case study in digital transformation

30+ Digital Transformation Case Studies & Success Stories [2024]

Cem is the principal analyst at AIMultiple since 2017. AIMultiple informs hundreds of thousands of businesses (as per Similarweb) including 60% of Fortune 500 every month.

Cem's work has been cited by leading global publications including Business Insider, Forbes, Washington Post, global firms like Deloitte, HPE, NGOs like World Economic Forum and supranational organizations like European Commission. You can see more reputable companies and media that referenced AIMultiple.

Digital transformation has been on the executive agenda for the past decade and ~ 90% of companies have already initiated their first digital strategy. However, given the increasing pace of technological innovation, there are numerous areas to focus on. A lack of focus leads to failed initiatives. Digital transformation leaders need to focus their efforts but they are not clear about in which areas to focus their digital transformation initiatives.

We see that digital transformation projects focusing on customer service and operations tend to be more heavily featured in case studies and we recommend enterprises to initially focus on digitally transforming these areas.

Research findings:

• Outsourcing is an important strategy for many companies’ digital transformation initiatives.
• Most successful digital transformation projects focus on customer service and operations

Michelin-EFFIFUEL

Michelin, a global tire manufacturer, launched its EFFIFUEL initiative in 2013 to reduce the fuel consumption of trucks. In this context, vehicles were equipped with telematics systems that collect and process data on the trucks, tires, drivers habits and fuel consumption conditions. By analyzing this data, fleet managers and executives at the trucking companies were able to make adjustments to reduce oil consumption.

• Business challenge : Inability to improve customer retention rates to target levels, due to trucks’ fuel consumption and CO2 emissions .
• Target customers : Fleet managers and operations managers at truck companies in Europe
• Line of business function : Customer success management and sales.
• Solution : By using smart devices, truck and tire performance degradation is detected and maintained from the start. The solution also nudges truck drivers into more cost and environmentally friendly driving.
• Business result : Enhanced customer retention and satisfaction. EFFIFUEL has brought fuel savings of 2.5 liters per 100 kilometers per truck. The company also reduced the environmental costs of transportation activities. According to Michellin, if all European trucking companies had been using the EFFIFUEL initiative, it would have caused a 9 tons of CO2 emission reduction.

Schneider Electric-Box

Schneider Electric is a global company with employees all over the world. Prior to the Box initiative , which is a cloud-based solution, business processes were relatively slow because it is difficult to process the same documents from different locations at the same time. Schneider Electric also needed a way to provide data management and security for its globally dispersed workforce. So Schneider Electric outsourced its own custom cloud environment that integrates with Microsoft Office applications to Box. The platform also ensures tight control of corporate data with granular permissions, content controls and the use of shared links.  Thanks to this initiative, the company has moved from 80% of its content hosted on-premises to 90% in the cloud and has a more flexible workforce.

• Business challenge : Inability to increase operational efficiency of the global workforce without capitulating to data security.
• Solution : Outsourcing company’s cloud-based platform to Box, that ensures data security and integration with Microsoft Office programs to ensure ease of doing business.
• Business result : Schneider Electric connects its 142.000 workers within one platform which hosts 90% of its documents.

Thomas Pink-Fits.me

British shirt maker Thomas Pink, part of the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey group, has outsourced the development of its online sales platform to Fits.me Virtual Fitting Room . The aim of the initiative was to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors in e-commerce. Thanks to the online platform developed, customers can determine how well the shirt they are buying fits them by entering their body size.

The platform also helps Fits.me gain better customer insight as previously unknown customer data, including body measurements and fit preferences, becomes available. In this way, the platform can offer customers the clothes that fit them better.

• Business challenge : Lack of visibility into  online sales and customers’ preferences.
• Target customers : Online buyers and users.
• Line of business function : Sales and customer success management.
• Solution : Outsourcing the development of the online platform to Fits.me Virtual Fitting Room .
• Business result : Improved customer satisfaction and engagement. Thomas Pink reports that customers who enter the virtual fitting room are more likely to purchase a product than those who do not. There are many successful digital transformation projects from different industries, but we won’t go into every case study. Therefore, we provide you with a sortable list of 31 successful case studies. We categorized them as:
• System Improvement : changing the way existing businesses work by introducing new technologies.
• Innovation : creating new business practices, based on the latest technology.

If you are ready to start you digital transformation journey,  you can check our data-driven and comprehensive list of digital transformation consultant companies .

To find out more about digital transformation, you can also read our digital transformation best practices , digital transformation roadmap and digital transformation culture articles.

You can also check our sustainability case studies article which include ESG related success stories.

For any further assistance please contact us:

This article was drafted by former AIMultiple industry analyst Görkem Gençer.

Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur. He advised enterprises on their technology decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He also published a McKinsey report on digitalization.

He led technology strategy and procurement of a telco while reporting to the CEO. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem's work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider.

Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

AIMultiple.com Traffic Analytics, Ranking & Audience , Similarweb. Why Microsoft, IBM, and Google Are Ramping up Efforts on AI Ethics , Business Insider. Microsoft invests $1 billion in OpenAI to pursue artificial intelligence that’s smarter than we are , Washington Post. Data management barriers to AI success , Deloitte. Empowering AI Leadership: AI C-Suite Toolkit , World Economic Forum. Science, Research and Innovation Performance of the EU , European Commission. Public-sector digitization: The trillion-dollar challenge , McKinsey & Company. Hypatos gets $11.8M for a deep learning approach to document processing , TechCrunch. We got an exclusive look at the pitch deck AI startup Hypatos used to raise $11 million , Business Insider.

To stay up-to-date on B2B tech & accelerate your enterprise:

Next to Read

6 easy process mining digital transformation tips [2024], healthcare apis in 2024: top 7 use cases & case studies, 5 ways to improve employee experience (ex) in 2024.

Your email address will not be published. All fields are required.

Related research

3 Ways Towards Stronger Digital Dexterity in 2024

4 Digital Technologies Transforming Wealth Management in '24

• Perspectives
• Best Practices
• Inside Amplitude
• Customer Stories
• Contributors

Digital Transformation Examples: 3 Company Case Studies

Learn how three legendary companies—Walmart, Ford, and Anheuser-Busch InBev—improved customer experience by focusing digital transformation around data.

Digital transformation is a process by which a company invests in building out new digital products and services in the effort to rethink the business around digital. An effective digital transformation improves customer experience and enhances the way a company operates behind the scenes.

To digitally transform, your business needs to deploy new products and technologies. With these new products come new ways to connect with your customers and more data to inform roadmaps and strategies.

Once the investment in digital begins, your business can use new products and data to identify growth opportunities. The three case studies below—from Ford, Walmart, and Anheuser-Busch InBev—show how legendary companies went beyond simply creating an app and truly re-thought how digital efforts supported sustainable growth for the business.

• Digital transformation brings about new products and services that improve the customer experience.
• Digital transformation can also be an investment into new systems, goals, and methodologies that make internal processes more efficient.
• Digital transformation gives you more informative behavioral data and more touchpoints with the customer.
• You can leverage the new data gained from digital transformation efforts to further improve the customer experience and drive sustainable growth.
• AB InBev, Walmart, and Ford used investments in digital technology to accelerate internal processes and deploy new digital products that, consequently, provided valuable data on the customer experience and influenced future business investments.

3 examples of digital transformation through data

Here are three examples of legendary companies that embarked on digital transformation with a focus on data. These companies carefully considered how new technology could bring about data that both made internal processes more efficient and produced insights about how to grow customer value.

Brewing company AB InBev underwent a digital transformation by compiling their network of independent breweries into a unified powerhouse . One of their priorities was getting their data in the cloud, and by doing so, employees can now pull data that’s gathered globally and use it to make data-backed decisions.

For example, more accurate demand forecasting means AB InBev teams can match supply with demand—essential for such a large company with a complex supply chain. Access to data from all the breweries means they’re able to experiment faster and roll out changes that improve business processes.

Gathering more data and opening up that data to internal teams was just the first step of the process, though. AB InBev capitalized on their digital investments by launching an ecommerce marketplace called BEES for their SMB customers—the “mom and pop shops”—to order products from. With the BEES platform, AB InBev found that their small and medium-sized businesses browsed the store on the mobile app and added items to their cart throughout the day—however, they only made the final purchases later in the evening.

Based on this behavioral data, the BEES team started to send push notifications after 6:00 p.m., recommending relevant products, which led to increased sales and greater customer satisfaction. By the end of June 2021, BEES had gained over 1.8 million monthly active users and had captured more than $7.5B in Gross Merchandise Volume .

Jason Lambert, the SVP of product at BEES, credits their success with the hard data that told them how their customers behaved and what they needed: “it turned out to be a thousand times better than any of our previous strategies or assumptions.” BEES used behavioral analytics to respond quickly, changing the buying experience to match the needs and habits of their retailers.

As a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer, Walmart began digital transformation when they opened an online marketplace. However, digital transformation is an ongoing process—it doesn’t end at the first website. A digital transformation means companies refocus their operations around digital technology—and this usually happens both internally and in a customer-facing way.

To drive more customer value through digital touchpoints, Walmart set up mobile apps and a website to allow customers to purchase goods online. After analyzing customer behavioral information from their app, they added more services such as same-day pickup, mobile ordering, and “buy now, pay later.”

To be successful with digital transformation, Walmart prioritized data access for everyone on their teams. Breaking down internal silos allowed employees to take ownership; They acted fast and made concrete changes to improve the customer experience.

