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Forbes
5 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Why Organizational Agility Is Key For Digital Transformation Success
Tom Niehaus is Executive Vice President, North America, at CTG. It's clear the days of tidy, one-and-done digital transformation (DX) projects are over. The pace of change in technology and business isn't slowing down, and companies must stay ready to adapt, whether that means updating tools, adjusting workflows or rethinking how teams operate. This kind of built-in flexibility is what will separate companies that thrive from those that fall behind in a post-DX world where short-term transformation has given way to long-term digital agility as the key to unlocking sustainable competitive advantage. Even with major investments in new technologies, many organizations struggle to keep up and are unable to unlock the full potential of their digital tools. What felt innovative a year ago is now just the starting line. The challenge is no longer about buying the newest solution; it's about building a nimble digital structure and culture that can evolve. Why Technology Alone Isn't Enough A well-known McKinsey study found that 70% of digital transformation efforts do not achieve their goals. One of the biggest reasons? Organizations often focus too much on the tech itself and not enough on change management, specifically whether their people and processes are ready to adapt. Digital transformation initially involved adopting new systems quickly. Now, the focus has shifted toward digital agility, aiming to build capacity and capability for ongoing change. That's a big mindset shift and one that requires more than just a good IT roadmap. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that a new tool will solve everything. But repeatedly, we've seen that without the right foundation—clear strategy, team alignment and real change management—even the best technology will underdeliver. Digital change is hard. People worry about what's coming next, how it will affect their work and whether they're prepared. Without clear communication and support, these concerns can manifest in slowed or even stalled progress. A Practical Path To Sustainable Digital Agility Sustainable digital agility and the competitive advantage it enables require more than just adding more tools, although they are certainly a part of the equation. Rather, it's about making sure every part of the organization is aligned, prepared and able to keep evolving. Companies that commit to a smart, structured approach to change—including leadership, a focus on empowering people and adopting a continuous change mindset—are the ones that maximize the value of their tech investments to create real business impact. Here are three ways to build this kind of agility: When leaders talk about how tech drives business outcomes—not just system upgrades—it shifts the focus to what really matters: results. A major utility company we work with, for example, was upgrading its control systems, but instead of framing the project as a technical fix, leaders explained how it would help the company respond faster, operate more efficiently and improve customer service. This simple shift aligned teams and built stronger support across departments. To do this well: • Build business cases that show value beyond just technical benefits. • Establish cross-functional teams to ensure alignment throughout the project. • Track progress based on business-focused outcomes, not just system milestones. People won't adopt what they don't understand or find useful. Organizations that bring users into the process and make room for feedback tend to see smoother rollouts, higher utilization and better results. A utilities company we work with rolled out security-scanning tools at several plants, but instead of setting them and forgetting them, leaders invited plant operators to share feedback. This end-user feedback loop helped them fine-tune the system to improve daily workflows and avoid business disruptions. There are key steps that can help: • Use design thinking to understand what users need. • Create feedback loops so improvements happen during the rollout, not after. • Adapt the solution to fit distinct roles, teams and workflows. Big, sudden changes often overwhelm people and organizations. A gradual rollout lets teams adjust, build confidence and share lessons learned along the way that can be used to refine deployments to align with organizational tolerance for change. A healthcare system moving to a new electronic health record, for example, chose not to adopt a 'big bang' approach to implementation. Instead, it rolled out modules and capabilities step-by-step, offering focused training, adapting the system based on feedback and applying lessons from one rollout phase to the next. The result? A smoother transition, better adoption across the board and less impact on the patient population. Best practices to consider: • Start with modular rollouts so people can adjust gradually. • Apply change management practices customized for each group or department. • Provide 'at-the-elbow' support during initial implementation, followed by continuous training that evolves and aligns to new user needs as the project progresses. From Nice-To-Have To Must-Have Modern technologies will continue to shape how businesses compete. However, unless companies can leverage those tools to create meaningful value for their teams, customers and operations, they'll miss the mark. I can't overstate this enough: Competing and winning in business will increasingly demand a strategic shift toward digital agility. Only then will companies stop chasing every new tech trend and instead build nimble and resilient organizations that can learn, adapt and thrive in a world of constant change. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Forbes
27-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Championing A New Growth Imperative In An Era Of Disruption
