Why professional services companies must invest in digital transformation

Pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices com­pa­nies are already ben­e­fit­ing from the imple­men­ta­tion of
dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, but to prof­it ful­ly, their employ­ees and clients need to under­stand what is dri­ving that invest­ment.

Every com­pa­ny has recent­ly spent mon­ey on dig­i­tal tools in some capac­i­ty and expe­ri­enced effi­cien­cy sav­ings and rev­enue boosts as a result. Yet, many pain points remain that could be solved by fur­ther invest­ment in tech.

Chief dig­i­tal offi­cer at RSM UK, Chris Knowles, says one bar­ri­er is that firms wor­ry they will not see any sig­nif­i­cant return on invest­ment for some time. Yet he insists that the gains can be swift, espe­cial­ly if a com­pa­ny has a strate­gic plan when it comes to dig­i­tal. This includes think­ing clear­ly about how end-users will adopt pop­u­lar tech­nolo­gies such as data ana­lyt­ics, automa­tion or client por­tals.

“We had a big invest­ment push around ana­lyt­ics and had a high lev­el of adop­tion with­in a mat­ter of months,” he says. “The buy-in inter­nal­ly was fair­ly easy to achieve, once we had demon­strat­ed the val­ue that ana­lyt­ics can quick­ly bring to make time spent on client deliv­ery more pro­duc­tive and val­ue-adding.”

Dan Guest, chief oper­a­tions and com­mer­cial offi­cer at Mitie Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices, agrees that com­pa­nies need a strat­e­gy and must be clear on the busi­ness case for invest­ing in any dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. “The plan has to be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to every­one, includ­ing your peo­ple and clients. The direct impact on them might not be obvi­ous imme­di­ate­ly,” he says.

Covid-19 has cer­tain­ly accel­er­at­ed dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion invest­ment across pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices.

Simon Drake, SVP and UK gen­er­al man­ag­er at Hitachi Solu­tions, says the pan­dem­ic forced many providers to look close­ly at how they could improve their inef­fi­cien­cies. “We all had to think about how to take what we do and repli­cate it very, very fast using dig­i­tal tools,” he says. “How could we use cloud tech­nol­o­gy to deploy ser­vices rapid­ly and con­sis­tent­ly, whilst respect­ing each client’s indi­vid­ual needs? The pan­dem­ic has cre­at­ed a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ty, but it has also meant that how we engage with clients has had to change very quick­ly.”

One issue that prompt­ed busi­ness­es to invest in dig­i­tal soon­er than they per­haps might have done, was the dif­fi­cul­ty they had in get­ting their nation­al or inter­na­tion­al teams togeth­er to col­lab­o­rate and inno­vate. With every­one work­ing vir­tu­al­ly, there was a risk that oper­a­tional and behav­iour­al change would be hard­er to achieve.

Amy Smart, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion part­ner at Grant Thorn­ton UK, says that the pan­dem­ic accel­er­at­ed dig­i­tal adop­tion sig­nif­i­cant­ly. “Change is hard, but like many com­pa­nies the pan­dem­ic forced adop­tion of a more dig­i­tal way of work­ing. It gave us per­mis­sion to push out dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives with­in a few weeks which could have oth­er­wise tak­en years to imple­ment,” she says. “Dig­i­tal also allows us to unlock the pow­er of our com­mu­ni­ty. We have all these peo­ple with bril­liant ideas and dif­fer­ent skills who, with the right tools, can real­ly con­tribute to our jour­ney and help us get there quick­er.”

She adds that when pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices com­pa­nies do invest in dig­i­tal, they need to ensure they cap­ture and man­age the mass of data they gen­er­ate effec­tive­ly. Data must be in the right place at the right time to unlock oppor­tu­ni­ties from tech­nol­o­gy. Of course, bet­ter use of data also means more action­able insights that will ben­e­fit clients in the short- and long-term.

Tom Amies-Cull, glob­al chief oper­at­ing offi­cer, media at Dentsu Inter­na­tion­al, says one of the biggest wins for his glob­al com­pa­ny is that the busi­ness is now more inte­grat­ed. This means its teams can offer clients a more con­sis­tent and inno­v­a­tive ser­vice. “You have to think of this whole process in a holis­tic way because dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is fun­da­men­tal­ly busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion,” he says.

“You have to start with the impact that any change will have on your peo­ple and your clients, and then link that to what you are try­ing to do as a busi­ness. This approach will make change much more man­age­able.”

Dentsu Inter­na­tion­al is cur­rent­ly ratio­nal­is­ing its num­ber of brands from around 60 to six, and dig­i­tal tools are enabling the change to run more smooth­ly. Tech­nol­o­gy is being used to con­nect dif­fer­ent teams and reduce some of the silos and local issues that exist­ed before.

As any busi­ness invests more in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, the effi­cien­cy sav­ings in terms of mon­ey and time become more obvi­ous. Yet, there have also been some big wins for pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices.

Com­pa­nies have moved quick­er than some might have imag­ined to a sys­tem in which elec­tron­ic sig­na­tures are used. This is sav­ing time and improv­ing a ser­vice provider’s rev­enues com­pared to the tra­di­tion­al sys­tem of print­ing or scan­ning. It is also prov­ing to be a use­ful entry point when it comes to encour­ag­ing clients to inter­act more close­ly with providers online.

This is cer­tain­ly progress because, as Knowles notes, the broad­er pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices and busi­ness-to-busi­ness sec­tor has been late to the par­ty when it comes to mov­ing clients to an online rela­tion­ship. “To fur­ther encour­age this over the next few years, we have to think about how we can add more val­ue to clients dig­i­tal­ly,” he says.

What dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion has done is raise expec­ta­tions of providers among their employ­ees as well as their clients. As con­sumers, we have all become used to instant respons­es from busi­ness-to-con­sumer com­pa­nies, and this is putting pres­sure on pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices firms to up their game.

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is also chang­ing the cul­ture of many com­pa­nies, espe­cial­ly as peo­ple adopt hybrid work­ing.

Drake says dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy has fuelled a change where­by peo­ple are now work­ing quick­er and have adopt­ed more of a test and learn approach. “With dig­i­tal tools peo­ple feel empow­ered to take a few risks in a rel­a­tive­ly safe envi­ron­ment,” he says. “Clients are also respond­ing faster and mak­ing deci­sions quick­er.”

This is a cru­cial point. Pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices com­pa­nies and their clients need to be on the same dig­i­tal page when it comes to tech­nol­o­gy and how they use it day-to-day. There will also be times when providers need to be agile enough to work with­in the con­straints of their clients’ invest­ment in dig­i­tal so far, and arguably vice-ver­sa.

Ulti­mate­ly when it comes to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices com­pa­nies need a clear strat­e­gy and to be able to set and com­mu­ni­cate long-term goals. All com­pa­nies will make a mis­take or two along the way, but the secret is to learn from those so that the provider and its clients gain val­ue from what should be an ongo­ing invest­ment.

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it hitachi-solutions.co.uk