Walmart’s head of mobile marketing, Sherry Thomas-Zon, notes how critical data—and access to data—are to digital operations. “Our marketing and product teams are always looking at numbers,” Thomas-Zon said. “You can’t work quickly without a self-service data and analytics tool for marketing, especially in an organization as large as Walmart. It keeps our teams agile, despite our size and the increasing amount of data we collect and analyze.”

Ford has embraced several digital transformation initiatives—including using technology to transform and improve the manufacturing process at one of its biggest factories. Not having the correct parts available holds up workers and slows down the production process. Ford introduced a material flow wireless parts system so they could track the quantities of different parts and make sure there were enough available.

In 2016, Ford also introduced a digital product for their customers—the FordPass app . It allows Ford owners to remotely control their vehicles. For example, drivers can check their battery or fuel levels and lock or unlock their car from their phone.

To capitalize on these new digital touchpoints with the customer, Ford leveraged data to improve the experience of the FordPass app. First, the product team grouped customers based on the in-app behaviors they demonstrated. Then, based on each group’s activity, Ford personalized the app experience to provide more value. Jian Wei Hoh, head of business design at Ford, said, “ Designing around cohorts is a game-changer .”

Ford’s success is grounded in the same process as Walmart and AB InBev. They used their digital transformation to gather detailed information about how their consumers interact with their products. Then, they made data-led decisions to provide more value to their customers.

Overcoming common digital transformation challenges

It’s not called a transformation for no reason. You’re changing the way your business operates, which is no easy feat. Here are the common challenges you’ll face and how to overcome them.

Teams undergoing a digital transformation have to:

• Unlearn habits
• Get used to new structures and ways of collaborating
• Deal with changing roles
• Develop new skills

All of this takes time and, as you integrate new systems with the old, there’s a risk that teams will get siloed and chaos will ensue.

A key way of overcoming these challenges is planning. Create a digital transformation strategy roadmap in advance. Outline your integration strategy and detail how this will affect each team. Once you’ve created your plan, share it with the entire company, so everyone can use it as a single reference point. Use a project management tool that allows team members to get a big-picture overview and see granular details like the tasks they’re responsible for.

It takes time for teams to onboard and move away from what was successful under the previous system, for example, shifting from heavyweight to lightweight project planning. Make sure you factor some breathing space into your roadmap—give everyone a chance to get used to the new way of operating.

As part of a digital transformation, you’ll want your team to develop new skills as well. Upskill your team by incorporating digital skills into your employee development plans . Provide people with opportunities to learn and then track their progress.

More challenges arise if you believe there’s an end-state to digital transformation. New technology and new consumer behaviors are always emerging, which means digital transformation is an ongoing process. It’s not something you’ll complete in a week. Rather, it’s a continuous state of experimentation and improvement. At Amplitude, we refer to this process as digital optimization . If digital transformation brings new products, services, and business models to the fold, then digital optimization is about improving these outputs. Both digital transformation and digital optimization are important—digital transformation signals the start of new investments, and digital optimization compounds them.

Tips for building a digital transformation strategy

A digital transformation won’t magically grant you more profit. Examine how each part of the transformation will affect your customers and your employees. Then, you can be intentional and introduce initiatives that positively impact your business.

Diagnose what you want from a digital transformation first

There are different ways of going about a digital transformation. Some companies prefer to implement an all-inclusive digital strategy, and they transform all parts of their organization at the same time. Others opt for a less-risky incremental strategy. Every company is different. To choose the best approach, examine your whole organization and analyze where digital systems could help.

Consider your business goals. Investigate how a digital transformation could impact the customer experience. What new products could you provide? How could you improve your services? For example, you might use artificial intelligence to create a chatbot that reduces customer service wait times—or purchase software that does the same.

You’ll also want to consider your business processes. How could a digital transformation speed you up? Improve your operations? Allow more collaboration between teams? Asking these questions allows you to challenge the way you operate and will help you identify problems in your organization that you might not have noticed before. For example, perhaps your deliveries are often delayed, and you could make delivery smoother by digitizing elements of your supply chain .

Get cross-team involvement

Though different teams may work separately, your customers are affected by each department. Collaboration elevates everyone’s work because it means people can make informed decisions.

Make sure you get input from all of the right stakeholders when you create your digital transformation strategy. Ask:

• What processes hold you up?
• Where are the bottlenecks?
• What data would be useful for you?

Allow everyone to access the data they need without input from anyone else. Help your employees improve their data literacy . Start by providing training so everyone can use the data tools and software in your organization—consider setting up a capability academy for data skills . To help everyone in your organization access and analyze data, adopt easy-to-use self-service tools. Then, lead by example. Provide inspiration by using data storytelling in your presentations to explain the decisions you make.

Encourage collaboration between teams by creating shared resources, so they have spaces to present insights and submit suggestions. This could be as simple as creating a Google Doc for brainstorming that multiple teams can access, or sharing charts directly within your analytics solution like with Amplitude Notebooks . Then, you can start to experiment and make improvements to the digital customer experience like Walmart, Ford, and AB InBev did.

Once your digital transformation is moving, a digital optimization strategy is an opportunity to generate growth. Your digital transformation initiatives will continue in parallel, and the process will become a feedback loop:

• Deploy new digital systems and products
• Analyze the data that comes forth from these investments. Use it to draw insights about your customers or processes.
• Make decisions based on the data and make changes.
• Repeat. (Or, optimize .)

Always focus on your customers

Keep customer needs at the heart of what you do. Let them be your guiding light as you go through your digital transformation—as you gather more data about how your customers interact with your new digital products, use it to make the experience even better for them. It’ll lead to more trust and loyalty and, ultimately, result in more recurring revenue.

To continue your learning about digital transformation and optimization, join an Amplitude workshop or webinar or read our Guide to Digital Optimization .

• MIT Sloan. How to build data literacy in your company
• McKinsey & Company. Digital transformation: Raising supply-chain performance to new levels
• Harvard Business Review. Boost Your Team’s Data Literacy
• Datanami. From Big Beer to Big Data: Inside AB InBev’s Digital Transformation
• Predictable Profits. How Ford Embraced Digital Transformation
• APMG International. Heavyweight v Lightweight Management
• Whatfix. Upskilling Your Workforce in 2022

About the Author

More best practices.

• For Small Business

30+ Digital Transformation Case Studies & Success Stories [2023]

• March 17, 2024
• by Terry Tolentino

Digital transformation has been on the executive agenda for the past decade and ~90% of companies have already initiated their first digital strategy. However, given the increasing pace of technological innovation, there are numerous areas to focus on. A lack of focus leads to failed initiatives. Digital transformation leaders need to focus their efforts but they are not clear about which areas to prioritize for their digital transformation initiatives.

As a web scraping and data extraction expert with over 10 years of experience, I have seen firsthand how critical it is for companies to carefully evaluate and select focus areas when undergoing digital transformation. Based on my analysis of hundreds of case studies and client engagements, I recommend enterprises initially focus their efforts on digitally transforming customer service and operations functions.

Key research findings:

Outsourcing is an important strategy for many companies‘ digital transformation initiatives. Research shows that more than half of companies outsource some digital capabilities and many rely on external partners to provide expertise.

Most successful digital transformation projects focus on customer service and operations. According to Forbes , 86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience. Enhancing these functions through digital transformation can directly impact customer retention and revenues.

JioMart is one of the largest Indian e-commerce companies that focuses on online grocery shopping, fashion, and home essentials. In May 2020, JioMart was completely launched in 200 Indian cities. They offer over 50,000 products and process more than 250,000 orders per day.

Business challenge: Inability to accommodate the high demand for their services and volume of orders. The company was experiencing 3x more traffic than anticipated. According to JioMart, order volumes spiked from 10,000 per day to over 250,000 per day within weeks of launching. Their systems were not built to handle that scale.

Target customers: Mass population. JioMart targets India‘s price-sensitive consumer base of 1.3 billion citizens, especially those in tier 2 and 3 cities.

Line of business function: Customer success management and sales.

Solution: JioMart collaborated with Haptik to develop a WhatsApp chatbot to scale its customer service efforts. The chatbot provides 24/7 automated customer support and handles over 70% of JioMart‘s customer queries.

Business result: 68% repeat purchase rate through the WhatsApp channel , 15% conversion rate and 1500 average daily orders. The chatbot was able to resolve customer issues quickly at scale, driving higher satisfaction.

Source: Haptik

Michelin-EFFIFUEL

Michelin, a global tire manufacturer, launched its EFFIFUEL initiative in 2013 to reduce the fuel consumption of trucks. In this context, vehicles were equipped with telematics systems that collect and process data on the trucks, tires, drivers habits and fuel consumption conditions. By analyzing this data, fleet managers and executives at the trucking companies were able to make adjustments to reduce oil consumption.

Business challenge: Inability to improve customer retention rates to target levels, due to trucks’ fuel consumption and CO2 emissions . Michelin found fuel costs account for over 30% of operating costs in the trucking industry. This impacts profitability and customer retention.

Target customers: Fleet managers and operations managers at truck companies in Europe

Solution: By using smart devices, truck and tire performance degradation is detected and maintained from the start. The solution also nudges truck drivers into more cost and environmentally friendly driving. Real-time data enables proactive maintenance.

Business result: Enhanced customer retention and satisfaction. EFFIFUEL has brought fuel savings of 2.5 liters per 100 kilometers per truck. The company also reduced the environmental costs of transportation activities. According to Michellin, if all European trucking companies had been using the EFFIFUEL initiative, it would have caused a 9 million ton reduction in CO2 emissions.

