DOM Acceleration

Quest Food Management Services is one of those that opted to disrupt. The Lombard, Illinois–based food services group provides services to business, industry, higher education, conference centers, and the K-12 segment in the Midwest, with more than $65 million in annual revenue.

Though the company implemented a food services management software platform prior to the pandemic, adoption was slow and growth only incremental, according to company President Nicholas Saccaro. Then COVID hit and upended everything.

“As we started to reopen from COVID, our operating model completely changed. Instead of opening a cafeteria and serving five hundred kids a lunch period and so on, where we could rely on all this tribal knowledge of existing personnel, now we are doing seven- and fourteen-day meal kits and drive-through distribution where there is absolutely no data, no tribal knowledge to go off of whatsoever,” says Saccaro. “So, the adoption of the food management platform in our organization skyrocketed because people found that this was an opportunity to get better data to be able to leverage the learnings and the experiences we were seeing literally every single day.”

As Quest accelerated its digital journey—DOM in motion—the company transformed itself. “We were kind of reinventing our model,” Saccaro says. “The pandemic really kind of accelerated our adoption and use of these digital tools because it was so important for us to be able to plan the business accordingly. If we weren't able to utilize systems like that where we could forecast production needs or track production trends, we wouldn't know how much to order or how many staffers we had to bring in. It was like starting a new business or a new division of our organization.”

The pandemic further shaped people's experiences with food and dining, says Saccaro. Now they utilize technology to be able eat food where they want, when they want, and how they want, and to have access to all kinds of broad options. “This is absolutely going to transform the way we think about customer experience,” he adds.

Pre-pandemic Quest was at DOM Level 2/early experimenters—still mired in siloed systems, some operations manual and others automated, many disconnected, and technology hesitant. Then, out of necessity, the company embraced the DOM. Today the company is innovating, has a high-performing culture, and has defined metrics to measure its operations. In other words, it is a Level 3/digitally credible company on the way to Level 4/digitally mature.

Rethinking Your Space

Now is the time for businesses of all sizes to look toward the future, assess their systems and processes, and rethink the possibilities in their industries. It's time to look to innovative ideas and processes, and rebuild bigger and better.

The traditional linear mindset—one step and one customer at a time—is being replaced with the digital mindset that enables small companies to compete on the same playing field as behemoths.

The business model and business objective remain unchanged; it's the execution phase empowered by an innovative thought process that ultimately enables a shift to a digital culture and DOM in motion. Already, experts predict that companies worldwide will spend close to $7 trillion on digital transformation between 2020 and 2023.²

Breakwater Treatment & Wellness is a great example of a company that embraced the digital operating model as a pathway to focus on what makes it unique—its processes. The Cranbury, New Jersey–based cannabis products and services company provides a high-end educational shopping experience to customers, according to Andrew Zaleski, Breakwater's President. All the cannabis buds are hand-trimmed to ensure the highest quality. Plus, the company recruits top-notch cultivation and harvesting experts and is involved in research to continually improve its products.

The power of DOM helps Breakwater measure and maintain its quality products as well as provides a platform to deliver a better experience to customers. “Breakwater is fully committed to this process, which has allowed us to sustain a reputation for high quality over low cost and high-volume alternatives,” says Zaleski.

Purposeful Companies Poised for the Future

Today's workforce—as well as tomorrow's—want a company's strategies to be driven by purpose that in turn creates a thriving culture. Successes are about a purposeful culture and environment pinned on the premise of how to make lives easier. It's no longer only about profits. Digital is about simpler, faster, and better. When companies and people pay attention to that, the profits and the successes follow.

Values Front and Center

If that sounds like a stretch, again look at Quest. When the pandemic hit, Saccaro says, the company decided early on that no matter what happened, the company would remain true to its longtime core values of integrity, responsiveness, accountability, respect, and excellence among its teams, communities, and customers.

