Alan Trefler - Build for Change: Revolutionizing Customer Engagement through Continuous Digital Innovation

ALAN TREFLER

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Copyright 2014 by Pegasystems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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ISBN: 978-1-118-93028-1 (ebk)

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So much has changed in the business world, particularly in the past 20 years. Two changes are particularly relevant to this book. First, thanks to the ubiquity of technology and the reach of the Internet, the power of customers has reached dramatic levels. You will see many examples of this phenomenon in the pages ahead. Second, companies can now fully digitize their processes to the point where the enterprise can and must undergo a full digital transformation. It is the only way the enterprise will accomplish the seamless operations so vital to success. But as this happens, the enterprise must focus on how, through both high tech and high touch, it engages customers and responds to their expectations.

This book lays out the path to accomplishing that result.

There will be several challenges along the way. Past approaches to systems development have left companies frozen in technology, unable to respond to both opportunities and the demands of customers. Companies cannot solve this problem by simply buying apps or software as a service. Technology and process must be more tightly integrated in the work of digitization. That integration will require that the divide between the information technology (IT) and business communities goes away. As this happens, the organization itself will undergo change.

That change will include how people think of their own work: how work is performed and customers are engaged; the pace of work and the rate at which operational change can be accomplished; the ability to see how radically the performance of an enterprise can improve with the right approach to technology and process, as business and IT people come together to drive change.

Changes in thinking and behavior will not be restricted just to the workers. No great change is achieved unless an enterprises leaders and managers change how they think and behave. What has been the key to past success may not be the key to success in the future. That is especially true with respect to the role of information technology and how it is managed.

Twenty years ago, Michael Hammer and I published Reengineering the Corporation. We described the three Cscustomers, competition, and changeas the forces driving companies into frighteningly unfamiliar territory. New entrants to markets were intensifying competition by changing the rules of business, while the pace of business change itself was accelerating. Meanwhile, customers were gaining the upper hand in their relationships with sellers, with access to more information and more choice, and were becoming increasingly sophisticated and demanding.

In some respects, what we wrote was seen as predictive. All this was happening while companies were stuck in their bureaucratic structures and fragmented work. Meanwhile, customers in particular were beginning to drive the need for change. We wrote that business customers and individual consumers know what they want, what they want to pay for it, and how to get it on the terms they demand. We warned that customers such as these dont need to deal with companies that dont understand and appreciate this startling change in the customer-seller relationship. Customers will just go elsewhere.

Today, customers are doing just that.

We argued for radical change in the nature of work, with a focus on the redesign of business processes. Today, the phenomena we described are plain to see, and drive the urgency of what you will read in this book.

The cry for leaders and managers to wake up to the changing business landscape and the importance and power of technology is not new. I have made the plea and have heard it for years. But what is new is the approach to the digitization of the enterprise that this book lays out. Time is of the essence. While customers have been gaining power, the pace of business change is also accelerating. It is time to think radically about how technology plays and works in your enterprise.

James Champy

Coauthor of Reengineering the Corporation;
Author of X-Engineering the Corporation:
Reinventing Your Business in the Digital Age

This book is the product of decades of engagement with many of the worlds most sophisticated organizations. I would like to thank the clients who have shared their views on the imminent threats, as well as their managerial and technological responses. Their journeys are the real story of this book, and it has been a privilege to see firsthand how insight and innovation can lead to differentiated success.

Capturing and refining these ideas has been a journey in itself. Let me thank the team of Brian Callahan, Scott Cooper, and Russell Keziere for invaluable assistance in getting to this point.

Thanks also to the Central Square Theater (www.centralsquaretheater.org) for organizing the focus group quoted in this book. This included cast members, aged 14 to 22, of