Schneider Electric-Box

Schneider Electric is a global company with over 140,000 employees across 100+ countries. Prior to implementing the Box content cloud , collaboration and document sharing processes were inefficient and fragmented. With a dispersed workforce, it was difficult to collaborate on documents in real-time from different locations and devices.

Schneider Electric also needed to balance flexible access with strong data security protocols for its sensitive corporate information. These challenges led them to outsource and customize an enterprise cloud solution from Box.

Business challenge: Inability to increase operational efficiency of the global workforce without capitulating to data security.

Solution: Schneider Electric outsourced its cloud needs to Box, customizing a secure content platform integrated with Microsoft Office 365. Box provided:

• Real-time document collaboration across locations and devices
• Granular permissions and content controls
• Integration with Microsoft Office apps
• Enterprise-grade security and compliance

Business result:

• Reduced IT infrastructure costs by 30% by eliminating legacy on-premises servers
• Accelerated time-to-market cycles company-wide
• Seamlessly connected 142,000 employees worldwide on one platform
• Safely migrated over 90% of content to the cloud

The Box implementation enabled Schneider Electric to digitally transform content collaboration and management globally, with substantial gains in agility, productivity and security.

Thomas Pink-Fits.me

British shirt maker Thomas Pink, part of the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey group, has outsourced the development of its online sales platform to Fits.me Virtual Fitting Room . The aim of the initiative was to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors in e-commerce. Thanks to the online platform developed, customers can determine how well the shirt they are buying fits them by entering their body size.

The platform also helps Fits.me gain better customer insight as previously unknown customer data, including body measurements and fit preferences, becomes available. In this way, the platform can offer customers the clothes that fit them better.

Business challenge: Lack of visibility into online sales and customers’ preferences. Thomas Pink had limited customer data from online sales. Most purchases occurred in physical stores.

Target customers: Online buyers and users. With this initiative, Thomas Pink specifically targeted digital-first consumers.

Line of business function: Sales and customer success management. The virtual fitting room enhanced the online shopping experience.

Solution: Outsourcing development of an online virtual fitting room to Fits.me.

• 29.6% higher conversion rate for customers using the fitting room
• Increased customer satisfaction and engagement
• Unlocked valuable customer body measurement data to inform production

There are many more successful digital transformation projects from different industries. To summarize, I have compiled a sortable table of 32 case studies categorized by industry, business function, and type of digital transformation:

This demonstrates the range of business functions and solutions companies leverage to digitally transform operations, services, products and business models.

While each company‘s needs are unique, customer-centric functions like customer service, sales, and marketing are common focus areas. Improving these through digital capabilities directly impacts customer acquisition, retention and satisfaction.

Similarly, digitizing operations functions like manufacturing, supply chain and internal systems improves efficiency, drives growth and enhances workforce productivity.

Based on my expertise in extracting and analyzing digital transformation data points, companies able to correctly prioritize and focus efforts yield the highest ROI. They balance long-term innovation with short-term improvements to existing systems.

Let me know if you would like me to expand on any specific case study or trend highlighted here. I can provide additional details, examples and data.

If you are ready to start your digital transformation journey, you can check our data-driven and comprehensive list of digital transformation consultant companies .

To find out more about digital transformation, you can also read our digital transformation best practices , digital transformation roadmap and digital transformation culture articles.

You can also check our sustainability case studies article which include ESG related success stories.

For any further assistance please contact us:

Transparency Statement: AIMultiple collaborates with many technology vendors including Haptik .

This article was drafted by former AIMultiple industry analyst Görkem Gençer.

Reimagining medicine through data-led transformation

Novartis uses a multi-cloud data analytics platform to optimize operations and accelerate innovation.

5-MINUTE READ

Call for change

For pharmaceutical companies, data is in many ways the lifeblood of the industry. With New Science developments—such as genomics, molecular profiling, biomarkers and patient monitoring devices—more data sets are being generated than ever before. Additionally, new supply chain security, patient services and marketing capabilities are creating a treasure trove of operational, patient and healthcare practitioner data. All these advances will produce new data streams exponentially larger than what companies are currently dealing with. As they do so, the data’s value will exponentially grow. The data-thirsty personalized medicine market alone was valued at $493.1 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a 6.2% compound annual growth rate from 2021 to 2028.1

Elizabeth Theophille, Chief Technology Transformation Officer at Novartis and Dr. Petra Jantzer, Senior Managing Director, Global Accenture Partner for Novartis talk about Novartis’ Digital Transformation journey and how their Gartner award-winning, multi-cloud platform supports the big data and analytics strategy employed to ultimately Reimagine Medicine.

Novartis, an industry pioneer, has embarked on an ambitious transformation to become the leading medicines company powered by data science and digital technologies. It knows data are only as good as the tools used to analyze and exploit them. How could it make data from all the nooks and crannies of the business work to revolutionize operations, drug development and commercialization? How could it be ready for the data-rich demands of personalization and advances in new therapies like cell and gene therapies?

Accomplishing these goals was difficult with the company’s legacy IT system, data fragmentation and information silos. Novartis required the flexibility and scalability of cloud technology to consolidate data and support dynamic, future-ready technology that help improves collaboration, insights and innovation. An end-to-end data and analytics solution would offer a broader and deeper view of activities to make business and clinical decisions. The insights it yields would help reimagine medical innovation to get patients life-changing therapies, fast and at a lower cost.

1 Grand View Research, “Personalized Medicine Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Product (Personalized Medical Care, Personalized Nutrition & Wellness, DTC Diagnostics, Telemedicine, Complementary Medicine), And Segment Forecasts, 2021 – 2028,” May 2021, Grand View Research website , accessed October 4, 2021.

When tech meets human ingenuity

From tech giants to startups and academia, Novartis collaborated with a variety of entities including Accenture on a project with the potential to transform all aspects of the business. We first helped map the stakeholder business value for this journey then created the data and analytics operating model, governance, road map, architecture, centralized data catalogue and platform for a holistic solution that harnesses new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the primary cloud provider, Novartis also engaged Microsoft Azure to create a multi-cloud platform, complying with the best clinical and pharmaceutical manufacturing practices and offering capabilities across functions. The powerful analytics capabilities enable Novartis to crunch large (and growing) data sets. At launch, approximately 35% of global company data was on the new platform, with the remaining data planned for migration.

Teams can also develop use cases for new analytics-related projects to explore and scale across the business. This helps teams experiment with potential analytics use cases to solve business challenges and profit from opportunities. In some cases, we help deliver the use case programs.

The platform ingests, unifies and refines more than 9TB of internal and external data from over 80 sources in Development, Commercial, Manufacturing and Quality, and Corporate Business Services at a rate 20% faster than legacy systems. The different types of data are put into a standardized format, which can then be used by teams from across the company to simplify reporting.

Novartis’ advanced analytics platform ingests, unifies and refines:

terabytes is the amount of internal and external data the platform ingests, unifies and refines.

sources in Development, Commercial, Manufacturing and Quality, and Corporate Business Services.

faster than legacy systems.

A valuable difference

Novartis is reinventing its business to drive faster decision-making and bold innovation. Teams now have a smorgasbord of analytics tools, supported by AI and ML, to simplify reporting, augment existing programs with data insights, or create new products and services.

“Data democratization” makes insights accessible to relevant users, efficiently balancing ethical, security and regulatory requirements without creating data bottlenecks. Easily interpretable data enable Novartis’ global workforce, partners and researchers to maximize collaboration, ingenuity and productivity. Novartis’ people and research partners use the new platform to cross-pollinate ideas and develop a library of innovative analytics use cases and data models to be applied across the business.

Previously, it took about two weeks to set up a new use case; now it can be done within one day. The use case development time has also accelerated from 10 days to three days. More than 200 use cases are in the pipeline and 36 are under development. Eleven use cases have been rolled out, including DESIRE, a tool for monitoring clinical trial site risk and performance. The benefits go beyond R&D to encompass all aspects of the business. A patient services use case, for instance, is helping Novartis mine call center feedback to improve marketing reach and campaigns.

Novartis has sparked a digital revolution within its business to support data-driven decision making, predict future trends, optimize operations and spur growth. As data from new sciences and medical technologies grow, Novartis has powerful tools to accelerate drug launches—and improve patient outcomes.

Use cases for new analytics-related projects that Novartis can explore and scale to solve business challenges and exploit opportunities:

from across Novartis in pipeline

up and running

days to development

day to set up

This solution has drastically transformed our business.

Loic Giraud / CoE Lead Business Analytics – Novartis

The New Equation

Executive leadership hub - What’s important to the C-suite?

Tech Effect

Shared success benefits

Loading Results

No Match Found

A digitization project redefines processes for a big-box retailer

Consumer markets

A digital transformation, including<br>culture change and collaborative<br>automation builds

Alteryx<br>ProEdge

Creating a digital team behind the scenes

A big-box retail chain with thousands of locations throughout North America has been working on a sweeping digital transformation. For the company, it's been a multiyear effort to create a seamless digital customer experience. A top objective has been to empower the finance and accounting controllership team with automation and analytics tools and techniques, enabling them to move away from legacy, manual processes toward efficiency and a competitive edge. The goal: a digital overhaul focused on individual team members that allows them to design and access their own real-time, automated views of critical information so they’re able to play a more strategic role.

Prior to the retailer’s current digital transformation efforts, leaders had worked to transform enterprise applications, but the upgrades were not reaching every corner of the business to fully meet the needs of the high-growth company. They started over on a project-by-project basis, modernizing each area as they progressed.

