Every Company Operating Type Has These Two Components

Effective and efficient execution is the cornerstone of any organization’s success, irrespective of operating type, but what often gets overlooked is the drivers of execution. People have and will always be behind effective execution. Even as more processes, tasks, and systems get automated, automation’s creation, implementation, and management will determine the automation’s level of intelligence and impact.

The three operating types have edges and can be debated. Still, when forced to return to three that summarize different operating models, these three win out. What all three of these types now have in common, which hasn’t always been the case, is that they can only do well with a digital infrastructure, systems, and actionable data that power any of the operating types.

Operating efficiency: The ability to operate efficiently and for a company and its customers to receive value from doing so is mainly driven by its ability to facilitate workflows that are as frictionless as possible. Systems must be smart, and with the advent and evolution of AI, they are and will be increasingly so. As I refer to AI, intelligent automation will allow team members to be at their best more often, in addition to fully autonomous agents. When done thoughtfully and well, this will enable companies that lean into operating efficiency to 10x their efficiency and productivity.

Product/Service Innovation: Innovation is a creative human endeavor. Companies relying on a different approach to serving customers acknowledge human ingenuity as the catalyst while depending on a combination of human and digital execution. Any innovation starts with people seeing and seizing an opportunity to deploy resources, time, and capital to approach serving customers in a new way. Innovations are happening across many domains, but most have a digital component without dependency.

Customer intimacy: Being hyper-customer-focused and centric brings a seemingly endless array of challenges. Customers can be demanding, fickle, and complicated because, well, people. At the heart of every company that leans into and on customer intimacy as their operating type is the need to initiate, cultivate, and maintain customer relationships. Business relationships are a duality of rationality and irrationality that require people and intelligent systems to pull off successfully, repeatedly, and at scale.

As you have gathered from the above, people with access to the best digital tools and capabilities will be better positioned to execute their company’s strategy and operating type. The key to execution for companies, especially those in the mid-market, is going to be threefold:

1. Ensure everyone in the company is aware of its strategy and operating type and their contribution to it.
2. The company has the digital prowess to operate efficiently, serve customers well, and operate with real-time actionable insights to nimbly respond.
3. Team members are empowered to do their best work more often to drive customer delight and operational efficiency through digital superiority.

What do all three of the above have in common? The intersection and combination of people and intelligent automation working together. Organizations, irrespective of operating type, can only succeed with the harmonious balance of human capital and digital capability. Strategies will differ, as they should, on top of an operating type, but what will remain the same is seamless harmony between people and automation.