Have you experienced or heard of anything similar to these anecdotes? “Tesla can’t figure out how to manage its glass inventory and replacements” or “I was abroad and had to give Uber my credit card number again!” or “My banking mobile app is not approving my online train ticket that was purchased on the web with my credit card.” I’ve definitely experienced the last two, and I don’t own a Tesla but can certainly relate to the experience that a friend of mine in the Bay Area had.

What’s going on? Simply, your core system’s supply chain, vendor management, core banking, and finance management processes represent the elephants in the room. They are providing a poor customer experience to users and partners and are slowing your transformation, giving you an illusion of a digital experience. So what do you do? The agility you might have achieved in building new systems of engagement on mobile and other channels needs to scale all along your end-to-end customer journeys, from front to back. Your core systems of record also need to be modernized, not left behind. But it’s also about modernizing how you work with more Agile, not less; Agile is by no means out of fashion — it needs to be done better and deeper. Spotify’s Agile approach can act as an inspiration in this regard; check out part 1 and part 2 of these videos, and download this research for more details.

At the Digital Transformation & Innovation Europe 2019 Forum in London on June 4 and 5, my keynote will be about how digital accelerations need a reenergizing injection of tech-driven fuel, starting from the core, while continuing the hard work on customer experience.

In addition, I will be holding a panel with three key clients that have undertaken such a journey. The discussion will be around 360-degree modernization — how do you do it?

We will talk about how you need to modernize people, organization processes, and technologies from front to back. For people, it means defining what type of new culture you aspire to be to move faster and deliver better, both on systems of record as well as systems of engagement. For organization, we need to break up team silos built on the core systems to be more dynamic and support more agility. For technology, it means moving to cloud, automating more, modernizing the core step by step, and finally, for process, it means replacing process with practices inspired by an Agile culture. Organizations might not be doing all of this at once; most have started by attacking the front end and then hit the wall of old legacy back-end systems or siloed packages that kill customer experience.

Come, listen, and ask questions to three customers with good and bad experiences that we can all learn from.

Hope to see you in London! These are only two of the insightful presentations and discussions that will take place. Make sure you don’t miss our Forum.