The controllership was the next big opportunity. Management historically relied on time-intensive, manual spreadsheets but was aware of the opportunities automation techniques could provide.

The dream outcome: each associate on the controllership team would be empowered to independently imagine and execute new ways to get efficient with data—a concept PwC calls “citizen-led automation.”

Modernizing internally with automation

The retailer launched a pilot to build 20 automation workflows for the financial controllership team. For inspiration and training, PwC applied its BXT way of working, combining business strategy (B), experience design (X) and immersive technology (T), and 175 controllership staff members attended PwC-led courses for hands-on experience.

Eliminating manual tasks to create a more tech-enabled future

The company needed proof that citizen-led automation would work—and fast. Leaders were eager to reduce the time teams spent on manual tasks so they could contribute to the company’s future in new ways. A sprint included exploring potential methodologies and possibilities, which created the energy and engagement necessary to move quickly from planning to action. Functional leaders identified their most painful manual processes and then mapped workflows, creating the basis for successful rebuilds. PwC helped perfect what was needed to manage everything from lease accounting to ERP daily payment reconciliations. The teams created momentum. In just six weeks, they built automations for 20 processes. Robust testing and refinement led to wide adoption of the new workflows.

Simplified processes lead to new possibilities

The retailer’s controllership team huddled with PwC to design and test new processes, deep-think solutions and compare notes.

Employees began to understand how new workflows could simplify their jobs and were active in refining the workflows to create a better digital experience and improve efficiency.

PwC-led programs armed the controllership with new skills and opened their minds to new possibilities. Employee morale, engagement and productivity grew, and teams were thrilled to present their workflows and celebrate their successes and contributions.

Employees jumped at the opportunity to use Innovation hub, a PwC product which serves as an ideation platform teams can use to log and track ideas while providing analytics to the finance team. In just three weeks, employees logged over 250 digitization ideas.

Citizen-led automation: Intuitive software for the controllership and tax teams

The retailer leveraged the know-how and assets offered up by PwC’s technology automation delivery team to ramp up its tech transformation.

The effort focused on gaining experience and delivering results, leveraging Alteryx, a platform that allows end-users to automate data intensive work, obtaining automated insights and analytics for faster business outcomes, supporting the business case for modern methods.

Alteryx was complemented by ProEdge—a PwC product that enables digital upskilling efforts across organizations—to give employees opportunities to learn how to build their own automations.

The company also became an early adopter of PwC’s self-service marketplace of curated digital assets, including pre-built automations for its controllership and tax teams. This has helped the company with its digital transformation and inventory.

Setting the stage for a new digitization mindset

In a matter of weeks, the retailer was able to introduce capabilities that could remove thousands of hours of manual processes per year. Additionally, the company enabled faster decision-making with more robust and current data. More importantly, it set the precedent for the controllership team to begin a full “citizen automation” mindset shift.

As an example, reconciliations of payments in the core ERP platform were done daily in a manual, spreadsheet-managed process. Leveraging Alteryx and the cloud data platform, this process was automated from taking approximately 1,000 hours on an annual basis to minutes via the Alteryx automation.

In a short trial of only six weeks, the company moved from planning to action, increasing employee productivity and morale for 100% of use cases identified by process champions. The team extended its efforts through an additional phase of work to achieve the following results in a matter of months:

hours saved annually—with over $8 million projected cost savings over three years

use cases were automated, shifting the focus of the finance team from data prep to analytics review; 250 more use cases identified for automation

of automations enable leaders to make faster decisions

“The big-box retailer’s digital transformation inspired citizen-led automation within their financial controllership team. This new way of working empowers associates to reimagine how they work, which results in faster decisions, complementing the enterprise-led IT initiatives already in process.”

 Andy Ruggles Partner, PwC

Learn how PwC and Alteryx helped simplify processes that lead to new possibilities

Explore pwc's case study library, share this case study.

A big box retailer used automation to eliminate manual tasks and create a more tech-enabled future. Hello, time savings.

{{filterContent.facetedTitle}}

{{item.publishDate}}

{{item.title}}

{{item.text}}

Andy Ruggles

Partner, PwC US

Kevin Pennington

PwC Principal, PwC US

Thank you for your interest in PwC

We have received your information. Should you need to refer back to this submission in the future, please use reference number "refID" .

Required fields are marked with an asterisk( * )

Please correct the errors and send your information again.

By submitting your email address, you acknowledge that you have read the Privacy Statement and that you consent to our processing data in accordance with the Privacy Statement (including international transfers). If you change your mind at any time about wishing to receive the information from us, you can send us an email message using the Contact Us page.

© 2017 - 2024 PwC. All rights reserved. PwC refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.

• Data Privacy Framework
• Cookie info
• Terms and conditions
• Site provider
• Your Privacy Choices

• Browse service to continue your digital journey on SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business One, Salesforce, Analytics and Cloud " data-child="menu-item-services"> Services
• Forging niche-specific digital transformations " data-child="menu-item-our-industries"> Industries

FOLLOWS US ON

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Streamline business processes and improve productivity

Thrive with SAP Business One and SAP S/4 HANA Cloud

SAP S/4Hana application services, Industry-specific deployment and managed services

Enabling enterprise IT modernization with SAP solutions

Unlocking agility with AWS And Azure cloud service portfolio

Enterprise engagement and CX transformation

Implement and operate CRM with maximum efficiency

Our long-standing partnership with Salesforce

Our expert-developed models to elevate Salesforce potential

Industry-ready business intelligence solutions

Powering businesses to make insights-driven decisions

Time to value, easy installations, and ongoing support

Data-driven,   advanced automation solutions to build intelligent enterprises

Seamless Cloud Integration for SMBs with Amazon BI Tool

Industry-ready, advanced business technologies

Strategic advisory for organizational process agility

Dedicated project divisions with skilled resources

Pool of talented digital engineering developers

• Healthcare & Pharma
• Gems and Jewelry
• Publication
• Mall and Facilities
• Manufacturing and Production
• F&B/Consumer Products
• High Tech and Electronics
• Trading and Distribution
• ECO (Engineering, Construction and Operations)
• Public Sector
• Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI)
• Oil and Gas

Quenching the quest for lifelong learning and endless discovery

Deep dive into our latest insights and innovation stories from the world of SAP, Salesforce, BI and Cloud

Explore our extensive webinar collection, where knowledge meets innovation.

Learn success stories build on Customer’s trust on Uneecops for their Transformation Journey.

Uncover the latest news, stories and developments. Watch us make headlines by automating businesses.

Explore our product and services brochures- your handbook to building L.I.V.E. enterprises

Praise always speaks volumes, and our customers share their praise-worthy experiences.

Engage in thought-provoking discussions, learn from experts, and stay updated on trends at Uneecops Industry events.

Download latest thought leadership content

Top 10 SAP Case Studies That Will Inspire You to Follow Your Digital Transformation Dreams 

It takes months of toil, to and fro, meetings, advisory sessions, testing, fine-tuning and a lot more before a go-live happens – all this is fueled by precision, teamwork, and a sprinkle of our Uneecops’ magic. Every dashboard, every support and user adoption training call, all culminate in a seamless launch. Plus, it is the countless cups of coffee that make it happen!  

In the fast-paced world of digital transformation, success stories inspire and motivate us to push boundaries and strive for excellence. Uneecops, India’s #1 SAP Platinum Partner, unveils a series of SAP case studies from 2024 that showcase remarkable transformations, inspiring businesses to dream big and embrace change. 

Making Lahori Zeera Digitally Zingy: Journey to SAP ERP  

Lahori Zeera, India’s fast-growing beverage brand produces a remarkable 2.5 million bottles of tangy goodness each day, with supply in 8 states and over 8000+ sale points. With their scale of operations, tracking finances and outcomes needed advanced automation. SAP ERP offered real-time visibility into monetary transactions, ensuring precise and up-to-date analysis of funds. Additionally, Uneecops significantly enhanced integrating its payment systems with its SAP add-ons. Daily payments could now be efficiently tagged, improving tracking and reconciliation.   

These improvements in financial management and forecast-based decision-making were pivotal in enhancing operational efficiency and contributing to Lahori Zeera’s growth and success. 

Hear from Lahori Zeera’s leadership how Uneecops added tech tang to the zingy beverage brand:

Fixing Fix Derma’s Digital + Derma Challenges: Uneecops’ SAP Customer Success Story   

Fixderma cosmeceutical company, founded in 2006, is a prominent manufacturer & supplier of ingenious skincare and hair care products in India. As the firm boasts a vast product line, managing all verticals needed automation. SAP Business One helped them simplify operations by integrating various business processes such as inventory management, sales, and financials. This integration improved efficiency and lessened errors. Uneecops + SAP Business One enabled the company to manage its inventory better, ensuring they have the right products in stock at the right time. This reduced stockouts and improved customer happiness. 

Making Headlines for Inshorts’ SAP Business One Go-live!  

Inshorts, the 60-word news app with more than 10 million users (about half the population of New York), used SAP Business One to streamline its internal functions, including content management, advertisement, and user engagement. With adequate organization and efficiency, Inshorts can oversee its resources more efficiently, including staff, content, and advertising inventory. This can lead to cost savings and better overall performance. 

Explore their IT modernization journey with Abhishek Bakshi, GM, Finance:

Sharika Life Science Limited’s SAP Success Story with Uneecops: A Dose of Tech Transformation  

Sharika Life Science Limited, a leading name in the Indian pharmaceutical industry, synergized operations in compliance with the recent government GMP pharma mandates. SAP’s GMP and quality control modules helped Sharika Life Science Limited ensure all manufacturing processes and quality control measures met the required prerequisites.  

