Are your business operations ready for the future?

Find out with the Intelligent Operations Maturity Assessment to help accelerate value

Conventional wisdom may have it that improving operations drives incremental changes to business performance, but our groundbreaking Accenture research “Fast-track to future-ready performance” reveals a much richer picture. Operations has evolved, and so have “future-ready” enterprises who are working differently–transforming how they work by using rich data for decision making, augmenting human talent and employing a specialized workforce at scale. Our economic modeling shows that the numbers are on their side. High-performing companies are achieving almost twice the efficiency and three times the profitability of peers by placing operations in the driver’s seat to fast-track growth. But how does your organization compare? Are your operations stuck in a rut or keeping pace, ready for the future?

Take the Intelligent Operations Maturity Assessment here.

Leading the way: What does it mean to be future-ready?

Through our survey and bespoke interviews, we heard from 1,100 leading executives across 13 industries and 11 major economies around the world to explore the correlation between operations maturity and high performance. We identified four progressive levels of operations maturity: stable, efficient, predictive and future-ready, based on the deployment patterns of 8 key characteristics.

1. Analytics. Discovery, interpretation and communication of meaningful patterns of data.
2. Automation. Sets of technologies that perform repetitive, rule-based tasks.
   
3. Data. Quality, deep data from diverse internal and external sources.
4. Stakeholder experiences. Engagement experience across all stakeholders including customers, end clients, suppliers, partners and employees.
5. Artificial intelligence. The ability of a machine to perform cognitive functions like sensing, comprehending, acting and learning.
6. Business-technology collaboration. IT and business functions with joint governance driving the organization’s strategic roadmap.
7. Industry-leading practices. Ways of doing business that are recognized as best in class.
8. Workforce agility. On-demand and collaborative including human+machine talent to drive the best outcomes.

Against the critical insights gleaned from business leaders, the findings were clear: the greater the operations maturity, the greater the rewards. Organizations at the highest level—elevating every decision by applying intelligence to become future-ready—are significantly more profitable and efficient compared to others. They see better business outcomes, including increased efficiency and profitability and improved shareholder experiences. Yet, only 7% are achieving this today, with a 2.8x average boost in profitability and 1.7x higher efficiency.

Where is your organization on its operations maturity journey today?

 The Intelligent Operations Maturity Assessment helps business leaders to assess their organization’s operational maturity and arms them with the knowledge to accelerate their company’s journey to becoming future-ready. Comprised of 15 short questions, ranging from business goals to digitization to leading practices and more, it takes no longer than 10 minutes to complete. Upon completion, participants receive a personalized scorecard with a comprehensive assessment of their organization, including:

• Current level of operational maturity based on the four progressive levels
• Aspirational level of operational maturity in three years’ time
• Comparison to peers based on other companies in their industry and matching, or similar, job roles
• Key considerations for improvement

Building the engine: The making of the maturity assessment

What makes the Intelligent Operations Maturity Assessment unique is its roots in research and data-driven thought leadership, developed using a multi-disciplinary approach and a team that combined data science, econometric modeling and differentiated market positioning.

We began by developing user personas drawing on strong industry relationships and meaningful client conversations to ascertain common goals and pain points. The Accenture research team then revisited the original survey questions to determine what would best fit client needs, and remastered the scoring methodology for operations maturity against the four levels identified (stable, efficient, predictive and future-ready). This was underpinned by carefully constructed industry datasets, business insights and financial information such as company revenues and profitability to set a foundation. Economic modeling was also conducted to deduce the statistical relationship between company performance and operations maturity, and scenario simulation to project future possibilities.

Before launching, the assessment was rigorously stress-tested by our researchers, marketing teams and operations experts from the methodology to the user experience. The scorecard—the final output users see—needed to generate value with clear insights and recommendations to help companies elevate their business decisions and become future-ready.

Key principles to consider when developing value-driven assessment tools:

1. Adopt a 360° view. Cause and effect can be difficult to ascertain with operational maturity; it’s not one size fits all. There are many factors that can influence current or future state. It’s important to adopt a broad view of the strategic actions that drive value to help companies elevate their business decisions and realize tangible, sustainable and transformational growth.
   
   
2.  Start with the end goal in mind. Creating user personas helps to hone in on the target audience and develop a product that correlates with their priorities using the right mix of data visualization and content.
   
   
3. Put data in the driving seat. Though it’s not a benchmarking tool, leveraging a combination of survey findings, AI, econometric modelling and scenario simulation backed by industry and financial data can help make sense of complex and disparate data and tease out tangible, actionable insights.
   
   
4. Personalization is the DNA of your value assessment. Every company and business leader is unique, so accurate and precise personalization is a critical component. Defining how users will interact with the assessment and where it will be deployed is key. Think multi-channel mobilization to drive broader utilization.
   
   
5. Collaboration is key. Collaboration should involve not only working with subject matter experts, but also drawing on the expertise of other functions such as marketing and sales to create education and awareness campaigns that will drive adoption and enable high-value conversations that matter.

Shifting gears: Outsmart, outperform, outpace

Now is the time to make your move to intelligent operations by thinking big and going beyond incremental change. The Intelligent Operations Maturity Assessment delivers insights based on petabytes of data that can help organizations elevate their business decisions to realize tangible, sustainable and transformational value and growth.

If you have any questions about the Intelligent Operations Maturity Assessment, feel free to reach out to us at intelligent_ops@accenture.com. In the meantime, take a look at who we’ve helped here.