Become the outcomes-obsessed transformative enterprise: Perspectives from PwC leaders

As COOs face constant disruption, follow this framework to reinvent operations and drive innovation

  • Blog
  • 4 minute read
  • August 15, 2024

Matthew Comte

Operations Transformation Leader, PwC US

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Resource scarcity. Energy transition. Deglobalization. Capital uncertainty. Despite all these challenges and more, too many companies still focus on traditional — and frankly, outdated — priorities like reducing costs instead of reassessing operations and reinventing business models. In our experience, winning COOs often help shape enterprise-wide business capabilities. They’re also orchestrators who work with strategy, product innovation, technology, and commercial and back-office teams. This means:

  • Reimagining the end-to-end ecosystem
  • Considering both employee and customer experience
  • Making data a core enabler to value
  • Expanding their scope of risk and opportunity
  • Integrating digital skills building into their company’s culture
  • Making technology a means to enable measurable business outcomes

In our 2024 Digital Trends in Operations Survey, more than two-thirds of the respondents — 69% — told us their investments in operations technology haven’t fully delivered the expected results. They noted such challenges as integration complexity, technology performance, people capabilities and data issues. These can curb efforts to create more value in the supply chain and operations, which is increasingly necessary considering that 45% of the executives in PwC’s 27th Annual Global CEO Survey said their company won't be viable in 10 years if it stays on its current path.

Why are real results often elusive? Reasons include a lack of a clear and consistent business case for new technology, a narrow focus on individual teams and tech instead of end-to-end architecture, and not evolving a digital workforce — especially with automation and analytics. To close this gap, COOs and operations leaders should be outcomes obsessed rather than tech obsessed and align their company’s digital investments with strategic objectives.

Here’s a four-dimension framework COOs can use to pursue reinvention

Based on the operations survey and our experience across industries, we encourage COOs to reevaluate their operations and reinvent their business models using a framework that has four dimensions — vision, value, velocity and viability.

How GenAI can help accelerate transformation

It’s not easy to change how you anticipate operational disruption sooner and take better advantage of available resources. One thing that could significantly help is GenAI, which can analyze and leverage large amounts of data faster than ever.

It seems like everyone’s talking about GenAI, but what’s really going on? While 70% of operations and supply chain officers have tested or implemented GenAI, our Digital Trends in Operations Survey found that only 20% have implemented it in many areas, and the benefits for companies have been uneven. Among the reasons for this lack of wide adoption is the absence of a cohesive GenAI strategy at the enterprise level, limited employee understanding, a lack of skilled GenAI talent and difficulty in measuring the impact of GenAI on operations.

The real value of GenAI comes from enabling employees to make better decisions and improve end-to-end processes, ultimately empowering them to orchestrate across the enterprise. COOs should treat GenAI as an asset for reimagining their businesses rather than a plug-and-play technology for discrete use cases.

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