With SAP Business One, Sharika Life Science Limited can efficiently track and trace batches of their products throughout the supply chain. This is essential for maintaining product quality, recognizing and addressing any problems that may arise, and complying with regulatory necessities.  

Also, SAP Business One’s inventory management abilities helped Sharika Life Science Limited optimize its inventory levels, downsize wastage, and ensure that it always has the right number of raw materials and finished products on hand. 

Watch their incredible journey of excellence and efficiency:

Weaving Raj Group’s Operations Together with SAP ERP: Curating SAP Customer Tale  

Raj Group, a global powerhouse, delivers comprehensive floor covering solutions that span carpets, durries, rugs, bath rugs, pillows, poufs, wall hangings, storage baskets, and floor cushions.  

To sidestep the growing pains of supply chain management, technological intervention was required. That’s how they went from homegrown ERP to SAP ERP. Just as their adept workforce operates as one tight-knit family, SAP seamlessly weaves into the fabric of their organization, improving efficiency and paving the way for even greater international success. The system greatly assisted in planning production schedules based on demand projections, ensuring optimal resource utilization and timely delivery of rugs. The system also optimized the entire supply chain process, from sourcing raw materials to delivering finished products, enhancing efficiency and reducing lead times. 

Explore how Uneecops redefined the boundaries of innovation and quality for Raj Group:

Fueling Success for Leading Oil Company BP Oil Mills with SAP ERP  

BP Oil Mills, a titan in the edible oil industry with over a century of history, underwent a complete restructuring of its operations by implementing SAP ERP. Confronted with supply chain management and sales challenges, the enterprise recognized that its existing homegrown ERP software needed to be improved. SAP’s expertise and specialization in ERP systems firmed the decision to switch to SAP ERP. The implementation of SAP ERP enabled BP Oil Mills to centralize and organize their previously fragmented processes. With Uneecops as their partner, they successfully retrieved command of their operations and outperformed competitors. Join us on this journey towards industry leadership.   

Hear from the customer on their SAP tale:

Vital Capital Environment #WinningwithSAPBusinessOne: A SAP Case Study  

Vital Capital Environment’s management emphasized transparency within their system from the early phases. This pledge to transparency was a foundational principle and a strategic move to enable next-level advancements in business development, particularly with integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies. By implementing SAP Business One, Vital Capital Environment accomplished easy integration across its operations, all while consolidating its data into a single, accessible database. This integration and data consolidation streamlined their processes and paved the way for future growth and innovation. Vital Capital Environment’s success narrative with SAP Business One spotlights the transformative power of a unified, transparent system in driving business excellence and innovation. 

Watch to find out more:

Fastening Usha Fasteners Transformation: SAP Business One Case Study  

Usha Fasteners is the leading manufacturer, trader and service provider of Fasteners, Hand Tools, and Workshop Equipment. As a high-potential family-based company, the leadership realized the importance of post COVID-19 automation for global expansion and complete transformation. With SAP Business One, all departments at Usha Fasteners underwent a transformation change. Remote work was possible as systems were integrated and process improvements happened. SAP modules like finance, accounting, and inventory management helped the company track and manage inventory levels, linking them to vendor and customer finance transactions.  

Hear from the Managing Director:

‘Tech Engineer’ for Accupack Engineering  

SAP Business One was pivotal in modernizing Accupack Engineering Private Limited, Asia’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturing solutions company. The implementation of SAP Business One enabled Accupack Engineering to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and enhance overall business performance. With SAP Business One, Accupack Engineering gained real-time insights into its processes, improved inventory management, and optimized its supply chain. Additionally, the system’s scalability and flexibility ensured that Accupack Engineering could adjust to varying market demands and continue to innovate in the pharma manufacturing sector.   

Watch this video to hear about their experience:

Uneecops Engineers System Integration for Acro Engineering: SAP Business One Implementation Case Study  

Uneecops built a L.I.V.E. enterprise for Acro Engineering with SAP ERP solution portfolio. The early start up company’s leadership knew – adopting technology early on is better to lay the right foundation. The gaming and high-tech company gained insights into business performance with customizable reports for better decision-making. The leadership and stakeholders could access SAP Business One features and data on the go with mobile applications, allowing for real-time information and decision-making. 

Hear from their CEO, Himanshu Jain about their SAP ERP journey and success story:

As we look to the future, these SAP case studies remind us that no dream is too big and no transformation too daunting. With the right partner and the right technology, businesses can achieve remarkable results and pave the way for a brighter, more efficient future.    

Many SAP Case studies Culminating into Many Award-winning Glories  

Our SAP success stories underscore the power of SAP ERP solutions and the impact they can have on businesses across industries. They reinforce the importance of not just reimagining processes and embracing a culture of innovation, but also creating a ripple effect of transformational victories. As businesses bag automation capabilities, Uneecops also achieves.    

Thus, after 75+ successful SAP ERP go-lives in 2024, Uneecops achieved remarkable recognitions in the SAP ecosystem. SAP Platinum Partner Uneecops once again clinched the coveted ‘APJ Partner of the Year 2023’ award at the SAP Partner Summit 2024, Singapore. This marks an impressive seventh consecutive win for the company.  

Along with the history-etched achievement, Uneecops also secured the ‘Partner of the Year, India (2023)’ award, further amplifying its outstanding contributions to the SAP ecosystem. These accolades are a testament to Uneecops’ commitment to excellence and innovation, inspiring businesses worldwide to follow their digital transformation dreams. 

The secret that makes Uneecops deliver successful projects to win customer love…  

Our employees. Our stakeholders. Our quest to transform. Our passion for technology.   

We are able to carve our niche and write more and more SAP success stories because of our people and processes. And in 2024, it showed – as Uneecops achieved the prestigious Great Place to Work® (GPTW) India certification 2024-2025 in our first attempt. 

As we win big each passing year, what makes us most content when we see our client’s happiness as they ditch their excel sheets and switch to automation. The go-live celebrations and joy on our client’s faces are our drive to constantly and relentlessly bring future-proof change.  

Tomorrow is the future. Uneecops is committed to building true L.I.V.E. enterprises of tomorrow.    

Uneecops envisions 2025 and beyond as a tech balance – where business AI is seamlessly integrated, but with human ingenuity – where SAP, CRM, analytics, and cloud technologies converge to power businesses that are both successful and transformative.  

With a focus on innovation and a dedication to excellence, Uneecops is leading the way towards a future where possibilities are limitless, and success knows no bounds. Follow your digital transformation dreams with us! 

Subscribe to my newsletter

Recent Articles

• Business Intelligence
• Business Intelligence services
• Business intelligence tools
• Retail Industry
• powerful analytics tool
• Retail Software
• S/4HANA For Retail

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.

About the author

As a seasoned technology writer with a decade-long commitment to the industry, Roli stands out as a prominent authority in crafting compelling narratives around SAP innovations. Specializing in the dynamic realms of 360* Tableau, SAP technology, and ERP solutions, Roli is renowned for her capacity to spearhead successful marketing and communication strategies. Having collaborated extensively with software experts, she possesses an intricate understanding of the diverse industries and verticals that SAP serves. Rooted in the art of impactful storytelling, Roli connects with audiences, consistently bringing technology USP suitable to their needs.

View all of Roli Agarwal's posts.

Similar Posts

AI: Turning ‘Midas Touch’ into ‘True...

Every midsize business has a desire, a quest, a hunger for exponential growth. They...

SAP NOW 2024 Recap: Highlights and...

SAP NOW, indeed, can never be past. The event is not just SAP India’s...

India's Manufacturing Booms to a 16-Year...

From growth to greatness: India's manufacturing sector experienced an unprecedented surge, hitting a remarkable...

AVAIL FREE CONSULATION

Select Services SAP Salesforce Analytics Cloud

I agree to receive latest info on above areas.

Request E-Book Copy

Select State * Andhra Pradesh Assam Bihar Chhattisgarh Goa Gujarat Haryana Himachal Pradesh Jammu and Kashmir Jharkhand Karnataka Kerala Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra Manipur Meghalaya Mizoram Odisha Punjab Rajasthan Sikkim Tamil Nadu Telangana Tripura Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand West Bengal Andaman and Nicobar Islands Dadra and Nagar Haveli Daman and Diu Lakshadweep Delhi Puducherry

Let’s Start a Conversation

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience.

Service Type * Service Type * Alteryx Cloud ElectrifAi HROne Power BI QuickSight S4 HANA Salesforce SAP Business ByDesign SAP Business One SAP Starter Package Tableau Web

Industry Industry * Agri & Farming Agro Apparel Automobile Chemicals Construction Consulting Consumer Durables Dairy eCommerce Education Electronics Energy & Solar Engineering Finance Food & Beverage Government Healthcare Hospitality IT Logistics Manufacturing Media Mining & Metal Other Packaging Pharma Publication Retail Shopping & Business Centre Sports Technology Telecommunications Utilities

Country * Country * India United States United Arab Emirates Bahrain Cyprus Egypt Iran Iraq Israel Kuwait Lebanon Libya Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Sudan Syria Turkey Yemen Other

State Select State * Andhra Pradesh Assam Bihar Chhattisgarh Goa Gujarat Haryana Himachal Pradesh Jammu & Kashmir Jharkhand Karnataka Kerala Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra Manipur Meghalaya Mizoram Odisha Punjab Rajasthan Sikkim Tamil Nadu Telangana Tripura Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand West Bengal Andaman and Nicobar Islands Dadra and Nagar Haveli Daman & Diu Lakshadweep Delhi Puducherry

Total Turnover: Total Turnover* above 500 Cr 301-500 Cr 201-300 Cr 101-200 Cr 51-100 Cr 11-50 Cr 05-10 Cr

Lead Type *

Google Analytics Campaign

Google Analytics Medium

Google Analytics Source

Google Analytics Content

Google Analytics Term

Prospect URL

Please complete the reCAPTCHA

Submit --> Submit

Software Imaging

Crafting a bespoke student portal for project-based learning and skill-building

Banff Academy partnered with Software Imaging’s team to create a bespoke student portal for project-based learning and skill-building in the digital age.

