“The Covid-19 crisis has validated and accelerated our move towards, what we call the frictionless enterprise, one in which information flows seamlessly between people and processes, intelligently, and as and when it is needed, to create effortless, touchless, and “frictionless” operations for our clients,” says Lee Beardmore, Capgemini VP.
Frictionless business does not mean the arbitrary application of technology, rules, or processes that might generally be called digital transformation.
Rather, frictionless business requires new, digital ways of thinking and working, combined with the capacity to constantly adapt itself to new contexts, he argues. In other words, it does not help to digitize inefficient or ineffective processes. That simply further institutionalizes bad practices.
The key is not simply to digitize existing processes, but transform them in ways that produce higher value, at equivalent or lower cost.
In most cases, the move to more-frictionless operations is based on more-liquid information flows. That means seamless interactions between people and processes that create effortless, touchless operations that contribute to value creation.
Even frictionless information flows do not produce value if unharnessed to the key resource-generation engines. As computer scientists always have said, “garbage in, garbage out.”
Even the removal of friction does not help if the processes do not create value. And some processes create much more value than others. Assuming it can be done, moving swiftly to transform 20 percent of processes makes sense--even if the other processes are left alone--if that 20 percent produces 80 percent of the financial return.
Those of you familiar with the quality control framework Six Sigma or the ISO-9001 certifications know those systems require documenting processes so they are repeatable. What neither does is begin with a different set of questions: should we be doing things this way in the first place?
Being systematic and having repeatable processes--all things being equal--is aimed at enhancing quality over time. But that arguably is true only if the repeatable processes are harnessed to the core value-creation engine.
A frictionless business operates not only with minimal internal obstacles--efficiently--but also prioritizes those operational practices that produce the greatest firm value. Beyond efficiency, which is doing things with least waste, it is more important to be effective: doing the right things.
It might be a truism that friction reduction typically requires digital sophistication. But digital processes--in and of themselves--are not sufficient to create value. What matters is reducing friction where it produces business value: reducing the costs and time of responding to customer demand for the core profit-producing products.
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