“We said we are going to lean on those values,” says Saccaro, “even if it means we have to endure some more pain right now to do what we think is right. If we are making decisions that are in alignment with our values, we will find a way to navigate through this.”

A few of the ways Quest did that during the pandemic included:

• Taking on a $5 million-plus Paycheck Protection Program (a Small Business Administration–backed loan program) loan to keep employees whole for eight weeks when there was literally nothing for them to do because the schools were shut down.
• Making sure that clients who helped keep their employees financially secure weren't billed while the company received the PPP money so they wouldn't feel like Quest was taking advantage of them.
• Mike McTaggart, Quest's owner, going without a salary so the money could go to food pantries and creating the Quest Cares Fund for employees.

“At every single turn our intentions were to keep our mission, vision, and values front and center and not change who we are,” says Saccaro. “It's easy to have solid relationships when things are going well but you really strengthen them and build them over the long haul when things aren't going well.”

The company did all that and it “absolutely” paid off, adds Saccaro, in “the commitment we have seen from our clients in terms of the contract extensions, their willingness to be flexible with us, and the new business we've signed. We have had two incredible growth years.”

Today's successful leaders like Saccaro understand the value of purpose and people—the right culture.

The Strength of Culture

David Granson also believes in the importance of culture. He is managing director of wealth management for New York–headquartered Goldman Sachs, the global investment banking, securities, and investment management firm. He has been with the company for 25 years. That's a strong testament to the company's culture.

“I believe the majority of professionals aspire for three things in their employment: to learn, to earn a competitive living consistent with individual objectives, and to feel they are making a difference,” says Granson. “Based on my criteria, Goldman Sachs is one of the world's great talent networks—not just in finance, but in industry at large—and the firm has afforded me the ability to achieve all three.”

Vision

Mastercard is a leader, too, with visionary executives that put people, purpose, and connection at the forefront. The company has a purpose manifesto—“to connect everyone to priceless possibilities.” That manifesto touches on responsibility, trust, working together, innovation, and “to let basic human decency serve as our guide.”⁴

Former CEO Ajay Banga famously coined the term “decency quotient,” or “DQ.” That's shorthand for treating others how they would wish to be treated. “Decency,” Banga says, “is the foundation for the kinds of relationships that drive respect, innovation, urgency, and enterprise-wide thinking. It's what supports and inspires people to believe that they can trust you, and that you will have your hand on their back, and not in their face. This lets them know that they can bring their full hearts and minds to all that they do.”⁵

That kind of culture and vision, which continues now beyond Banga's tenure, has made a difference for millions of people around the world, and for Mastercard.

Goldman Sachs is another company with strong culture and vision. Says Granson, “In my view, a determined professional can be fulfilled and challenged working with outstanding, collaborative, and dedicated colleagues, coupled with tremendous clients in an ever-evolving industry of global importance.”

“Effectively, Goldman's well-known ‘culture of success’ and client-first mindset has been the crux of my experience and my standard of comparison.” adds Granson, who is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.

The Journey

Digital transformation is a journey, and the business platform a milestone to measure where a company is on that journey toward continuous innovation and exponential growth as shown in Figure 2.1. Just because a company hasn't yet reached Level 5 of the DOM, though, doesn't mean that it's not on the right path. DOM in motion, after all, creates the velocity necessary for growth.

The bigger question is determining a company's current level of digital maturity. That's important because understanding the various maturity levels helps clarify the digital journey and what it will take to reach the next level and, eventually, Level 5—the market leaders. Level 5 companies are ongoing disruptors and grow exponentially as they build purposeful organizations.

Exploration Phase

Companies at Levels 1 and 2 are at the exploration phase on the DOM model. They already have certain meaningful processes and procedures in place. They probably have some form of technology.

But these companies want more, so they look for how to add value to their products or services. They consider how to monetize their existing systems and assets—their data—and how to mature their people.