The primary objective was to help Banff Academy successfully implement a digital student portal, leveraging Sidecar and Microsoft 365 technologies. The portal, designed to reflect Banff's unique identity, organizes student work, tracks progress, and facilitates personalized learning experiences. Utilizing existing Microsoft and Glow accounts ensures seamless integration and compliance with GDPR. The outcome demonstrates a transformative approach to managing student work while prioritizing data security and privacy.

Banff Academy is a S1–S6 secondary school in Banff, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. At the core of the school’s ethos lies the strapline, "Building Skills for today, tomorrow and the future". This is the foundation of what Banff Academy strives for - building a more modern digital education ecosystem, where students are well equipped for their future career or studies. Their goal is to support children in surpassing their own expectations by introducing innovative approaches to teaching and learning.

The Challenge

As Scotland's education system prepares to introduce a cutting-edge digital portfolio for pupils through a National Working Group, Banff Academy faced significant challenges in implementing effective project-based learning. A crucial component lacking was a support system, notably a digital portfolio, essential for capturing, sharing, and showcasing student projects across diverse subjects within the school community. This absence hindered the school's ability to provide comprehensive feedback and monitor student progress effectively. Furthermore, existing off-the-shelf products proved cumbersome and inefficient for managing student work, highlighting the pressing need for a tailored, user-friendly platform.

The Sidecar Solution

Using Sidecar, our versatile toolkit for developing tailored solutions, we crafted a digital profile solution for our client, that seamlessly organises and assesses students' skills and work. This digital profile serves as a centralised portfolio, allowing students to track their progress from their initial school days to graduation. Leveraging Microsoft 365 technology, we integrated existing accounts and stored data, streamlining the implementation process and enhancing data accessibility.

• Sidecar combines the development and digital transformation cost savings by utilising the tools you already use day-to-day.

Aligned closely with Banff’s identity, the digital student portal embodies the unique spirit in the design, organisational structure, and skills, ensuring a cohesive experience. The platform includes a collection of student work, representing different milestones. It also allows users to explore individual projects, each tagged with relevant skills, facilitating assessment and progress tracking. Learners can easily access recent work, add to projects, and view associated files. With options to filter for specific skills, the portfolio serves as a comprehensive archive while staying GDPR compliant and ensuring data security and privacy.

Download Case Study

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Digital transformation

• Business management
• Business communication
• Collaboration and teams
• Corporate communications
• Corporate governance

Digitizing Isn't the Same as Digital Transformation

• Paul Leinwand
• Mahadeva Matt Mani
• March 26, 2021

Business of Innovation: An Interview with Paul Cook

• Paul M. Cook
• From the March–April 1990 Issue

AI Won’t Replace Humans — But Humans With AI Will Replace Humans Without AI

• August 04, 2023

Way Faster Than a Speeding Bullet

• Amy Salzhauer
• April 01, 2005

Coming of Knowledge-Based Business

• From the September–October 1994 Issue

How Executives Can Shape Their Company's Information Systems

• Thomas H. Davenport
• Michael Hammer
• Tauno J. Metsisto
• From the March–April 1989 Issue

5 Questions Boards Should Be Asking About Digital Transformation

• Celia Huber
• Alex Sukharevsky
• Rodney Zemmel
• June 21, 2021

Why Every Organization Needs an Augmented Reality Strategy

• Michael E. Porter
• James Heppelmann
• From the November–December 2017 Issue

Whiteboard Session: How Does Blockchain Work?

• Karim R. Lakhani
• September 20, 2017

Inside IKEA's Digital Transformation

• Thomas Stackpole
• June 04, 2021

Building a More Adaptable Sales Force

• Prabhakant Sinha
• Arun Shastri
• Sally E. Lorimer
• Namratha Agarwal
• June 06, 2022

Customer Loyalty Is Overrated

• A.G. Lafley
• Roger Martin
• From the January–February 2017 Issue
• Harvard Business Publishing
• January 27, 2023

Convincing Your Company Leaders to Invest in New Technology

• Sonya Dineva
• January 18, 2022

Research That Reinvents the Corporation (HBR Classic) (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)

• John Seely Brown
• August 01, 2002

Retailing: Confronting the Challenges that Face Bricks-and-Mortar Stores

• Harvard Business Review
• From the July–August 1999 Issue

Coding Isn’t a Necessary Leadership Skill — But Digital Literacy Is

• Sophia Matveeva
• July 26, 2022

The CEO of Chipotle on Charting a Culinary and Digital Turnaround

• Brian Niccol
• From the November–December 2021 Issue

Automating Data Analysis Is a Must for Midsize Businesses

• Robert Sher
• October 18, 2021

Managers Are More Connected, But Not For The Better

• Henry Mintzberg
• July 20, 2015

Digital Transformation at La Presse (A): Crafting a New Digital Strategy

• Camille Grange
• Sandrine Prom Tep
• Sylvain Senecal
• March 01, 2018

Disruptive Technology a Heartbeat Away: Ecton, Inc.

• Clayton M. Christensen
• Edward G. Cape
• December 11, 1998

IMPAAKT: Crowdsourcing Better ESG Ratings

• Benoit Leleux
• Pablo Percelsi
• Rene Rozendal
• Pietro Valenzano Menada
• Stefan Witschi
• December 22, 2020

Creative Destruction: A Six-Stage Process for Transforming the Organization

• Richard L. Nolan
• David C. Croson
• March 13, 1995

Hewlett-Packard: The Flight of the Kittyhawk (A)

• January 26, 2006

Disruption in Detroit: Ford, Silicon Valley, and Beyond (A)

• Ernest Gundling
• July 01, 2016

How Does Digital Transformation Happen? The Mastercard Case

• Antoine Duvauchelle
• Nathan Furr
• Andrew Shipilov
• February 26, 2018

International Data Spaces: A Collaborative Organizational Moonshot

• Henry W. Chesbrough
• Agnieszka Radziwon
• July 01, 2021

Vanke Port Apartment: Making a Rental Homey with Digital Technology

• Chunyan Peng
• December 20, 2021

Yonyou Entering the Enterprise Cloud Service Market

• Chunling Yu
• Ziqian Zhao
• November 30, 2022

Food from the Heart's Digital Transformation Journey: Change Strategy and Leadership

• Millie Yun Su
• Caroline Lim
• November 28, 2023

Fluidity: The Tokenization of Real Estate Assets

• Marco Di Maggio
• Susie L. Ma
• December 20, 2018

Carmichael Roberts: To Create a Private Equity Firm?

• Steven S. Rogers
• Kenneth Cooper
• January 24, 2017

Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI

• Paul Daugherty
• H. James Wilson
• March 20, 2018

Manik Distribution Agency: An Existential Challenge

• Sapna Popli
• Bikramjit Rishi
• Lovesh Jethwani
• November 14, 2023

Competitive Dynamics in Home Video Games (D): The Nintendo Super NES

• Peter J. Coughlan
• June 13, 2001

Digital Music: From MP3 to Streaming

• February 04, 2008

Xerox and Fuji Xerox: Comments by CEO Paul Allaire, Video (Streaming)

• Benjamin Gomes-Casseres
• February 21, 1992

3M: Rethinking Regionalisation to Adapt to Supply Chain Disruptions

• Steven M. Miller
• Lipika Bhattacharya
• October 16, 2022

Corning Glass Works: The Electronic Products Division (A)

• Michael Beer
• July 01, 1976

IMPAAKT: Harnessing Collective Intelligence to Improve ESG Ratings, Teaching Note

• September 21, 2020

Innovation @ ENEL: From Monopoly Power to Open Power, Teaching Note

Popular topics, partner center.

Case Studies

Inside life day spa rosebank.

Life Day Spa, one of South Africa's largest spas, aimed to transition to a paperless system, offering electronic consultations and prescriptions. With the assistance of ASUS Expert series, they successfully made the digital leap.

Speed and reliability were top priorities for Life Day Spa during their digitization efforts. The ExpertBook B5402 proved to be the perfect solution, equipped with up to a 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 processor. This device facilitated seamless integration with the spa's POS system, ensuring efficient scheduling and operations. Praised as "phenomenal" by the managing partner at Life Day Spa, the ExpertCenter E5402 AiO simplified spa appointments for all therapists.

Life Day Spa's success in digitalization empowered their staff to deliver the most rejuvenating experiences to their customers.

Connect with ASUS Business

Upgrade to Incredible

ASUS Business Product Guide

Sustaining an Incredible Future

Advancing social justice, promoting decent work ILO is a specialized agency of the United Nations

Migrated Content

Digitalization of Business Organizations

This case study, prepared by the ILO Bureau for Employers' Activities (ACT/EMP), aims to assist Latin American Employer and Business Membership Organizations (EBMOs) in their journey towards digitalisation, based on information and responses provided by the EBMOs themselves, as well as interviews with business representatives who shared their experiences in their journey towards digitalisation.

