Orient - The Official Magazine of the British Chamber of Commerce Singapore - Issue 71 April 2019
People Power: The Role of Human and Cultural Factors in Digital Transformation
By Ram Lakshminarayanan, Partner, People and Change Consulting & Tim Rockell, Director, Operations Consulting KPMG Singapore
Digitalisation is impacting the workplace from an operational and a customer perspective. The Business-to-Business world is demanding a Business-to-Consumer experience. Price comparison, procuring, contracting, logistics and order tracking have all been transformed through seamless mobile applications in the B2C context. Gen Zs won’t expect anything less in the workplace.
The transformation of work over time has in our view regularly occurred in silos. Corporations fit for the 21st Century need to become connected organisations.
New technologies are already shifting the paradigm of work. Here are some examples:
a) Claims managers in the insurance sector are finding that a large part of routine workflow is becoming automated; allocated and delivered using artificial intelligence.
b) Applying cognitive automation, the back-offices of companies are being transformed. Mundane and repetitive tasks are completed without human participation.
c) Machine learning is enabling complex task handing. Chat-Bots in a Customer Contact Centre are going beyond standard responses and understanding human emotions during a telephone call or text-based communication.
The workforce itself – the human component, will be impacted by new challenges. With better primary-through-to-tertiary healthcare, people globally are living longer and more healthily to boot. A 50-year old could have 25-year active career and contribution to the workforce ahead of them. The notion of a retirement in the sun is not for everyone, nor can governments afford to support aging populations through welfare.
Organisations have been grappling with retaining corporate knowledge as the older workforce retires; conversely, retaining an aging workforce may hinder knowledge transfer to the rising ranks. Robotic Process Automation is slated to remove more of the mundane. Machine learning may retain the capability for institutional decision making.
Balancing an older, experienced workforce and a now not-so-younger millennial workforce (the oldest Millennial is now 40-years old) and preparing for the entry of Gen Z requires a shift in culture to accommodate at least three generations in a digital workplace.
An SMU study on Digital Culture co-sponsored by KPMG1 focussed on the human and cultural aspects of the technological transformation. It found that most businesses are failing to transcend the gap between knowing what is needed and doing what is required to combine emerging technology with new processes and skills in order to remain competitive. This presents a significant risk to the organisation, its operating model and the talent it acquires and retains.
Whilst technology such as artificial intelligence and robots open doors to opportunities for the organisation, it