DXC Eclipse Addressing the challenges of digital transformation in Australia - White Paper
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White Paper DXC Eclipse Addressing the challenges of digital transformation in Australia
White Paper
Digital transformation in Australia
The World Economic Forum describes digital as driving the world’s Fourth Industrial
Revolution. It is understandable, as few areas of life have not been touched, or
transformed, by fast technological advancements in the last decade. Many services
we take for granted today are barely ten years old. For example, it was only 2008
when Apple launched the AppStore, Microsoft announced Windows 7 and the Amazon
Kindle was released.
As the pace and sophistication of innovation has accelerated, so have customer
expectations. Today’s customers are highly connected and want fast, reliable, rich
and seamless experiences across all channels. Traditional businesses are under
pressure to transform in order to deliver the experiences customers want, particularly
as a fresh breed of nimble, digital-only companies emerges. Digital disruption is a
new competitive threat upsetting existing markets and creating new ones.
Australian organisations are whole-heartedly embracing digital initiatives to
fundamentally improve how they engage customers, empower employees, optimise
operations and transform products.
A 2018 study by Microsoft in partnership with
IDC/Asia Pacific estimated digital transformation
initiatives will add approximately $45 billion to
Australia’s GDP by 2021. The study also found
respondents expect “83 per cent of jobs will be
transformed in the next three years due to
digital transformation”.1
1
https://news.microsoft.com/en-au/features/digital-transformation-to-contribute-45-billion-to-australias-gdp-by-2021/
2
78 per cent of organisations surveyed in the 2019 Telsyte ‘Beyond Disruption’ Digital
Study confirmed they have a digital strategy in place.2 In the same study, 60 per
cent of companies reported they’ve already increased value for customers through a
digital transformation strategy. Australia’s Information Technology leaders surveyed
for the study cited digital strategy as their organisation’s number one ICT challenge
with an emerging focus on customer experience as a top five business priority.3
DXC Eclipse, the Microsoft practice within DXC Technology, recently held a series of
workshops across Australia to share insights to the drivers and myths around digital
transformation. The workshops also explored the challenges organisations consider
to be the most pressing when pursuing digital transformation initiatives.
This whitepaper highlights the core challenges to digital transformation experienced
by Australian businesses and shares five stories of companies that have successfully
transformed their businesses using Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Factors challenging Australia’s digital transformation
Conversations with current and prospective customers helped DXC Eclipse identify five core
challenges commonly faced by Australian companies architecting digital transformation:
1. Improve access to data
2. Enhance customer experience and customer service
3. Optimise operations and controlling costs
4. Add value to people and culture
5. Achieve competitive advantage
2
Telsyte ‘Beyond Disruption’ Digital Study 2019 – page 5
3
Telsyte ‘Beyond Disruption’ Digital Study 2019 – page 1
3
White Paper
Improve access to data
Success in the digital era demands access to real-time, data-driven insights. Real-time,
data-driven insights fuel smart business decisions, improve team productivity, deliver
competitive advantage, help control costs and enhance employee engagement and
customer experience.
A 2018 study of medium to large Australian businesses commissioned by Microsoft
revealed that, while the majority know they need to digitally transform their business
and feel confident they have a digital transformation strategy, less than a third
actually “have a company-wide strategy for sharing data”.4
Hampering the delivery of real-time, data-driven insights are some common challenges.
Every organisation at the DXC Eclipse workshops is seeking to build, or refine, a
single source of truth about their customer base, suppliers, key stakeholders and/or
employees. Many companies struggle with the realities of having multiple data sources
in online and offline systems, across legacy databases and new digital sources.
System complexity and multiple “sources of truth” force many organisations to rely on
people, instead of systems, for insights. This means data insights are slow to access,
offer snapshots in time instead of real-time views and have high error rates from
manual human processing.
Business intelligence (BI) tools have been around for years. Yet challenges accessing
data sources mean many organisations are slow to deploy visual dashboards based
on real-time data flows. Some BI tools have proven difficult to stabilise, maintain and
customise in order to share useful insights to multiple stakeholders. Mobile connectivity
to dashboard visualisations and predictive modelling capabilities are highly rated needs
but not broadly deployed due to limitations around capturing and processing data.
4
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/australian-business-knows-it-needs-a-digital-transformation-heres-the-steps-that-can-make-it-happen-2019-2
5
https://www.cio.com.au/mediareleases/33967/data-management-challenges-cost-australian/
4
White Paper
The ‘Value of Data’ study conducted by Vanson Bourne for Veritas Technologies
revealed data management challenges cost Australian organisations approximately
$2.5 million a year.
