Report

ServiceNow Workflow Quarterly: The Resilience Issue

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Companies need resilience to succeed in a world where disruption occurs suddenly and cascades unpredictably.

We define organizational resilience as the ability to maintain performance in the face of environmental, political, social, cyber, and other disruptions. The global pandemic reminded us that in an interconnected world, disruption can occur suddenly and cascade unpredictably. At the same time, some companies and governments weathered the COVID-19 challenge better than others. So what are the attributes that distinguish the world’s most resilient organizations? How should leaders orchestrate people, processes, and technology to take resilience—and its twin, risk management—to the next level of excellence?

To help answer these questions, we surveyed more than 1,080 senior business leaders across six industries in 13 countries around the globe. Company sizes ranged from $350 million to more than $5 billion in annual revenue.

Making Business Thrive: A Cloud Leader Roadmap for Achieving 10x ROI

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Enterprises around the world have discovered how to use cloud to increase revenue and build their business. For organizations with the most-successful implementations, which go beyond cloud migration, cloud helps them achieve far more than lower costs: it empowers them to transform their business and fuel their future.

Companies of every size need to capitalize on their business and IT investments, including their investments in cloud. Enterprises beginning their cloud journey or seeking to accelerate it can maximize results by following the model of leaders, whose cloud use drives a 12% bottom-line increase compared with just 2.6% for cloud beginners.

That’s just one of the benefits cloud leaders realize, according to a recent Wipro survey of 1,300 global executives regarding their current and future cloud plans. Cloud leaders – the top 20% of companies we polled – achieve a return on investment 10 times higher than beginners. They do it by embracing the important role cloud plays across their enterprise, from streamlining operations and accelerating product development to combining cloud with other technologies to amplify revenue generation.

Data Modernization: Breaking the AI Vicious Cycle for Superior Decision-making

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Amid the increasingly complex business, economic and social environment of the post-pandemic world, companies need even greater intelligence to make fast, optimal decisions. For many companies, that means finding the relevant data – whether on-site or through a third-party – amid the fast-growing data volumes generated by our hyper-digitized economy and using it as a fuel for artificial intelligence (AI), a key ally in sound decision-making.

Most businesses already understand this. In partnership with Cognizant, we surveyed 1,000 senior executives from companies of different sizes across a range of industries in the US. Our research reveals that the majority of respondents (57%) believe the main benefits of AI are improved planning and decision-making, above even AI’s ability to support faster innovation and higher profitability.

ServiceNow Workflow Quarterly: The Total Experience Issue

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Historically, most companies have treated employee and customer experience as separate challenges, managed in different departments across the organization. Customer experience (cx) has generally gotten more attention than employee experience (ex) because customers provide the revenue that keeps companies in business.

Yet it seems obvious that happier, more productive employees will in turn deliver better experiences for customers, benefitting the bottom line. Empirical research supports this hypothesis. For example, a 2017 MIT study found companies in the top quartile for EX delivered twice the innovation, double the customer satisfaction, and 25% greater profitability compared to companies in the bottom quartile.

What can organizations achieve when customer and employee experiences are connected with seamless, consumer-grade tech that breaks down departmental silos, allowing work to flow smoothly from across the organization? We know the covid-19 pandemic was a forcing function for digital transformation in general, because thousands of companies suddenly had to rely on digital platforms and business models to stay in business. How did this impact ex and cx in the enterprise? We set out to answer these questions in the Total Experience Issue of Workflow Quarterly.

Earlier this year, ServiceNow and ThoughtLab surveyed 900 senior business leaders in five industries across 13 countries. We sought to understand how companies are using digital technologies and solutions to improve their cx and ex, the benefits they are seeing, and the challenges they face. Our goal was to help organizations develop a roadmap to excellence in using digital solutions to optimize customer and employee experience and boost overall performance.

Future-proofing Cities in a Post-pandemic World with Deloitte

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This article focuses on how cities can build resiliency in public health systems, government operations, and other city domains by focusing on four key capabilities— nimbleness, scalability, stability, and optionality. These recommendations are informed by a global survey of 167 cities conducted as part of the Smart City Solutions for a Riskier World research study to identify challenges and track progress made by cities in each of the key capabilities of resiliency.

ESI Thoughtlab, in collaboration with a coalition of business, government, and academic leaders, including Deloitte, surveyed 167 cities globally to understand their progress on UN Sustainable Development Goals, how they coped with the pandemic, and how are they leveraging digital technologies, data, and other innovative solutions to drive progress in the post pandemic era.

The survey was conducted between August and November 2020. It covered cities across 82 countries with varying income levels and population sizes. The survey also classified cities into three stages of smart city maturity—beginner, intermediate, and leader—based on their progress in harnessing technology and data across various urban domains and their ability to foster citizen and stakeholder engagement. Based on the survey results, 29% of cities were classified as beginner, 49% as intermediate, and 22% as smart city leaders.

The Future of Digital Workspaces with Lakeside

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The future of digital workplaces hinges on one important factor: digital employee experience (DEX). The smoother the digital experience, the more productive employees can be. Conversely, the harder it is to access and use workplace technology, the less workers can do. More than a year spent supporting remote workers since the outbreak of Covid-19 has given companies a crash course in the urgency of digital employee experience.

CEOs and CHROs now realize how much of a priority digital employee experience is in the modern work world. That’s because understanding the technology needs of employees and how it affects them is imperative for creating sustainable growth in productivity as well as controlling costs. Ignoring digital experiences, however, can lead to poor business performance, failed goals, and other losses.

This Lakeside Software report is based on commissioned research performed by ThoughtLab including a survey of 200 C-level executives, 200 end users, and 200 IT leaders in March and April 2021 within manufacturing, financial services, professional services, healthcare, pharmaceuticals/life sciences, and insurance.