Reimagine your business processes with an engagement layer

Co-authored by Josh Hoyt,  principal, Capgemini

Digital transformation promises to unlock business potential across the entire value chain, including the partner ecosystem. It can be a force multiplier when coupled with a company’s ambition and vision.

Digital strategy is at the core of any digital transformation. Digital strategy can follow either an evolution or a revolution approach. With evolution, digital strategy is aligned to the original business strategy. L’Oreal and Air France are good examples of the evolution approach. In a revolution approach, digital strategy is the main business strategy. Burberry and Amazon are revolution companies.

No matter what the approach, the digital transformation journey is very specific to each company and requires careful consideration of people and culture.

A good digital strategy should outline a prioritized portfolio of digital initiatives across value chains and the expected outcomes. Digital initiatives typically fall under one or a combination of three themes:

1. Collaboration: Building better connections with partners, customers, assets, and/or people
2. Innovation: Innovating continuously at the process level
3. Simplification: Simplifying IT infrastructure, user experience, data, and analytics.

To achieve digital initiatives, companies will usually develop a bi- or multi-modal system architecture. At the core is a reliable System of Record (business transactions) and Systems of Innovation surround the center. It is in the System of Innovation that the engagement layer is found. If done correctly, the engagement layer is a valuable approach because it provides a working environment for users without the need to jump across multiple systems to complete a business process.

Let’s take an example from an upstream Oil & Gas environment. To execute a land-to-ledger scenario, it is typical for users to work across multiple systems, such as land, royalty, production accounting, and joint interest billing systems. The engagement layer can simplify the user interaction and automate certain transactions across these systems as illustrated below:

Traditional approach
New approach to process innovation with an engagement layer

The engagement layer allows companies to:

• Innovate on the entire value-chain (end-to-end perspective) at the pace of the business and collaborate with business partners
• Process faster innovations using platforms that are low or no code in nature (Salesforce, PEGA, AWS, or Azure). Also, a good candidate for continuous delivery and deployment
• Streamline a consistent user experience.

We see companies struggle to take full advantage of the engagement layer due to:

• Poor data management: data management and/or master data governance are not defined or established
• Lack of integration: Enterprise class integration framework not available
• Lackluster user experience: Standards are not established or streamlined.

The engagement layer is a powerful approach to deliver digital initiatives with minimum disruption and faster return on investment. Are you ready to reimagine your business processes with an engagement layer?