On average, employees lose up to two hours a day
searching for data needed to perform their roles.
Around 30 per cent of Australian organisation manage customer dissatisfaction issues
directly related to data management challenges.5
Microsoft Dynamics 365 supports cloud-based data warehousing. This drives
real-time views of data, enables integration of different data sources, supports
powerful BI visualisations and creates a single source of truth for decision-makers.
The Power BI, Cortana Intelligence and Azure Machine Learning modules are natively
embedded, giving users access to built-in predictive insights and actionable next steps.
As a cloud-based solution, Microsoft Dynamics 365 includes strong security and
access controls for data and apps that are built into cloud services. This covers network
connectivity, physical data centres, service hosting platforms, user and administrator
access and more.
5White Paper
Case study
Pickles Auctions
Pickles Auctions (Pickles) is Australia’s leading auction and
valuations specialist, with operations in every State and
Territory and a proud heritage spanning 50 years.
As a long-time car auctioneer, Pickles relied on in-person
auctioneers. Industry disruption from online car sales meant
the business had to expand its services to the web and find
new ways to compete. Pickles was able to offer online bidding
for in-person auctions but found it difficult to scale beyond
that. The company’s ability to innovate was hampered by
reliance on legacy systems that had been developed over time
but no longer served its needs.
Pickles selected Microsoft Dynamics 365 as the solution
to move the business forward. The cloud-based enterprise
resource planning (ERP) solution provides visibility over all
operations, a single source of truth for decision making,
flexibility and scalability to expand the business in any
direction.
“Now that we have a cloud-ready solution that can scale up easily
and quickly, we can start exploring some of the opportunities in new
ventures. The technology implemented with this project is the backbone
of the wider digital transformation of our business. With this solution,
we really can do all the other things we aspire to...”
David De Jonge
Chief Financial Officer, Pickles Auctions
6White Paper
Add value to people and culture
Executives and managers are rapidly realising engaged and empowered employees
have significant potential to reduce turnover, improve efficiency and productivity,
enhance the customer experience and boost profitability. Studies are emerging that
show direct linkages between the levels of an employee’s engagement, productivity
and their happiness.6
Research also shows organisations with highly-engaged staff are up to 20 per cent
more productive than those with less-engaged staff.7
One of the fastest ways to engage staff is to provide
teams with access to easy-to-use tools and real-time data
to enable decisions to help them perform their roles.
Organisations seeking to add value to their people and team culture often face several
tough realities. At every workshop DXC Eclipse conducted this year in Australia and
New Zealand, human resistance to change topped the list.
Sometimes executive stakeholders need convincing that digital transformation is
essential for business survival. Sometimes employees need reassurance that “job
security through obscurity” is outdated thinking. Often, entire teams need reminding
that changes to their current roles don’t necessarily spell bad news for them
personally.
The impact of change resistance can reach far. Fear of change discourages some
employees from sharing authentic insights to the business processes of today, which
are critical to enable new process design for the future. Other employees might
be reluctant to place confidence in new systems and processes and will seek work-
arounds, thereby slowing user adoption.
Aside from human resistance to change, many organisations struggle to understand
current processes and how those processes could be made more efficient. Customer
needs are often assessed using guesswork and stereotypes created over time, instead
of being grounded in viable data points. Customer lifecycle management is ad-hoc.
Employee onboarding, training and self-service programs are inconsistent.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 comes out-of-the-box with an intuitive, easily navigable user
interface. This helps ensure ease of adoption and ramps employee time to productivity.
Integrating customer relationship management (CRM), Office 365 and additional
applications into a single, cloud-based solution drawing on a common data model
means employees can quickly and easily access tools, systems and insights to do their
job more effectively.
6
https://www.smf.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Social-Market-Foundation-Publication-Briefing-CAGE-4-Are-happy-workers-more-productive-281015.
pdf#page=9
7
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/12/13/promoting-employee-happiness-benefits-everyone/#36fcf4d5581a
7White Paper
Case study
tna solutions
tna solutions is a leading global supplier of integrated food
“Now that we have processing and packaging solutions. The organisation has 500
a cloud-ready solution staff working across 14,000 systems installed in more than 120
that can scale up easily countries. Process and system complexity across a distributed
global team posed significant operational difficulties. With so
and quickly, we can
many employees distributed across so many countries and
start exploring some of systems, it was difficult to ensure every person had access to
the opportunities in new the best information they needed in the moment in which they
ventures. The technology needed it.
implemented with this Microsoft Dynamics 365 provided tna solutions with an
project is the backbone integrated cloud-based solution to give its global workforce
of the wider digital a single platform with secure, anytime access to information.
