Jens Engelhardt: Simple and Digital

Read the transcript below.

JENS ENGELHARDT: Digital leaders today are redefining the art of the possible. They create completely new customer experiences. And they do that based on a very lean, very cost effective and very fast delivery engine.

So the goal for established companies is very clear. They need to match or exceed that experience. They need to radically simplify their business, their processes, their business rules, the way they operate their business and they interact with their customers.

There are a couple of challenges we see. Firstly, it's dealing with the existing complexity across different silos. Secondly, it's about how IT and technology actually interacts with the business. It's also about dealing with the legacy of processes and IT. And it is about creating the capacity to invest into digitization and the future of your company.

That's why at Bain, we have developed that simple and digital approach to really transform the core business of established companies. Let me highlight five elements of that approach. No. 1, setting customer experience and customer obsession as the North Star of everything you do.

No. 2, before you digitize, you need to reduce complexity. You never digitize complexity.

Three, you will use the customer episode as the unit of transformation. And No. 4, you take one episode after the other. And by that, you reduce the complexity. You cut the elephant into digestible pieces, taking one by one and put them into implementation really fast.

And No. 5 is, as you do that, you instill new ways of working, new ways of agile working, in your organization. And you use that customer episode redesign as the nucleus for that. As a result of that, your customers will get way better experience, and you will be able to operate your company at way lower cost.

Read the Bain Brief: Running the Business through Your Customer's Eyes