Join ISG’s CMO, Paul Gottsegen, as he interviews ISG Advisor, Prashant Kelker, about enterprise agility trends and predictions for 2022, especially the ones most people have missed: agile financial operations and architecture.
Transcript:
Prashant
We are seeing a trail of moving away from large ERP programs to – like we discussed earlier – continuous transformation in this angle and partners play a huge role in this.
Paul
How do you make it there?
When we think about the technology stack and the processes at any organization, how do you become more agile so that you have the wherewithal to transition to this continuous mindset, or as you're making changes to what seems like a consumer experience interface. Like you said, with the curbside pickup, you have to be very agile to changing your backend, because it's really mainly a backend order management. Or invoicing or whatever issues.
So, talk a little bit about enterprise agility. I know it's a topic that comes up with a lot of our client base, and you have a lot of experience talking to leaders about this. What can you tell us about what you're seeing?
Prashant
Oh, that's a lovely question, Paul. Actually, let me use this question to go beyond what is being spoken about in the press. The press talks about organizational agility in in the form of culture. And I want to tick that box and move on to the topics that are not spoken about – and that is financing and architecture.
The best strategy of organizational agility will be brought to its knees by the legacy architecture. You won't be able to move. So, if we can apply the word “agility” to how one should think architecture, one should think as de-layered as possible.
Now, thinking as de-layered as possible unfortunately means that ERP or software-as-a-service is not always your answer. The very fact that you can buy software for a process shows that every other organization is actually doing that process already. It's not going to differentiate you.
I think the world is a mix of SaaS, ERP and, like in the old days, bespoke development.
So, thinking architecture in terms of delayering because that delayering gives you the best flexibility. And you should also be doing very careful buy versus build, and not going too much towards buy. I think the innovativeness comes in the build part.
Now, if you want to bring this to life, you’ve got to start looking at how you think CapEx and OpEx, and that's where the finance part comes in. It’s the “how?”
- How do you go away from annual budgeting towards delayering continuously?
- How do you go from thinking of a budget for a program to doing agile sprints?
These are the new problems which interest us at ISG.
About the authors
Paul Gottsegen
Prashant Kelker
Prashant Kelker is Chief Strategy Officer of ISG, Partner of ISG Americas Consulting and a member of the ISG Executive Board (IEB). He was named to the IEB in January 2023. Prashant was appointed Chief Strategy Officer in 2018, responsible for developing the firm’s three-year strategic blueprint, and he was instrumental in the development of our highly successful ISG NEXT operating model in 2020.
In January 2023, he was named to the expanded role of Partner, Americas Consulting, bringing together all our advisory capabilities in the region to support our commercial and public sector clients in response to the growing convergence of digital technology and enterprise operating models, business processes and revenue-generating connected products and services.
Prashant joined ISG in 2012 from Accenture, initially working for our DACH business and based in Germany. He moved with his family to the United States in 2018. Prashant earned his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and a BE in electronics from Bangalore University in India.