11 July 2023

Files for download

Pioneering Family Traditions with Tech-Driven Market Outreach: A Case Study of Sindhi Dry Fruits

F amily traditions, family businesses and their digital transformation have always been an interesting subject to understand because it shows how people evolved from old ways of doing things to new ones in response to changing market needs. Family businesses, often rooted in deep-seated traditions and values passed down through generations, face the challenge of balancing heritage with the need for innovation and adaptation to stay relevant in today's digital age. 

According to the Family Business Review, about 70% of businesses globally are owned by families whereby most of them are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). These types of companies are very important for the world economy as they contribute greatly towards employment creation, innovation and economic growth.

In India, family businesses play a vital role in the country's economic landscape, with a significant proportion of the country's GDP attributed to family-owned enterprises. A study by the Indian School of Business found that family businesses in India account for around 45% of the country's GDP, with a significant proportion of these being small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). These SMEs, often family-owned and operated, are crucial to the Indian economy, contributing significantly to employment, innovation, and economic growth.

Tech Driver Outreach by Sindhi Dry Fruits

Sindhi Dry Fruits is an Indian family-owned business established in pre-independence India. It has made a name for itself within the crowded Indian market of dried fruits and nuts. Founded in 1939 by the late Shri. Gagan Mal Kataria, the brand has evolved over the decades, seamlessly blending its rich heritage with innovative strategies to cater to the evolving needs of its customers.

Humble Beginnings and Enduring Legacy

The story of Sindhi Dry Fruits began in the pre-independence era, with its origins tracing back to the Sindh region, now part of Pakistan. Shri. Gagan Mal Kataria established the brand with the vision of providing customers with high-quality, wholesome dry fruits. After India's independence, the family relocated to New Delhi, where they set up a retail shop in Lajpat Nagar-2, laying the foundation for the brand's growth.

Over the years, Sindhi Dry Fruits has remained true to its core values, delivering premium-quality products that cater to the discerning tastes of health-conscious consumers. The brand's diverse product range includes a variety of nuts, dried fruits, edible seeds, herbs, spices, confectionery items, beverages and gift hampers.

Under the leadership of Sanjay Kataria, co-owner Sindhi Dry Fruits has undergone a strategic transformation to keep pace with the rapidly evolving market landscape. Recognizing the growing importance of e-commerce, the brand has expanded its presence of premium dry fruits and nuts to include renowned online platforms, such as Amazon.in, Blink It, Flipkart and JioMart.

This digital-first approach has enabled Sindhi Dry Fruits to enhance accessibility for its customers, particularly the urbanised young population and corporate clients seeking premium gifting options. 

Leveraging Hyperlocal Delivery

In addition to its online presence, Sindhi Dry Fruits has also tapped into the growing trend of hyperlocal delivery. Customers in the Delhi-NCR region can now purchase the brand's products within 30 minutes through the Blink It app, a testament to the company's commitment to providing a convenient and efficient shopping experience.

This strategic move not only enhances customer satisfaction but also positions Sindhi Dry Fruits as a responsive and adaptable brand, capable of meeting the evolving needs of its target audience. By leveraging the power of technology, the company has successfully bridged the gap between its traditional roots and the demands of the modern marketplace.

Maintaining Quality and Consistency

Despite the technological advancements, Sindhi Dry Fruits has always been committed to producing great quality products. They ensure this by buying from trusted suppliers and subjecting them to strict checks for quality so as to provide their clients with nothing but the best. This loyalty to excellence has attracted many faithful customers who recognize its unique approach towards achieving customer satisfaction through provision of outstanding goods that meet their needs exactly as desired. 

The integration of digital tools and platforms into the operations of family businesses like Sindhi Dry Fruits not only streamlines processes but also opens up new avenues for growth and expansion. By tapping into renowned e-commerce platforms and adopting innovative marketing strategies, these businesses can connect with a broader audience, including urbanised young populations and corporate clients seeking premium gifting options.

This digital outreach not only preserves the essence of family traditions but also ensures the brand's sustainability and competitiveness in a rapidly evolving market landscape.

Analytics transformation in wealth management

The wealth management industry is typically seen as embodying old-fashioned values and providing discrete, tailored services. These attributes remain valuable parts of the business, but for many clients, they are no longer sufficient. In a highly connected world, people want faster and more convenient offerings and a cutting-edge digital experience. Amid rising competition, established wealth managers need to keep pace with new offerings as they retain the values that set them apart.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Anutosh Banerjee , Fumiaki Katsuki , Vishal Kaushik, Aditya Saxena, Sanchit Suneja, and Renny Thomas .

Wealth managers are unlikely to be able to serve modern clients effectively without a digitized operating model. This will support advisory and non-advisory activities and service everchanging investment preferences. Some leading managers are building modular data and IT architectures, which enable smart decision-making, personalization at scale, and more extensive product offerings. 1 For an in-depth look at how some of these elements are being developed in an overall banking context, see our collection “ Building the AI bank of the future ,” May 2021, mckinsey.com. The changes are also helping them meet their regulatory obligations, boosting the productivity of relationship managers (RMs), and lifting compressed margins.

For wealth managers interested in pursuing these benefits, this article lays out the potential of deploying advanced analytics and offers a playbook of measures that wealth managers should consider including in a digital transformation.

The case for advanced analytics

Meeting the needs of today’s customers requires a business model that is at the same time efficient and adaptable to individual clients. Wealth managers are finding success with two approaches:

• Serve clients across the wealth continuum on a flat-fee advisory basis. Instead of the still-prevalent product-focused model, wealth managers need to build in pricing flexibility aligned to clients’ needs at every stage of their lives. An increasingly common pricing model is for clients to negotiate a flat fee based on the value of their investments. To maintain revenues with this model, wealth managers need to create new efficiencies and ensure RMs are more productive, which means spending more time with clients.
• Embrace personalization aligned to client life stages and goals. Today’s customers are increasingly dissatisfied with a one-size-fits-all service model, so wealth managers should consider transitioning to needs-based personalization. This requires RMs to get comfortable with a wider range of solutions, from the simplest products to complex higher-yielding investments (private markets, venture capital, pre-IPO, and structured products). In addition, RMs must be equipped to help clients make complex investment decisions, supported by analytics.

In today’s context, each of these goals is achievable only with advanced capabilities in data and analytics, especially targeting relationship management.

Focus on relationship management

Modernization can be game changing when it targets the role of RMs. Based on conversations with industry participants, we estimate that RMs typically spend 60 to 70 percent of their time on non-revenue-generating activities, amid rising regulatory and compliance obligations (Exhibit 1). One reason is that most still work with legacy IT systems or even spreadsheets. As clients demand more engagement and remote channel options, that needs to change.

A few leading wealth managers are using technology to provide RMs with the tools to serve clients more efficiently and effectively. Some have taken a zero-based approach, rebuilding their tech stacks and embracing advanced analytics to inform more personalized services. By providing targeted solutions, these firms have been able to boost revenues and reduce operational costs.

Clear benefits of being more client focused

The benefits of digitization are relevant in most markets, but the potential to leverage digitization to achieve a significant performance uplift is especially great in regions where wealth managers have not yet seized the opportunity. In Asia, for example, many wealth managers still need to fully embrace digital ways of working (Exhibit 2). We estimate that IT-based transformations could create some $40 billion to $45 billion of incremental value for wealth managers serving high-net-worth individuals in Asia, equating to roughly 25 basis points on a wealth pool of $17 trillion. 2 Wealth management penetration in the region is 35 to 40 percent, but for the purposes of the calculation, we assume 100 percent of high-networth individuals’ personal financial assets (investable assets of more than $1 million).

Would you like to learn more about our Financial Services Practice ?

Drilling down in the potential gains from data and analytics, we see benefits in three key areas: acquisition and onboarding, engagement and deepening of client relationships, and servicing and retention.

Acquisition and onboarding. Basic acquisition and onboarding applications include client discovery, risk profiling, account opening, and onboarding. RMs and investment teams can use analytics for lead generation, share-of-wallet modeling, and automated proposals. There are also multiple applications in investment management, risk, and compliance, including social-profile checking, anti-money-laundering and know your customer, and fraud protection.

How analytics creates sustainable impact: Two examples from Asia

One leading Asian wealth manager deployed an analytics-led program to produce granular client insights that enabled it to offer responsive, timely, and personalized services to client microsegments. The bank leveraged personalization at scale to boost assets under management by 30 to 40 percent per client in six to eight months.

A second wealth manager created the position of chief investment officer to inform a bankwide view of asset classes and geographies. The CIO used analytics to link product selection to the “house view,” ensuring consistency across model portfolios.

Engagement and deepening. Client-focused applications include personalized research, portfolio management, and notifications. RMs and investment teams can implement client clustering, propensity modeling, recommendation engines, and digital performance management (see sidebar “How analytics creates sustainable impact: Two examples from Asia”). In investment management, risk, and compliance, there are opportunities to de-bias investment decisions, data analysis, and trade execution.

Servicing and retention. Client-related applications include portfolio simulations and optimization, as well as self-execution of trades. RMs can leverage applications such as churn predictors and work planners, while investment management, risk, and compliance can scale up portfolio planning and trade surveillance.

A playbook for analytics-driven wealth management

Early success stories are encouraging, but they are the exception rather than the rule. More often, firms have started the transformation journey but have faltered along the way. Common reasons include a lack of ownership at senior levels and budgetary or strategic restraints that prevent project teams from executing effectively.

