Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - The common denominator of successful transformation (INO107)

Summary

• Jana Werner, leader of the AWS Enterprise Transformation Team for EMEA, discusses the complexities of transformation and shares success patterns observed from Amazon's journey and customer experiences.
• Ewald van Jaarwaarde, CEO of Brandtag Essentials, presents their transformation journey, focusing on customer-centric processes, scalable data platforms, and leveraging AI and cloud technologies.
• Key challenges in transformation include maintaining focus, aligning teams, and overinvesting in capability building.
• The session emphasizes the importance of customer value as the common denominator for successful transformation, using six themes: clear purpose, culture and organization, mechanisms, data-driven decision-making, technology adoption, and business and technology architecture.
• Brandtag's transformation strategy includes focusing on customer ease, data-driven insights, a scalable technology platform, capability building, and delivering value.
• The talk concludes with the importance of boldness, vision, curiosity, and iterative processes in transformation.

Insights

• Customer Centricity as a Driving Force: The most successful transformations are those that are driven by customer value, focusing on solving real-world customer problems rather than being inward-focused and siloed.
• Sustainable Transformation is Challenging: The statistics from a McKinsey study highlight that sustaining transformation gains is difficult, with only 12% of companies able to maintain performance improvements after three years.
• Anti-patterns in Transformation: Common pitfalls include technology without clear business value, big bang operating model changes, and waterfall programs that lead to shadow IT budgets and watermelon reporting (green outside, red inside).
• Amazon's Six Themes for Transformation: These include having a clear purpose, measurable outcomes, a high-velocity culture (day one culture), small autonomous teams (two pizza teams), scalable mechanisms (like working backwards), and a focus on data and technology architecture.
• Brandtag's Transformation Approach: Brandtag's strategy involves developing an omni-channel platform, leveraging generative AI for email processing, creating a data platform for insights, adopting a modular architecture, upskilling employees, and focusing on end-to-end deployment and value delivery.
• Challenges and Learnings: Brandtag faced challenges in maintaining focus, aligning teams, and capability building. They learned the importance of simplicity, team integration, and investing in capability building.
• Importance of Boldness and Curiosity: Ewald van Jaarwaarde encourages leaders to be bold and curious, leveraging technology to leapfrog stages and deliver value to customers.
• Iterative Process and Feedback: Transformation is a continuous process that requires prioritization against customer value and the development of capabilities while delivering customer value. Feedback is crucial for data-driven companies.