SMAC IT – Value Stream Mapping Pertinent in Today’s Digital Age

 
In today’s fast-paced world of, ‘Customer First in Digital Age’, the  Experiences, Expectations and Perceptions of Customers backed by technological advances and business model mindset shifts;   call for an ‘Outside-In’ look into effectiveness and efficiencies both in relevance to the iceberg illusion and the actuality existing in the end-to-end value chain for businesses.
Value Proposition is a promise of value to be delivered, communicated, and acknowledged. It is also a belief from the customer about how value (benefit) will be delivered, experienced and acquired [1].
 

Developing a value proposition is based on a review and analysis of the benefits, costs, and value that an organization can deliver to its customers, prospective customers, and other constituent groups within and outside the organization.

 
Steve Jobs quote – “If you can define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution.”
It is here again in today’s age of IoT (Internet of Things), SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) and ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth), the market dynamics play a major impacting role for businesses for that outside-in look into value-add and non-value add activities as part of their value-streams helping them deliver business outcomes and carve out improvement activities suiting their business processes.
Value-stream mapping is a lean-management method for analyzing the current state and designing a future state for the series of events that take a product or service from its beginning through to the customer with reduced lean wastes as compared to current map – Wikipedia

Although value stream mapping emerged in the manufacturing sector, it is also used in logistics, supply chain, service industries, health care, software development, and new product development [2]

IDC Top 10 Predictions for Worldwide IT, 2019 [3] indicate two of the below-mentioned predictions –

• Prediction 1: the Digitized economy. By 2022, 60%+ of global GDP will be digitized, with growth in every industry driven by digitally enhanced offerings, operations, and relationships and almost $7 trillion in IT-related spending in 2019–2022
• Prediction 2: Digital-native IT. By 2023, 75% of all IT spending will be on 3rd Platform technologies, as over 90% of all enterprises build “digital native” IT environments to thrive in the digital economy.

IDC sees 3rd Platform technologies comprising of 4 Pillar technology areas: Big Data & Analytics, Cloud, Mobile, and Social; which Forrester refers to as Nexus of Forces as dominating enterprise IT spending in five years, with legacy systems selectively being used to support digital transformation [4]
With the convergence of IT and Business abled by the prevalence of web-based transactions, IT services are becoming increasingly central to the mission of providing value to customers. In this context, Lean IT initiatives are becoming an interest in the core business.
Further fueling into the scenario is Generation Z and Forbes thus calling out [5] their importance and the impact created –
Currently, Gen Z accounts for approximately $29 – $143 billion in direct spending, and they are well on their way to becoming the biggest generation of consumers by 2020, which is right around the corner.
All of these drive for need in the hour for businesses to SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) their IT. Thereby making anywhere and, in every mode, accessible and connected. With mobility abled through ease on fingertips; anytime and anywhere accessibility into huge amounts of data at disposal for the information enabling providing knowledge – all of these easing into hitting onto the wealth of internet wealth.

“The future will be characterized by smart devices delivering increasingly insightful digital services everywhere.” The aspect of, Intelligent Digital Mesh, that Gartner calls, and thus refers [6] –

• Intelligent: How AI is in virtually every existing technology and creating entirely new categories.
• Digital: Blending the digital and physical worlds to create an immersive world.
• Mesh: Exploiting connections between expanding sets of people, businesses, devices, content, and services.

As per Cearley, Gartner Vice-President – “Trends under each of these three themes are a key ingredient in driving a continuous innovation process as part of the continuous next strategy,”
 
Lakshmi Nanduri -Program manager @YASH Technologies
References:

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/03/09/part-4-measuring-the-worlds-most-neglected-competitive-weapon-time/#36721d6a2f6f
2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2018/11/04/idc-top-10-predictions-for-worldwide-it-2019/#7484f2d57b96
3. https://www.idc.com/promo/thirdplatform/fourpillars
4. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lilachbullock/2018/12/03/4-sales-trends-that-you-need-to-know-about-in-2019/#5c7a94762857
5. https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2019/

• Digital Transformation
• stretegis technology change
• Value-stream mapping