Bill Pappas, Executive Vice President and Head of Global Technology and Operations, MetLife. Amid a convergence and acceleration of new and emerging tech advancements, we are on the precipice of a new frontier for innovation. Rapid advancements in areas like agentic artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and cloud computing have proven this. Against this backdrop, customer expectations continue to evolve, requiring tech and business leaders to prioritize customer-centric innovation to remain competitive and drive tangible revenue growth. Forrester's report found that "customer-obsessed" organizations reported 41% faster revenue growth than non-customer-obsessed organizations. So how can tech leaders ensure they are staying aligned with customer needs so they can make the right decisions and help drive growth for their companies? Master the game of options and choices. 2025 is shaping out to be a year of options and choices as tens of thousands of AI tools are currently available in the marketplace. With so many possibilities, leaders must quickly assess how these tools work, how they enhance the customer experience, whether they can be integrated into the enterprise framework and the long-term implications of adopting them. As emerging technologies like AI continue to evolve at a pace we have never seen before, the real challenge for leaders is making decisions that responsibly create value for both the business and the customer—while preserving the flexibility to adapt to changing market trends. To navigate this complexity, leaders must embrace a commercial mindset, aligning decisions with broader business objectives through value-based prioritization. This calls for the development of new strategies and playbooks that are prioritized for impact. Create new playbooks with speed and discipline. Over the last five years, the pace of change has been unmatched. For many situations we face today, this means there are no playbooks. Leaders have had to navigate a global pandemic, adopt emerging technologies and manage the responsible use of AI. Amid all of this, leaders have had to create new execution playbooks while simultaneously executing business as usual. We had to build our planes while flying them. To complicate matters further, playbooks are becoming more integrated in response to evolving customer preferences. For example, customers want more digital, self-service options, but they want those options to be secure. This means merging the cyber and digital playbooks. Another example is the growing customer demand for both high-tech and high-touch solutions. Delivering on both high-tech and high-touch requires an entirely new playbook, one focused on meeting customers how, when and where they want to be met. In today's innovation-driven environment, leaders need to revisit the foundation they have built through their digital transformation strategies and embrace a new growth imperative. Doing so requires leaders to strike the right balance between speed and discipline, both of which are essential to executing new playbooks that support broader business objectives. Those who can adapt with intention and clarity will set the standard for what leadership looks like in this next era of transformation. Execute at scale. One of the key enablers of a successful technology strategy is using tech and data to drive value and deliver measurable results for the enterprise. At MetLife, we place a premium on transforming pilots into models that can be embedded into products and service development, enabling execution at scale with agility and discipline. But scaling innovation is not just about platforms and processes; it's also about people. This starts with acknowledging where we are today. We're all learning in real time, from the CEO to the CIO to our customer advocates. That's why creating a culture grounded in the ability to learn, unlearn and relearn is critical. It ensures organizations can adapt alongside the technologies they embrace. At the same time, the connection between business and tech leaders has never been more important. With that said, challenges still remain. Innovation does not happen in silos, and success depends on everyone working toward the same objective: growth. To meet this moment, we must balance technical proficiency with leadership capability. That means upskilling at scale—not just in AI and data, but in critical thinking, collaboration and adaptability. These are the leadership attributes that enable teams to navigate ambiguity and still deliver with discipline. It is not enough to identify the value of emerging technologies; leaders across the enterprise need to communicate how these tools support business goals, both internally and externally. At MetLife, we have seen the greatest success at uniting our business leaders around the idea that AI is a business imperative by outlining a clear path to value. We've framed it in terms of process improvement and competitive advantage, not as a shiny object we're chasing. This type of business alignment is essential for innovating at scale. The Bottom Line In this era of converging disruptions combined with limitless options and choices, the leaders that will successfully drive the next frontier of innovation will be those who use a commercial mindset to leverage technology as a gamechanger, understand which options are prioritized for impact and will support customer value, develop and execute new playbooks with speed and discipline, and align with the business to execute at scale. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Forbes
25-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Four Ways Generative AI Can Boost Companies' Top Lines