The results? A powerful improvement in tna solution’s team
transformation of our
efficiency, collaboration and real-time decision making.
business. With this solution,
we really can do all the
other things we aspire to...”
David De Jonge
Chief Financial Officer,
Pickles Auctions
“We are excited about providing the business with critical information
around cash flow, business processes, targets, all from a single system.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 delivers all of this functionality out-of-the-box
and that’s going to be a significant change for the business. For a global
business like ours, a cloud-based software that transcends borders
enables our staff to access one single source of truth, so they are no
longer working in silos or reliant on manual processes.”
Pravin Singh
CIO, tna solutions
8White Paper
Achieve competitive advantage
Globalisation and technology advancements have introduced significant pressure to
Australian markets. Gaining competitive advantage on the basis of cost alone is no
longer viable, with competitors from other geographies able to offer lower labour costs
and greater efficiencies in scale. To compete globally, Australian organisations need
innovation, insights and agility. They must adapt their business models with digital
strategies to achieve four critical outcomes:
Q. How important is it for your organisation to leapfrog competitors’ (or peers’)
digital strategies?
5%
Not important
54%
Important
41%
Somewhat
important
Source: Telsyte Australian Digital Workplace Study 2019, n=447, base: opinions based on an eleven-point scale
from 0 to 10, 0 to 3 being not important, 4 to 6 being neutral and 7+ being important
1. Improving efficiency and containing costs by removing manual processes and
adding automated workflows.
2. Using real-time, 360 degree data-based insights to customer buying behaviours to
create engaging journeys that nurture a customer through the entire lifecycle.
3. Speeding time-to-market with new, or improved, products and services to help retain
existing customers and attract new ones.
4. Creating a memorable, positive, seamless experience that brings customers back
again and again.
The most material challenges for organisations realising competitive advantage lie
in being able to make good decisions with speed and in creating a holistic view of
their customers. Too often, data distributed across multiple systems clouds the view of
the customer. Strategic channel partners aren’t able to be easily connected with the
business. Employees work in silos to bridge the gaps, often using slow, manual processes.
Even when teams are keen to test and learn they can’t always access the budgets to do
so as it means diverting funding from a mission-critical current business process.
Moving to the cloud is the first step for organisations looking to become more
competitively agile. Freeing up the business from costly IT infrastructure delivers
flexibility, agility, scalability and releases budget to pursue insights, innovation,
efficiency and an improved customer experience. Competitive advantage follows.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is anhe enterprise cloud-enabled software-as-a-service suite
combines ERP, CRM with additional features including Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft
Flow and Microsoft PowerApps to give businesses, large and small, the ability to
securely grow, evolve and adjust to the needs of their dynamic business environment.
9White Paper
Case study
Michael Hill
Founded in 1979, Michael Hill is a global retailer in the mid-
“Now that we have market jewellery sector. The company has pursued significant
a cloud-ready solution growth over the last ten years. By 2017, Michael Hill operated
that can scale up easily 350 stores across four countries.
and quickly, we can Ahead of the rapid growth curve, the team could see the
start exploring some of strategic plans of the business demanded many more omni-
channel processes than existed at the time. As they pursued
the opportunities in new
expansion, the team needed to remain agile and differentiated
ventures. The technology from the competition and provide fast service to meet customer
implemented with this expectations.
project is the backbone Michael Hill chose to adopt Microsoft Dynamics 365 for
of the wider digital Retail, Finance, Operations and Customer Service to help
transformation of our the company bring its data all together in a single platform,
business. With this solution, enable its employees to have a complete view of the business
and facilitate a stellar customer experience.
we really can do all the
other things we aspire to...”
David De Jonge
Chief Financial Officer,
Pickles Auctions
“With Dynamics 365 we can map great technology to outstanding
business processes that will help us continue to expand our markets and
adopt new business models. Everyone benefits from that. The company
benefits, the customer benefits – its win-win for all.”
Matt Keays
Chief Information Officer
Michael Hill
10White Paper
Optimise operations and control costs
Each year, global economic and political dynamics create fresh uncertainty for
Australian businesses. To mitigate uncertainty and maintain a competitive edge,
many businesses seek to better control costs.
Optimising operations lets organisations save money and time, both of which can
be reinvested in the business to fuel expansion. More efficient operations also free up
employee time to focus on innovation, pursuing growth opportunities and improving
customer service.
