Transformation & change management

Like the tides, the balance of global supply and demand is constantly changing. This is not news. However, during the past few years global impacts have been exponential compared to times just half a decade ago. The uncertainties and unexpected events like Covid19, war in Europe and Suez incident, just to name a few, have led to challenges predicting changes in local and global business environment: Quickly turning tides bring strong currents. The familiar Forrester effect ‘Bullwhip Effect’ slashes through the operations worldwide. Now, more importantly than ever, the question arises: Are inventories a support or strain to your operations?

More and more Swedish companies are affected by the new EU Taxonomy, a legal regulation and classification system for how green a company is. Here we describe what the taxonomy means for your organization, what you need to think about and how to get started with your reporting.

The first post pandemic Vehicle Electronics and Connected Services, VECS, conference had its kick-off the 17^th May 2022 in Gothenburg. This highly popular conference had over 1400 automotive professionals visiting from all over the world, with keynote sessions tackling topics such as “Trends and Drivers Shaping the Future of Mobility”, “Technical Challenges & Solutions” and “The future of Automotive Services”. The first day provided inspiring talks about future trends and impressive innovations, how we can succeed with software defined vehicles, CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment) and connectivity. The second and final day, invited the participants to choose from seven different tracks, where one was dedicated to automotive cybersecurity. This track provided insights on the challenges that the automotive industry needs to address the upcoming years.

I wrote a blog post about my thoughts on Schrems II and additional safeguards. Please do not consider this as solutions but rather me guessing what possible additional safeguards are appropriate. I am trying to identify opportunities of improvement based on the complex information about Schrems II that is available right now. The key takes from this blog is to use Schrems II as an opportunity to start working risk-based and to improve the privacy by design and by default process.    

Recent unexpected events, that we never could have been prepared for, have brought flexibility and agility even more to the agenda. Companies are struggling to respond to the evolving use of technology and market changes, and they have finally understood how little time there is to address these changes. The organizations of the future have been able to cope with the changed landscape while the more traditional organizations have struggled to adapt themselves in the new environment. To be able to acclimate to a new reality where consumer behaviors, supply chains, employee needs, as well as legal and government requirements play an important role, companies must consider strategy development as part of their operating business. Again, market changes do not wait for the next strategic planning cycle. If your organization does not change accordingly in time, it may be too late and the rivals in the marketplace will gain advantages and steal your market shares. Therefore, there is a need to replace the classic strategy project to an iterative strategy process with faster feedback loops. In this article, we will present an iterative strategy framework that enables you to cope with the ever-changing environment.

IT is becoming increasingly vital for business leaders to drive digitalization when attempting to grow. The possibilities are endless and sorting out what the next step is for each specific organization is difficult. Many organizations struggle with even making a proper diagnosis of their current technology situation. This is where a Digital Flash comes into play, enabling a full view of the current digital and IT capabilities.

ix3, an Aker Solutions software company, announced today that they have entered into a partnership with Knowit Insight to strengthen the power to bring long-term value for businesses for an innovative future across engineering, operation and services.

ix3 was established by Aker Solutions in 2019 to keep the energy industry and its customers at the forefront of the digital transformation. As a trusted Google Cloud Partner, ix3 and Aker Solutions has the subject matter expertise, software capabilities, resources and partners required to drive change for the industry. Digitally.

Too often we at Knowit encounter frustrated CIOs and IT executives that are being challenged to lower their IT spend by business stakeholders, who do not always understand the service delivered nor the received value. As companies become more digital, the volume of IT spend tends to increase, placing greater demands on transparency of IT costs and underlying cost components. Without cost transparency, it is difficult to understand what is driving an increased IT spend, what the link to the business is and what business value it brings. Inadequate traceability of costs thus reduces the ability to create a tight link between business strategy and technology investments and explain the impact of change in IT cost.

Cloud is no longer a hype – it is mainstream amongst companies worldwide. Gartner estimates that the global market for public cloud services will reach a value of $266.4 billion in 2020, as adoption of cloud-based services for both software and infrastructure continue to grow. The consensus now states that it is no longer question of “if” a shift to cloud should be executed, but rather a question of “when” it should happen (if it has not already). As such, companies are increasingly focusing their efforts on formulating strategies and roadmaps for the inevitable shift that promises benefits such as cost savings, increased speed and flexibility, improved innovation, and evergreen IT, amongst other. In such a scenario, we ask ourselves, do companies expect the right benefits enabled by cloud?

It is no longer news that the rapid development and increasing maturity of technology in recent years have impacted all industries and redefined how business is made. However, many companies are still struggling with how to make use of this new technology, be it to innovate new products, create new business models, generate new revenue streams, ensure operational efficiency or simply just keep up with competition. This article deals with what should be (but isn’t always) considered an important part of the foundation, or the core, of a digital business, namely the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Without this “digital core” in place, innovation efforts tend to become more cumbersome and eventually risk becoming futile. Regardless of how mature your digital core is today, a proper ERP strategy is always a key component of your organization’s strategic plans to be able support the business tomorrow.

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, many strict guidelines have been placed in order to prevent infection risk in the workplace. We now have a work situation few are prepared for and that will cause major challenges for the continuity and progress.