Greg Pavlik, Executive Vice President, AI and Data Management Services, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Most discussions around enterprise AI have focused on how it cuts costs and streamlines processes, making people and systems more efficient. Of course, those are key potential benefits, but they just set the stage for what generative AI (GenAI) can do, not just in helping to save time and money, but in helping to build top-line revenue. GenAI models' ability to ingest and use structured and unstructured data means they can quickly deliver needed information to the right people. Employees can then apply their own expertise and human intelligence to the job at hand. It is that combination of artificial and human intelligence that can make the biggest difference in the enterprise. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) research found that more than half of CMOs surveyed expect to see at least 5% topline growth from their GenAI-related operations. Three out of 5 respondents said they will devote at least $10 million to AI and GenAI projects over the next three years. The first point to stress is that GenAI is still in its infancy. Over time, its value is anticipated to grow as it is used to analyze workflows, and the steps employees take to perform their jobs and assume more of their lowest level tasks. Corporate executives are witnessing this shift as AI agents are assigned routine operational activities, allowing their workforces to redirect attention toward higher-impact strategic initiatives. For example, Capgemini research indicates that 71% of organizations anticipate AI agents eliminating repetitive workloads, enabling talent to concentrate on value-creating activities. This aligns with the BCG projections of potential long-term productivity gains. Below are four use cases where businesses are seeing GenAI help drive more revenue and profitability. Healthcare providers are using AI to help employees concentrate on improving care instead of rote tasks. Clinicians can then spend more time with existing patients and perhaps see more cases, thus enabling improved care and potentially growing their client base. GenAI's ability to analyze vast datasets, detect trends and make predictions is invaluable for supporting proactive disease management, efficient resource allocation and evidence-based decision-making. When used strategically, GenAI can enhance everything from continuity of care, contracting, clinical operations and overall corporate functions, including purchasing and accounts payable. GenAI can suggest logical or even orthogonal 'upsell' and 'cross-sell' opportunities for a given type of business. If someone joins a gym, GenAI can post related products and services based on the user profile, such as dietary supplements, gym bags or sportswear. Likewise, a clothing retailer, knowing that a customer loves to roam the world, might offer travel-sized toiletries or containers—all potentially new revenue streams. While many organizations remain in the exploratory phase of GenAI, forward-thinking businesses already use it to help create entirely new ventures and thus enable new revenue. In one example, BCG cites a financial information provider that morphed its core business of selling financial data and analysis into a conversational insight-generation platform for clients. Those enhanced interactive services exposed an estimated $100 million of potential new revenue since they give clients more value than the traditional data feeds. The property insurance industry has faced uncommon challenges of late—dealing with flood and wildfire damage on a massive scale. In this sector, GenAI is proving to be particularly valuable as it can work with complex, unstructured data. In claims processing, for example, insurers are deploying advanced virtual claims assistants that are designed to automate document verification and processing, summarizing policy terms, coverage limits and supporting documents, speeding the claims review process for faster settlements. By off-loading routine and repetitive tasks from processors, actuaries and agents, GenAI can create space for insurance professionals to develop innovative policy structures. In this way, modernizing core systems with GenAI can help insurance firms proactively adjust to shifting regulations while providing better customer service. GenAI already helps insurance providers manage risk and other challenges in writing policies and handling claims. It can also spark the innovation needed to craft new types of policies or refactor existing coverage, which can help policyholders be protected and insurers stay in business. Job requirements are always changing. GenAI is an important tool for evaluating these adaptations and helping employees evolve to meet new needs. By integrating skills data with workforce and operational information, companies can leverage GenAI to nurture talent to boost long-term success. For example, a global professional services firm (and customer of Oracle) is encouraging its employees through coursework and mentoring to embrace AI to update their skills. In addition, it offers services to train large customers on the use of 'augmented intelligence,' which combines human and AI expertise to enable better results than either could achieve on its own. The combination of human and artificial intelligence is reshaping the way we work, complementing and enhancing employee capabilities. GenAI can be deployed to take on the repetitive and menial tasks, freeing up employees to focus on new, more complex or value-adding tasks. If Jane Doe now performs X, Y and Z jobs flawlessly, GenAI can assess how that skill set can be applied or enhanced to meet new requirements. By pinpointing training to boost her qualifications in related areas, Doe can become more valuable, and this proactive training may help boost her job satisfaction as well. People want to grow in their careers. GenAI, in what may seem paradoxical to naysayers, can help in that quest. Improving skill sets is good for the individual and the enterprise writ large. The Human-GenAI Dynamic Duo Regardless of how powerful the technology is, people and their knowledge remain the key asset of any business. I believe we should stop thinking about GenAI as a job killer and instead view it as a career enhancer that can help employees get productive in new areas, including the development of new products and services. Ultimately, it's the powerful human-AI combinations that can drive results for the enterprise. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
