Manish Sharma of Accenture Operations On How To Use Digital Transformation To Take Your Company To The Next Level

As part of our series about “How To Use Digital Transformation To Take Your Company To The Next Level”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Manish Sharma, the group CEO of Accenture Operations.

Manish Sharma is the group CEO of Accenture Operations. In this role, he oversees Accenture’s comprehensive portfolio of business process services for specific business functions including finance, procurement and supply chain, marketing and sales, as well as industry-specific services, such as banking, insurance and health services. He leads a team of over 145,000 professionals, charged with developing, selling and delivering intelligent operations to drive transformational value and productivity for clients. Manish is also a member of Accenture’s Global Management Committee.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

Until a little more than a year ago, I spent my entire career working out of India and building Accenture’s delivery footprint into what it is today. The transformation of this process, in places like India and the Philippines, has had a lasting impact on me. My past experiences in this space are why I’m very passionate about helping people in villages (across these regions) who don’t have the opportunity for longer-term success.

When I think about the three key milestones in my career, my first one was successfully securing our first big clients in India in the early 2000s. Buildings that once felt empty became bustling. The feeling of establishing a “real” business took on a more tangible meaning for me during that time. Another milestone came in 2010 when we began tackling massive transformations out of our delivery centers — an astonishing project to witness. And finally, in 2016, when we began migrating away from traditional “outsourcing” work and instead focused on automating transactional work and upskilling our people so they could take on more interesting work that was more strategic in nature. The culmination of these defining periods of change shifted our business from doing traditional delivery to working as distributed hubs of specialists.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

Early on in my career, I learned the value of planning for the unexpected. We were scheduled to go-live on a project. Three key people on our team had fallen victim to extenuating circumstances — and as a result, we were not able to meet the deadline.

The key takeaway is what can go wrong sometimes does. With experience, you learn to build in resilience, plan for the unexpected and industrialize knowledge and processes so other team members can serve as a release valve when everything else fails.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

Multiple people have helped me at different points of time in my career, but they each share common characteristics. They are people that give you confidence by supporting you, covering for your mistakes and letting you be your authentic self.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

For me, it’s Gandhi’s autobiography, “The Story of my Experiments.” What resonated with me was the value of small moments in changing the lives of people. Many of the defining characteristics of Gandhi took root from small moments; yet, had a lasting impact on the world as we know it today.

Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?

At Accenture, our purpose is to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity. This is our guiding principle–linked inextricably to the impact and value we create as a business. Our purpose is delivered through the collective teamwork and all 500,000+ people who make up Accenture.

Are you working on any new, exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?

My proudest achievement is founding our Impact Sourcing program to partner with rural firms to foster economic development across India and other regions of the world. The idea behind this program is to bring jobs to villages rather than having people migrate to big cities — equipping people with skills in finance, health administration and data science — and partnering with small business process firms to extend the infrastructure and opportunities for these people. It is a program I continue to be personally involved in.

Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion about Digital Transformation. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what exactly Digital Transformation means? On a practical level what does it look like to engage in a Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is all about making wholesale changes to your operations and changing how work gets done across technology, processes and people. During the pandemic, we witnessed digital transformation being compressed into months rather than years. Almost overnight, the digital achievement gap widened and those who had already invested in digital technologies had the tools and infrastructure in place to adjust faster and found new, agile ways of operating. Further to that point, our recent report found that even amid the crisis, an elite group (7%) of companies, achieved 3X the profitability and 2X the efficiency of peers.

Due to struggles during the pandemic, 74% of C-suite executives say they plan to completely rethink their processes and operating models to be more resilient, while 92% report they’re accelerating digital investments according to Accenture research. Technologies delivering the greatest value in any digital transformation today are cloud, automation and AI.

To begin the journey of digital transformation, executives need to start adapting their businesses for disruption, innovate for new demand patterns and rebuild the workforce model faster and better. Focusing on technology as part of changing how work gets done, translating it into tech-savvy new ways to fulfill orders, serve customers or develop products are key avenues to digital transformation.

Which companies can most benefit from a Digital Transformation?

Our recent report into future-ready businesses surveyed 13 industries, including automotive, banking, consumer goods and services, insurance, life sciences, communications, health insurance, hospitals, industrial equipment, media, retail, travel, and oil and gas. Among these industries, insurance (10%) and high tech (9%) were generally higher or more advanced in digital transformation than other industries. This makes sense as these industries are more oriented towards digital integrations over the years with less face-to-face interactions required. Industries requiring more in-person interactions include automotive, consumer goods and services, hospitals, retail and travel. Businesses within these industries are ideal candidates for digital transformation either to better drive profitability or provide consumers with digital options.