The result is perhaps that a company develops a new business process or model and its people become more receptive to change. Most companies at this point are at Level 1/digital infancy and Level 2/early experimenters on the journey to a complete and robust digital operating model.

Exploit

Companies at Level 3 now have the ability to explore as well as exploit in their business. To make the most of that new process or model, the business works to leverage what it already has and exploit new opportunities. Traditionally, a company would take on one problem and one solution at a time. Now with platform technology, it's one architecture and multiple solutions and outcomes because data, process, and experience are built in. The company has the chance to exploit all that internally and externally with customers.

Change happens steadily as companies think about ways to exploit their data and monetize it to deliver more processes and, ultimately, experiences. The university figures out ways to connect multiple departments and provide multiple services via one platform ecosystem and in one place. The hospital digitizes its information for faster patient check-in. The food service company delivers not just personalized menus, but also direct-to-consumer nutritional information. It's all happening as companies embrace a digital operating model that personalizes and streamlines service and delivery.

Most companies at this point are at Level 3/digitally credible and Level 4/digitally mature on the journey to a complete and robust digital operating model.

Moving On

IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company Limited is already at Level 3 and moving to Level 4 on the DOM journey with its robust business platform SIMPLIFY, a unified sales app for customer acquisition and servicing. Known as “One Sales Universe,” the app enables sales with a seamless flow across all stages of application, from lead to policy conversion to ongoing policy servicing. Apart from enabling 99.5% reduction in paper-based processing, this futuristic application resulted in an approximate 25% reduction in log-in to issuance turnaround time and a 50% reduction in sales queries within three months of launch.

This comprehensive and complete app helped IndiaFirst Life stay nimble and differentiate itself from the competition. As one of the youngest and the fastest-growing life insurance firms in India, IndiaFirst Life continues to innovate to improve in line with its #EmployeeFirst and #CustomerFirst ideologies.

Disrupt Holds the Power

The power of artificial intelligence enables companies to explore and exploit, but not to disrupt. To disrupt—companies at Level 4 and Level 5—requires an understanding of evolving markets and the ability to respond quickly to shifts with the right product or service. Disruption creates the real power of exponential growth. Once a company has explored options and developed new business processes, then leveraged its existing model and assets as part of the exploit phase, the next step is to disrupt.

Disruption is not for everyone. If the milk producer doesn't want to change the milk-producing industry or if a restaurant can't think about change, disruption won't happen. But if the restaurant does want to disrupt, the sky is the limit.

From London to New York to San Francisco, and beyond, food service is happening digitally and with less human interaction at restaurants, in schools, and in hospitals. Digital payments also have become the default method, whether it's a street vendor in Southeast Asia taking payments via mobile phones or a shop owner or service provider in Copenhagen looking to the process to complete transactions.

The rideshare business is another digital platform success. Cars certainly aren't a new form of transportation, and neither is it new or unusual that people want to go from place to place. A little more than a decade ago, rideshare meant hailing a cab or hiring a limousine service. Change meant more competition in the form of another taxi or limo company or perhaps subscription or on-call service.

Then came business platforms that exploited the demand and disrupted the industry. These platforms provided the ecosystem and the opportunity to connect supply and demand, provide more service to consumers—anytime, door-to-door, or cell-phone-to-cell-phone pick-up and delivery—and all with the ability to massively scale up.

Once implemented, that's exactly what has happened. The impossible is possible. Companies at this point are at Level 4/digitally mature and Level 5/market leaders with continuous digital maturity.

New Mindset

Many of us grew up with the linear mindset—do one task at a time, complete it, then move on to the next. Operations and thinking were siloed and management top-down. Today's digital mindset is about accomplishing multiple tasks at the same time, agile thinking, collaboration, transparency, and clarity. Authenticity and vulnerability matter.

Customers today want to know a business and its people are authentic. If a person or company says, “I'm the best,” people head elsewhere. The digital mindset world dictates that instead they say, “We're working harder to get better every day.” Today's consumers listen to the latter and come back. Continuous growth and improvement is the new mantra.

