wow! Internet, Cable & Phone
Pioneering DTO for Business Transformation
A DTO delivers a user-friendly environment for modelling the organisation. Its features enable users to quickly capture the current state of business operations and identify areas for transformation. Organisations gain rapid and insightful discovery and can identify under-utilised assets, align costs and value and importantly, visualise the impact of potential changes before implementing them.
Value-Led Transformation
Central to creating the DTO is the creation of value – customer value, employee value, shareholder value. The DTO is built to highlight how changes can maximise business value, ensuring that transformations are not just successful but also deliver the outcomes the business needs to remain successful.
Engagement and Communication
Huge emphasis is placed on the importance of engaging people in the transformation process. One of the ‘aha!’ moments is seeing how engaged people become when the digital twin finally represents the challenges people face alongside the opportunity to resolve them through successful change. The DTO allows clear communication, ensuring that everyone in the organisation understands the impact of change and their role in the transformation journey. This cross-organisational buy-in is a significant factor in delivering successful change.
“Seeing the way we work, built before our eyes helped us to understand the interaction our team has with one another and how we can make incremental changes to improve the outcomes we deliver into the business.” Aimee, Senior Recruitment Advisor, New Zealand Defence Force
Managing Change Risk
Most of us would agree that change is risky – we prefer the status quo. Using the DTO allows businesses to quantify and manage this risk effectively, exposing it against the reality of how the business operates so that it is understood and managed appropriately.
This approach not only ensures successful change implementation but also instils confidence in decision-makers. Creating decision intelligence is one of the core tenets of the DTO. Being able to visualise the impact of change throughout the organisation, rather than being confined to the narrow scope of a project ensures that siloes are broken down.
In turn, this enables decision makers to understand the risk associated with change, articulate these clearly, and make good decisions to support the changing needs of the business.
Evidence-Based Decision Making
The DTO equips leaders with instant insights, enabling them to make fast, informed decisions. It creates decision intelligence which is crucial in today’s fast-paced business environment where agility and informed decision-making are key to staying competitive.
There is a long-held connection between the speed of decision making and the quality of decision making. Utilising evidence supported by data, decisions are made quickly with the confidence that the data enabling the decision is complete and accurate.
In turn, this accelerates the cycles of innovation as decisions are made and implementations delivered which enable the next iteration of the business to be realised.
Continuous Improvement and Optimisation
The DTO supports continuous improvement and process optimisation. By providing a clear view of current operations modelled and compared against potential future states, it helps organisations to undertake value-driven and evidence-backed transformations. The DTO model is kept in sync as changes take place. Always having an up to date and accurate model of the current state delivers continuous improvement at speed.
In Summary
The Digital Twin of the Organisation platform is transforming how businesses approach digital transformation. It is not just about technology, or just about process. It’s about understanding the intricate web of relationships within an organisation and using this understanding to drive successful, value-oriented change faster than ever before, increasing your innovation cycles and driving continuous improvement for your business.