We’d love to hear about your experiences helping others with Digital Transformation. In your experience, how has Digital Transformation helped improve operations, processes and customer experiences? We’d love to hear some stories if possible.

We’ve taken pride in assisting our clients during these difficult times. Some of our recent successes in digital transformation include helping a grocery chain using our SynOps platform to forecast inventory demand and allocate inventory to stores more accurately. We forecasted demand up to eight weeks in advance with machine learning models. Outcomes included a 33% productivity increase, a 15% boost in forecasting accuracy and a 30% inventory reduction. At the onset of the pandemic (when many Chinese exporters shut down operations), Accenture developed an AI tool to scrape the web — using natural language processing — to find alternative suppliers that might be able to step in with missing materials or components as part of its SynOps platform.

Has integrating Digital Transformation been a challenging process for some companies? What are the challenges? How do you help resolve them?

Where we see the biggest pain points with digital transformation in operations are businesses too focused on incremental improvements in their operations. They need to think bigger. Practically speaking, this may translate into creating new ways to fill orders, serve customers or develop products. The very essence of a company is guided by how it operates. Changing how its work gets done has effects that ripple across all aspects of the enterprise.

We assist them in digital transformation by using our expertise and resources to drive bigger thinking. Specifically, by rethinking how work actually gets done across technology, processes and people so it’s not only focused on cost efficiency but driving growth and value. We do this by showing the benefits of using rich data for decision-making, augmenting people with technology and employing agile workforce models supported by machine intelligence.

Ok. Thank you. Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are “Five Ways a Company Can Use Digital Transformation To Take It To The Next Level”? Please share a story or an example for each.

As part of our report, we identified five distinguishing characteristics future-ready organizations put into practice. The first characteristic of a future-ready organization, that other organizations can take note of in order to adopt digital transformation, is to think big and go beyond incremental improvements. Business leaders should start with the end goal in mind and consider the bold moves it would take to close the digital transformation gap. Consider what advances in operations would new technologies enable and then set that point as an aspirational goal. This will require changing how the work gets done across people, processes and technology. An example of this approach is Johnson & Johnson retooled its supply chain to adapt to fluctuating consumer and production demand patters using an end-to-end digital ecosystem.

The second way companies can adopt digital transformation is to take a cloud-first approach to explore new areas to scale and maximize value. Our research showed 90% of future-ready organizations take this approach versus 76% of all other organizations. Workers can succeed when they rely on a seamless flow of information which is achieved by putting cloud at the heart of your business. An example of this is shown with Enel, an Italy-based company that has reinvented its operations in the cloud with huge savings.

The third way companies can adopt digital transformation is to enhance decisions with better, more diverse data, which 45% of future-ready organizations do, compared to 6% of other organizations. Critical thinking and problem-solving are now the backbone of every enterprise and translating data into employee productivity hinges on having access to the right information at the right time. For example, Cisco demonstrates how operating with better data creates a more forward-thinking view of customers.

The fourth way companies can adopt digital transformation is to scale automation, AI and integrated solutions with leading practices, which 58% of future-ready organizations are doing versus only 6% of all others. As I mentioned earlier, Accenture helped a grocery chain use AI to fine-tune promotions and allocate inventory up to eight weeks in advance — enabling a 30% inventory reduction (and less food waste).

And the fifth and final way companies can adopt digital transformation is to foster a specialized, agile workforce and augment them with technology. Our research showed 34% of future-ready organizations are doing this compared to 4% of all others. For example, Dutch bank ING transformed its organization into “agile squads” to improve time to market, employee engagement and productivity.

We’re working with our clients to bring about digital transformation and now have the proof points from accelerated adoption due to COVID. We look forward to helping them realize all the benefits of digital transformation as we move forward in 2021.

In your opinion, how can companies best create a “culture of innovation” in order to create new competitive advantages?

I’d argue it’s not about creating a “culture of innovation” but rather about creating an environment of continuous innovation — and that starts with freeing up time by eliminating transactional tasks and simplifying processes so that team members can focus on higher-value tasks. It also means committing to continuous innovation by incentivizing “future-ready” ideas that advance growth ambitions and emphasizing the human skills that distinguish us from machines.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“The great danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.” — Michelangelo

When I approach challenges, I’d rather aim very high–it’s in stretching our imagination and skills that we advance what’s possible. I am a strong believer that nothing worthwhile is ever achieved without aiming high and testing the limits of what we can do. Humans have unlimited potential if given the opportunity.

How can our readers further follow your work?

You can find me on LinkedIn or Twitter @ManishSharma_70.

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!