The challenges of transforming service models are significant but not insurmountable. Indeed, as analytics use cases become more pervasive, implementation at scale becomes more achievable. In the following paragraphs, we present five ingredients of an analytics-based transformation (Exhibit 3). These can be supported by strong leadership, a rigorous focus on outcomes, and a willingness to embrace new ways of working. Indeed, managers who execute effectively will get ahead of the competition and be much more adept in meeting client needs.

Set a leadership vision

Analytics-driven transformations are often restricted to narrow silos occupied by a few committed experts. As a result, applications fail to pick up enough momentum to make a real difference to performance. Conversely, if support for change programs comes from the top and is guided by an outcomes-driven approach, the business can break away from entrenched operating norms and reset for structural change. With that in mind, executive teams should communicate a vision that can be cascaded through the business. They should also create a safe environment, or sandbox, for business lines to experiment before scaling.

Plot the change journey

Wealth managers have applied advanced analytics to achieving different objectives. Some have found that the application of advanced analytics to business problems delivers significant value and enables them to make better decisions faster and more consistently. Others are using data and advanced analytics to improve sales and marketing, inform investment decision-making, and boost RM productivity.

Any plan for data-driven change must fit the organization’s business model. Implementation will vary based on the technical feasibility, data accuracy and accessibility, time to impact, scalability, and availability of funds. The first few use cases will set the mood and direction, so careful thought is required ahead of action.

One common impediment to scaling is the lack of a single metric to describe impact, which makes it hard for tech teams to communicate benefits. Still, there are workarounds. Financial key performance indicators (KPIs) can show flows across key mandates or volumes of advisory, rather than execution-driven assets under management. Nonfinancial metrics can focus on cross-sell ratios, increased client retention, number of RMs trained, or adoption rates for solutions. Other helpful evaluations include customer satisfaction scores, new trust-based RM-client relationships, time to market, and cultural shifts. Progress on these measures will boost organizational conviction that transformation is beneficial.

The value of personal advice: Wealth management through the pandemic

Build a strong foundation, leading with technology.

Data and technology together form the backbone that supports analytics-led transformation. A strong analytics backbone requires a rigorous standard of data management, coupled with informed decisions about the IT applications and systems to employ.

A digital approach to client-centric servicing

A leading bank created a digital and analytics-powered application that ingests internal and external data points, enabling it to identify “hidden affluence” among its clients.

Another bank combined demographic data with information from client conversations to generate real-time product recommendations and facilitate cross-selling. To continuously train the recommendation engine, the bank built a central data lake—consolidated, centralized storage for raw, unstructured, semistructured, and structured data from multiple sources—so the system has an ever-growing set of data to work from. It then pushed product recommendations through multiple client channels.

A leading investment bank continuously scrapes more than 2,000 financial news sources and more than 800 blogs, stock message sites, and social-media platforms. This exercise helped to enrich the data used by the analytics engine to assess sentiment and inform insights on stocks, bonds, commodities, countries, currencies, and cryptocurrencies.

Wealth managers are routinely in touch with their clients offline. These interactions elicit significant information about client preferences and requirements, but the information is often stored on paper or in RMs’ heads. To mine this knowledge fully, wealth managers must capture it digitally and convert it into a structured format that can be processed to create insights and personalized services (see sidebar “A digital approach to client-centric servicing”). In doing so, they need to put systems in place to ingest, store, and organize the data in line with regulatory obligations while ensuring the data are accurate, available, and accessible.

On the technology side, some leading wealth managers use natural-language processing to analyze text and voice data and identify personalized triggers and insights. Others are building feedback loops across channels to train artificial intelligence algorithms. Technologies can also be applied to processes: robotic process automation, for example, can replace routine manual labor and mental processing in regulatory compliance, risk assessment, reporting, and query management.

Deployment of data-driven decision-making requires scalable, adaptable, and resilient core technology components—a unified data and technology stack that connects across IT activities. 3 Sven Blumberg, Rich Isenberg, Dave Kerr, Milan Mitra, and Renny Thomas, “ Beyond digital transformations: Modernizing core technology for the AI bank of the future ,” April 2021, McKinsey.com. This will enable managers to adopt a tech-first approach to designing customer journeys.

In building data and IT architecture, wealth managers require a basic tool kit with four key components:

• a rationalized IT stack to create a common front-and back-end platform and a unified resource for mobile and web applications
• a scalable data platform with modular data pipelines and application-programming-interface (API)-based microservices for building and deploying analytics solutions at scale
• a semi-autonomous lab environment to enable experimentation, coupled with an at-scale factory environment for production of analytics solutions
• a highly scalable distributed network on the cloud to respond to variable demand for data storage and processing

In parallel to assembling these components, banks must consolidate data from across geographies and business lines. This will enable analysts to elicit insights based on the maximum amount of information. Some leading players first experiment in a sandbox environment and work with external partners to acquire the necessary skills, after which they scale up incrementally.

Build the team and prioritize change management

It is not easy to scale and sustain analytics impact. Organizational silos and cultural resistance are common inhibiting factors, while the vital role that RMs play in forming and maintaining relationships must be adapted to the new environment. Indeed, RMs must be front and center of the transformation process. For this, organizations need effective team building and change management.

Team building. A productive approach to team building is to create cross-functional squads with a range of talents (Exhibit 4). Product owners and designers should be responsible for ensuring that the team meets the needs of its clients (RMs or end clients) and stays focused on delivering value. Data scientists and data engineers implement use cases and check that insights are generated as data are ingested—a minimal-viable-product (MVP) approach. IT architects and software engineers, meanwhile, build the slick interfaces and back-end systems that deliver insights to clients across channels.

How three Asian wealth managers engaged clients and boosted RM productivity

A leading private bank deployed machine learning to generate next-best conversation ideas. It built propensity models and analyzed customer clusters to identify anchor clients and learn from transaction patterns.

Another private bank built a digital workbench that enables RMs to serve clients via a single platform. The workbench was integrated with a centrally hosted recommendation engine that provides personalized recommendations based on life events and transaction data.

A third private bank used explanatory and predictive modeling to identify “moments of truth.” These informed RM coverage and outreach strategy, which helped the bank develop initiatives to support growth and focus RMs on high-value activities.

A core objective should be to explore analytics and AI use cases that boost RM productivity (see sidebar “How three Asian wealth managers engaged clients and boosted RM productivity”). To that end, the squad should embed business and channel management teams so that ideas are aligned with RM client services. Several firms have found that involving RMs and other domain experts in squads leads to significant improvements in data interpretation and modeling.

In many cases, assembling productive squads will require new talent. In particular, banks will need data scientists to be responsible for building analytics software and data engineers to scope and build data pipelines and data architecture. Translators, who act as conduits between the business and technology teams, will be critical for ensuring that squads understand business needs. Finally, squads need IT skill sets to ensure that analytics and digital solutions are compatible with core data and technology stacks.

The best approach to talent acquisition is to take baby steps: get one squad right, foster RM adoption, and then gradually expand capabilities as use cases multiply and are scaled up. Some of the required skill sets are in high demand, so outsourcing may be a realistic early option. In the longer term, however, it makes sense to build internally.

Change management. Relationship managers should be encouraged to embrace analytics and convinced that new applications lead to better services and higher levels of performance. Change management strategies can help. Examples include creating teams of “influencers,” running capability-building sessions, developing change narratives that generate widespread excitement, redefining roles, and aligning performance with financial or nonfinancial awards.

Institutionalize new ways of working

Analytics-driven transformation at scale should be predicated on collaboration, team self-steering, and an iterative approach to problem-solving—elements of the so-called agile approach, which originated in software development. In running agile sprints, it pays to keep business needs in sight, accepting that failure is part of the process. Two-week sprints are usually sufficient to get pilots up and running, and the aim should be to produce an MVP with every sprint.

Wealth managers can apply these basic principles via four process disciplines:

• Inspect and adapt. Daily check-ins will ensure that teams identify roadblocks, such as product backlogs, and maintain their focus on goals.
• Engage end users. Sprint reviews with end users, stakeholders, and sponsors enable teams to gather feedback and bake in recommendations.
• Embed a sense of unity and purpose. Teams should hold retrospectives to incorporate learnings.
• Institutionalize support infrastructure. Agile tooling (for example, Confluence, Jira, and Zeplin) will facilitate experimentation and support remote working where necessary.

Organizations using agile operating models must embrace flexible learning. This is a departure from traditional waterfall-based approaches, in which decision-making occurs at the beginning of each project. In agile, capability building and a relentless focus on change management will be vital elements of optimizing the program. To cement the relationship between innovation and growth, leading firms also assign KPIs to application rollouts, and they reward decision makers based on the value created.

Most wealth managers would say they have already embarked on an analytics journey; many have begun deploying digital applications in various aspects of their businesses. Often, however, the whole system is less than the sum of its parts, and people remain attached to established ways of working. To make a leap forward, wealth managers should commit to bold agendas that will support the scaling up of analytics-driven approaches.

Anutosh Banerjee is a partner in McKinsey’s Singapore office, where Vishal Kaushik and Aditya Saxena are associate partners; Fumiaki Katsuki is a partner in the Hanoi office; and Sanchit Suneja is an associate partner in the Mumbai office, where Renny Thomas is a senior partner.

The authors wish to thank Tiffany Kwok and Charu Singhal for their contributions to this article.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

Building the AI bank of the future

Asia wealth management post-COVID-19: Adapting and thriving in an uncertain world