A high-performing procurement unit is a strategic differentiator in project-based industries characterized by high procurement costs and low profit margins. This is especially true for sectors such as real estate and construction, where the cost of procured goods and services typically comprises between 60 and 80 percent of all costs.

Businesses are realizing that the right placement of people and processes is a strategic differentiator. Applying a balanced mix of outsourced, offshored, and nearshored business functions can yield significant advantages to a company, both in terms of quality and cost. Indeed, Knowit is currently supporting a large Norwegian enterprise in their location- and shoring decision with focus on achieving a much more vigorous operating model while at the same time realizing significant cost-out effects.

In this article we guide you through the fundamentals of rightshoring and present a helpful tool that can be used for identifying the right location mix for your business functions.

We believe that it is just a matter of time until the expertise and capabilities typically held within “traditional” IT departments are fully integrated into the various business functions, leaving IT departments significantly slimmer both in terms of scope and staff in the future. The IT department as we used to know it is probably soon nothing but a memory. Here’s why…

What do Lean Budgeting, Lean Systems Design, Agile development, DevOps, Release on Demand, Business Agility, Trust, Lean Portfolio Management, Learning Organisation have in common other than being buzz words, and off course really valuable techniques for running a development organisation?

In a society in which people, companies and things are becoming increasingly connected, it is more critical than ever that we nurture relationships and truly understand what drives customer satisfaction; after all, keeping customers is both enjoyable and profitable. Without insight into our customers’ current and future needs and expectations, we also risk offering solutions that fail to create value. This not only applies to customers; it also applies to employees.

HR leaders are starting to gain a greater responsibility of the strategic development in their organizations. However, HR departments are often constrained by a heavy manual administrative burden despite great possibilities of digitization and automation. Therefore, Knowit Insight present the capability mapping methodology as a first step in sorting out how you can lead your HR department into the future.

Digitalization and a fast-changing world place great demands on companies today. The future belongs to those who become quicker, more innovative and flexible and can meet the changing needs of the customers. As competition becomes tougher and conditions change, new solutions are needed at an accelerating pace. Projects are initiated with good ambitions and a desire for higher productivity, better profitability, more satisfied employees and increased ability to meet the needs of the market. However, do you feel that the impacts that the project would give do not materialize? You are not alone.

At Knowit, we often meet customers whose projects have stopped at being just projects. The desired impacts that the project would give do not materialize, the question is: why?

Changing circumstances creates need of renewal
The technology development and digitalization are changing the face of the society. Frequent technology breakthroughs in combination with new driving forces creates continuous changing societal circumstances and new patterns of living. To stay relevant in these times, organizations need to renew themselves on a continuous basis. In our understanding, organizations can be viewed as organizers of value creation, thus organizations must find new ways to create value for their customers. Today, it is an absolute must to incorporate a digital business model to be able to provide customers with valuable digital experiences. Therefore, it is essential to rethink the business model and its mechanics to increase digital exploitation and improve value creation for customers.

Hierarchical organizational structures are becoming outdated
Early management theories and leadership frameworks were developed during the industrial revolution when organizations continuously grew larger and larger, which required structure. At the time this structure came in the form of a hierarchy with multiple layers of managers to control different organizational units and employees. Today, this type of hierarchy and structure is still in place in many organizations, where managers control its subordinates by telling them what to do and where decision-making is concentrated to managerial positions.

Is there a challenge related to having too much data? One, among many, interesting findings pointed out in one of the reports emerging from Knowit Insight’s ongoing collaboration with KTH (The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm) suggests that this is the case. 

On Tuesday, it became public that Hydro had suffered from a major cyber security attack – probably the largest in Norwegian history. In this blog post, I will explain the background, what we know today and some lessons learned.

Creating and deploying entertainment content are – among many media industry practices – experiencing rapid changes due to technical advancements within data analytics. The trend challenge conventional business and operating models since such analytics can translate into value through great customer insights^[1]. Traditional content creation and distribution are therefore experiencing a surge in competition for customers’ attention and entertainment content consumption. Thus, maintaining high levels of reward and low levels of risks when creating content directly correlate with how media companies can attract customers and accurately predict the type of content they desire^[2]. Our experience indicate that technical platforms are increasingly acknowledged and used, but the lack of full adoption by the organization impedes its full potential.

What if I told you that you could save 5% of your total project budget by leveraging what you are hopefully already doing? Is it easy? No! (things worth doing rarely are!) Is it impossible? Definitely not! I will prove it to you through a simple calculation.

Having been a part of the area of strength Project & Quality Management at Knowit Insight for almost a year, there is much to be proud of, as well as a lot to look forward to in 2019.

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) is PMI’s flagship publication and a fundamental resource for effective project management in any industry. It has been updated to reflect the latest good practices in project management.

In today’s digital society, organizations face new challenges, which place high demands on innovation capacity, flexibility, and speed. Technology advances rapidly and the level of complexity increases. Products and services evolve – cars are now being designed to drive us, rather than the other way around. In our view, quality is more important than before. Many organizations adopt agile methods to meet these challenges. But do agile work methods necessarily lead to improved quality?

In October, Knowit Insight’s Business Design team hosted their first event with the newly established practitioner network focusing on human-centered design and its many applications within business and organizational development. The goal of this network is to create an open space for sharing experiences and learn from each other’s efforts within human-centered design.