Transforming Your Operating Model for High Performance in the Digital World

As a result, business models are changing and so, too, must operating models. Accenture helps companies understand the implications and how to craft innovative operating models that will enable high performance in this new environment.

The business environment is becoming increasingly digital, allowing companies to move and analyze data more easily, provide certain types of products electronically and wrap value-added services around others. No geography, industry or company is immune from this megatrend.

Digitization is blurring traditional business rules significantly. On the one hand, organizations can reconfigure channel strategies and mine large amounts of data in real time. On the other, they face new competitors, shifting intellectual property models and new information flows.

These changing circumstances suggest that the path to high performance will require companies to adopt new capabilities, leadership skills and decision-making approaches.

To ensure that their operating models are defined in concert with overall business strategy and new market trends, senior executives are asking three critical questions:

• How should we change the way we connect with our customers, employees and the suppliers in a digital world?
  
  
• How do we structure our companies to enable more effective decision making in an increasingly networked and globally dispersed organization?
  
  
• How can we better penetrate new markets and defend against competitors on our home turf without introducing unnecessary complexity?

Toni C. Langlinais is the Phoenix, Arizona-based lead for Accenture’s North American Strategy business. With more than 20 years’ experience in consulting, Langlinais has helped multinational companies define their growth strategies; orchestrate organizational and operating model design and transformational change programs; and develop and execute programs to enhance customer, channel and product management.

Michael Peterson is based in Chicago and leads Accenture’s operating model work for its global Strategy business. During his 10 years in management consulting, Peterson has specialized in developing market strategies and supporting operating model strategies for leading Fortune 500 companies.

Donna Peters is a partner in Accenture’s Products Strategy group. She has extensive international experience in global mergers and acquisitions with capability building, operating model strategy and organization design emphasis, including an extensive background in designing and implementing change programs for sales and marketing processes, post-merger integration and product launch.