Anything Is Possible

Even old-school businesses can change when they adopt a modern enlightened culture.

Crum & Forster is a diversified specialty insurance company that dates to 1822. Today the Morristown, New Jersey–based insurer is part of Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, a global insurance and investment management company.

In 2014, C&F had a traditional insurance company culture with a centralized, top-down management style. Results were mediocre and employee satisfaction was low. Marc Adee, C&F's new CEO at the time, and his management team recognized that to grow and thrive in a highly competitive business, they would have to undertake a transformational journey that began with the company's culture.

Fast forward to today, a dramatically changed C&F is a company its employees see as a great place to work, it is increasingly seen as a great business partner, and the company has more than doubled top-line revenue and profit margins since it began its cultural transformation.

Who Controls It?

Companies can create their own data or they can collect it from others and monetize it. It can be personalized or depersonalized. But collection of that data and whether a company has ownership of the data, and ownership for a specific use even when it’s depersonalized, raises more questions.

People—especially younger generations—relinquish de facto control of their data all the time across social media channels. These channels take advantage of that and monetize users' data. Targeted ads based on someone's social media interests are a good example of that.

In some cases, companies depersonalize the data they own. A hospital system could depersonalize data to identify incident trends to determine optimal staffing.

Definitions

Every piece of data on a business platform has what's known as a physical and a logical definition. The physical is the obvious—a name is a name, for example. But take away the name—de-identify it—and the data becomes an ID in the system that can be aggregated to show trends and patterns as in the hospital scenario above. Then it becomes what's known as logical data. Logical data explains how the data is used to solve a specific problem.

Veteran CIO Ian Worden cautions that in the healthcare field, ownership of data as well as for a specific use can be more complex even when it's de-identified. But if a company reaches digital maturity, owns the data, and has developed its own unique data, all that can be monetized, exploited, and markets disrupted for exponential growth.

Business Benefits

Let's look closer at what utilizing Cloud capabilities can mean for a company, its people, processes, and IT operations. Among other things, the Cloud provides business continuity, contingencies, risk mitigation, and faster scalability—a necessity as a company grows.

Some things to consider include:

• How does utilizing the Cloud affect that business?
• How does it affect customers?
• What's left if everything about a business is offsite in the Cloud?

The Cloud is about digital platforms that streamline and expedite a business, its operations, data, and experiences. It's a common sharing platform for the infrastructure of a business. When someone clicks on a function in the Cloud, they're not really selecting one thing. As mentioned earlier, they're actually activating an entire platform ecosystem.

It's not a new concept. Over the past two decades, application service providers have connected businesses to networks via installed internet-based applications. But as work-from-home has become the necessity and the norm, human assets more than ever before have been transferred to the Cloud to coexist with business assets.

Almost by default, this move to digital has created a more fluid, transformative, technological environment, which allows for continuous collaboration, co-creation, and cooperation. Chances are over the past several years or so we've all heard at least once a business leader or manager say some iteration of how working from home could never work, but it really has worked.

Better and Better

For many companies, this model shift to a virtual environment can and has led to improved efficiency, better power of human capabilities, more outcomes from IT systems, and superior customer experiences. This is the power of business connected to the Cloud.

Now imagine the endless possibilities if a company voluntarily makes the move to embrace all the Cloud can offer. That's business platforms as a service (BPaaS). Think of BPaaS, which includes software as a service (SaaS) applications, as delivering end-to-end business services for customers. It's an all-inclusive framework customized to an individual internal and external business's needs and fully digitized for accessibility, scalability, and speed.

This is the ultimate mall, the one-stop shop for all your business needs—your customers' needs as well as the ability to access multiple companies, applications, and services for multi-functionality, and best of all, one investment in the place of 10. Considering the availability of business services and products these days, simplification of this kind will create a more streamlined working environment for all and allow for exponential growth.