Q. What are your organisation’s top business priorities for 2019?
Revenue Improving Improving digital
growth business agility customer experience
1 2 3 4 5
Operational Improving integration
cost savings of digital initiatives
Source: Telsyte Australian Digital Workplace Study 2019,
n=447, base: all respondents [rank]
Telsyte research shows that, on average, most Australian organisations spend around
half their IT budget on operations, with the balance on innovation and transformation
initiatives. The same study revealed that operational cost savings rated second in a list
of top five business priorities for 2019.
Organisations are often hindered from proactively optimising operations and
controlling costs by lack of real-time insight into where current expenses are incurred.
Financial reporting is available for periods of time, rather than moments of time. This
constrains the ability to prioritise projects, re-allocate spend or understand where true
costs are incurred.
Increasingly, organisations are seeking scope to reduce costs and support
sustainability. Every organisation is mindful of the balance to strike between scaling up
services and operations without always being able to scale up staff. Misconceptions
around costs of technology needed to evolve a business can also delay a productive
conversation around transformation.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 moves an organisation’s core business systems to the cloud.
Cloud-hosted applications offer cost savings through subscription-based licensing
models, reducing the requirement for expensive on-premise hardware and eliminating
the need for costly upgrades because the platform automatically updates in the cloud.
With Microsoft Dynamics 365, businesses no longer need to leap into a large-scale
implementation. Instead, organisations have the flexibility to implement the specific
modules in the cloud that make sense to their business.
11White Paper
Case study
PS+C Group
Founded in 2013, PS+C Group (PS+C) is a leading end-to-end
“Now that we have ICT and digital consulting organisation with over 400 expert
a cloud-ready solution consultants and locations across Australia. PS+C was made
that can scale up easily up of twelve business units, each running as a separate entity
with its own individual accounting, payroll, and timesheet
and quickly, we can
systems. Consolidation and reporting was delivered via Excel
start exploring some of spreadsheets. To grow, the group needed a fully integrated
the opportunities in new system that brought finance, payroll and timesheets together.
ventures. The technology PS+C chose Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to solve
implemented with this these challenges. Business Central had all the capabilities the
project is the backbone business required, even beyond what other pure accounting
of the wider digital software offered, and came with the security features,
trustworthiness and reliability reputation of Microsoft products.
transformation of our
business. With this solution, Today, the system provides better access to information for
PS+C staff members, letting them react faster to changing
we really can do all the
conditions. It also improves cash flow management and
other things we aspire to...” accuracy and speed of invoicing.
David De Jonge
Chief Financial Officer,
Pickles Auctions
“Currently the monthly reporting cycle sits at around 10 to 12 business
days. We plan to cut that down to five days using Business Central.
This will deliver additional business efficiency alongside improved
access to data for staff.”
Jeff Bennett
Chief Financial Officer
PS+C Group
12White Paper
Enhance customer experience and
customer service
The quality of customer experience and service is fast emerging a significant
competitive differentiator for brands. The digital era has catapulted customer
experience far beyond the moment of purchase. Today, customer experience begins
in the moment a consumer decides to make a purchase. For brands, optimising the
customer experience means making every step of the journey to purchase as easy,
clear and fast as possible.
Statistics proliferate around the importance of customer experience and customer
service. Gartner predicts that by 2020, customers will manage 85 per cent of their
relationship with a business without interacting with a human .
Research by Forrester found that experience-led businesses have 1.6x higher brand
awareness, 1.5x higher employee satisfaction, 1.9x higher average order value, 1.7x
higher customer retention, 1.9x return on spend, and 1.6x higher customer satisfaction
rates .
The biggest challenges faced by organisations in streamlining customer experience
and service processes lie in data gaps. Data gaps mean organisations don’t have the
insight to understand buying behaviour or the range of customer touchpoints with their
brand. Many organisations don’t know when a customer is approaching them, when
a customer leaves them and, most critically, why. This lack of insight makes it difficult
to create content to engage customers, nurture them closer to sale or understand the
experiences that matter most to their customers.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement comprises sales, customer service,
field service, and marketing capabilities to provide a robust and effective platform for
improving customer experiences. Overlaying interactive dashboards and 360-degree
customer data visualisations from Microsoft Power BI gives employees instant insight to
customer behaviour.
This real-time view lets employees track, update and personalise the customer journey,
allowing them to proactively and meaningfully respond. Blending ERP, CRM, Office
and additional apps into one, cloud-based experience on a common data source gives
employees the information they need to provide quick, reliable customer support.
8
http://cloudtransformation.cio.com/article/the-customer-centric-business-great-expectations/
9
https://www.cmo.com/features/articles/2018/4/26/forrester-consulting-it-pays-to-be-an-experience-led-business.html#gs.c72vi6
13White Paper
Case study
Beyond Bank
Beyond Bank is one of Australia’s largest customer-owned
“Now that we have banks with assets under management over $4 billion, 200,000
a cloud-ready solution customers, 43 branches, access to more than 3,000 rediATMs
that can scale up easily and 600 staff. Beyond Bank uses many different industry
databases and industry-specific approaches.
and quickly, we can
start exploring some of This created a complex network of software applications that
slowed the bank’s processes and made it almost impossible
the opportunities in new
to deliver a consistently outstanding level of service. Beyond
ventures. The technology Bank’s ability to capitalise on potential sales opportunities
implemented with this and deliver a unique, personalised experience was hindered
project is the backbone by its disparate systems, which stored essential information in
of the wider digital various silos.
transformation of our Beyond Bank selected a complete cloud-based Microsoft
business. With this solution, implementation, including Dynamics CRM, Office 365 and
Microsoft SharePoint; leveraging the entire Microsoft stack
we really can do all the
to deliver a seamless, efficient and effective user experience.
other things we aspire to...” The solution gave the Bank a complete view of the customer
accessible from any location, a range of sophisticated
David De Jonge reporting abilities and substantially lower cost of ownership.
Chief Financial Officer,
Pickles Auctions
“The new solution lets Beyond Bank users view customer history,
accounts, correspondence and portfolio information. The combination
of tightly integrated applications makes it possible for Beyond Bank
to gain the 360-degree customer view it needs, and to act quickly on
insights to improve business performance.”
“This project is one of the most significant projects Beyond Bank has
done in 10 years. This has been truly transformational and a real
game-changer for the organisation.”
Robert Aitken
former Chief Information Officer,
Beyond Bank
14White Paper
Conclusion
Achieving digital transformation can help organisations dramatically improve their
operations and their ability to compete successfully. A true digital transformation goes
beyond simply choosing and implementing new technology. It’s essential to take a
strategic approach to transformation so that, rather than adding digital elements to
existing processes, companies can truly transform their systems, processes and people
to yield extraordinary benefits.
Successful transformation requires the right mix of a technology vendor and partner.
The technology vendor needs to offer fit-for-purpose, configurable solutions. The
partner needs to understand the strategic imperatives driving the organisation’s
transformation and have the capability to create a roadmap to achieve those goals.
DXC Eclipse is proud to have implemented the first Microsoft Dynamics 365 for
Retail customer globally in the cloud in 2016. Since then, it has helped many other
organisations across a range of industries to fast-track their business transformation
to better engage customers, empower employees, optimise operations and evolve
products.
Together, Microsoft and DXC Eclipse provide the ideal partnership to deliver real-life
solutions to transform organisations and set them on a path to success.
“…All the knowledge and insights you need exist inside your
infrastructure—in your emails, your documents, your line of business
applications—it’s just waiting to be found using organisational analytics
and provide insights into what is going on.”
Satya Nadella
CEO, Microsoft
15White Paper DXC Eclipse DXC Eclipse, a practice within DXC Technology, helps enterprise and mid-market companies accelerate digital transformation, solve business challenges and deliver intelligent solutions for clients, employees and partners. Partnering with Microsoft, DXC Eclipse has a proven track record of helping organisations successfully transform their business. Whether the transformation requires migration, new implementations or upgrades, DXC Eclipse has the team to provide the best possible results. Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides fit-for-purpose, configurable solutions that help accelerate access to real-time data-driven insights. DXC Eclipse provides the expertise to guide an organisation through designing strategic objectives for transformation, and transparent project roadmaps to achieve those objectives. For more information around how DXC Eclipse and Microsoft Dynamics 365 could transform your business, visit www.dxc.technology/au/eclipse. About DXC Technology As the world’s leading independent, end-to-end IT services company, DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) leads digital transformations for clients by modernising and integrating their mainstream IT, and by deploying digital solutions at scale to produce better business outcomes. The company’s technology independence, global talent, and extensive partner network enable 6,000 private and public-sector clients in 70 countries to thrive on change. DXC is a recognized leader in corporate responsibility. For more information, visit www.dxc.technology and explore thrive.dxc.technology, DXC’s digital destination for changemakers and innovators. © 2019 DXC Technology Company. All rights reserved. DG_2184a-20. June 2019
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