CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Arun Kumar, Head of Product at Altimetrik
- Can you provide an overview of Altimetrik’s Digital Business Methodology and its core principles?
Altimetrik’s Digital Business Methodology (DBM) is a business-led, outcome-driven incremental approach that focuses on delivering results with speed and scale. Central to this approach is the emphasis on creating concise business use cases, simplification of end-to-end workflows, data-driven decision-making, smart interfaces and interactions leveraging GenAI and enablement of consumer-centric experiences. DBM enables collaboration among key stakeholders – including business teams, engineers, data scientists, analysts and operations teams – to drive tangible business outcomes.
The core principles of Altimetrik’s DBM revolve around achieving business outcomes through continuous innovation and incremental initiatives rather than large-scale technical transformations. In this regard, it differs significantly from traditional digital transformation efforts that often prioritize technology as the ultimate solution. DBM emphasizes intelligent data usage to enhance decision-making while prioritizing simplification and collaboration across all levels of operations. Additionally, DBM adopts a product engineering strategy that focuses on developing a Single Source of Truth (SSOT) and centralization of core data assets, thereby ensuring efficiency and sustainability in digital business initiatives.
2. How does DBM differ from traditional digital transformation approaches?
DBM adopts a strategic and holistic business-led approach, differing from traditional methods that typically emphasize extensive technological implementations to improve customer experiences and operational efficiencies. It advocates for the seamless use of advanced digital assets to foster agility, streamline workflows, and enable data-driven decision-making. This ensures that digital initiatives are not isolated projects but cohesive efforts that drive overall business outcomes, including innovation, cost optimization, and enhanced satisfaction.
In contrast to traditional digital transformation, which may involve disruptive, all-encompassing changes, DBM promotes incremental progress through flexible processes. It focuses on continuous improvement and adaptation, leveraging a structured framework that includes establishing a Single Source of Truth (SSOT) and robust governance frameworks. This ensures consistency, reliability, and compliance across digital initiatives while mitigating risks associated with data integrity and security. Maintaining the distinction between “digital business enablement” and digital transformation, DBM aligns technological investments closely with strategic business objectives. This strategic alignment optimizes operations, unlocks new revenue streams, and improves customer engagement through personalized experiences and optimized interactions. Ultimately, DBM provides organizations with a sustainable pathway to navigate in the evolving digital landscape, setting them apart with a blend of agility, strategic foresight, and customer-centric innovation.
3. Can you share examples of businesses that have successfully implemented a goal-aligned roadmap using DBM?
A renowned chocolatier was grappling with the challenges of transitioning from artisanal craftsmanship to factory manufacturing. Its sales plans failed to seamlessly synchronize with demand forecasts and supply plans. Poor visibility into product expiry dates left the chocolatier susceptible to business disruptions. Technology barriers and extensive usage of Excel spreadsheets caused further friction-points and manual hand-offs between sales, demand, purchase and supply functions.
Collaborating closely with the chocolatier’s business teams, Altimetrik embarked on a business use-case driven incremental approach that simplified workflows and fostered collaboration. Every aspect of the chocolatier’s supply chain business underwent meticulous scrutiny. Adoption of DBM resulted in the establishment of a Master Data foundation with an accurate and reliable product master, and an SSOT that harmonized transactional data from various systems. The business underwent a 20% reduction in decision cycle times, optimized logistics operations by 30% and benefited from enhanced supply chain efficiencies.
Another example of a successful implementation of DBM is at a global chemicals company that struggled in integrating several acquisitions over the years. A rapidly expanding product line, 35+ silo-ed ERP applications and significant overlaps in customer base posed challenges to sales partners in upsell and cross-sell situations.
Working with business and technology teams, Altimetrik’s practitioner-led DBM approach helped define end goals, identify bite-sized business outcomes, clarify the way-forward via a commercial excellence roadmap, and built revenue growth motions for sales partners in managing their opportunity pipeline. Use of machine learning and Generative AI on the underlying SSOT enabled new upsell and cross-sell actions, thereby driving revenue growth. Our partnership with the client enabled over 900 opportunities valued at nearly $550 mn USD to be generated for its Top 25 customers, and all sales insights were generated in under 6 seconds via an intuitive dashboard.
4. What are some common mistakes businesses make when adopting digital technologies? How does DBM help in mitigating these risks?
Common mistakes include focusing on long-term objectives without delivering tangible short to medium-term outcomes, extensive focus on the technology solution to be built, and failing to properly evaluate the current state of their platforms. Businesses race to invest in high-end technical solutions that are modern and top-notch without charting out a proper course to extract value. This often results in projects dragging on with numerous unknowns and potential obstacles. Moreover, long-term projects can lead to employee and stakeholder fatigue, causing disengagement and reduced commitment to work overtime. Resistance to change and a lack of stakeholder involvement throughout the transformation process further impede success. Businesses also struggle with a lack of a holistic approach, which prevents them from effectively responding to rapid technological advancements and changing customer expectations.
Our approach mitigates these risks by promoting a comprehensive, incremental approach to digital adoption. DBM emphasizes delivering bite-sized outcomes that drive rapid growth, ensuring that projects produce tangible short to medium-term results. By fostering a business-led agile digital culture and integrating technology seamlessly with business processes and people, DBM helps organizations make strategic technology choices and evaluate their current platforms effectively. The methodology encourages continuous stakeholder involvement and addresses resistance to change, maintaining high levels of engagement and commitment.
5. In what ways does DBM help maximize digital investments and ensure a high return on investment?
DBM helps maximize digital investments and ensure a high return on investment by focusing on delivering tangible business outcomes through incremental, manageable steps. This approach mitigates the risks associated with large-scale projects by emphasizing short to medium-term results, thereby avoiding the pitfalls of lengthy initiatives that often face stakeholder fatigue and disengagement. DBM leverages intelligent data use for smarter decision-making and promotes a collaborative culture that integrates technology with business processes. By adopting a product engineering approach, DBM creates reusable digital assets, ensuring efficiency and scalability. This methodology ensures alignment with business goals, enhancing agility, and optimizing costs, ultimately driving sustained growth and higher ROI.
6. What future trends do you foresee in the IT industry, and how is Altimetrik prepared to address these trends with DBM?
One trend that I foresee in the near-term is a pivot by businesses towards customer value creation and customer value capture for every digital and data initiative they undertake. Simply put, I anticipate business leaders to ask what value is being created through the adoption of technology, and how would this adoption help in capturing value from their customers. Our DBM approach, with its focus on incremental, bite-sized business use cases, puts the end-customer firmly front and center of the proposed initiative and measures value through this lens. DBM also helps business leaders to develop a roadmap that prioritizes initiatives based on business value and ease of implementation that align with their strategic goals.
Second, AI assimilation in general, and Generative AI in particular, will occur at scale. This will be very different from the foundational challenges witnessed today, with enterprises still grappling with the complexities of harnessing data from disparate sources. DBM’s focus in establishing a solid data foundation prior to diving into advanced AI applications will be beneficial. DBM will also facilitate the adoption of best-in-class cloud-based data platforms to create and manage data assets efficiently, thereby ensuring consistency and compliance.
Lastly, I anticipate that organizational silos between business and technology teams to blur. Co-creation requires active collaboration among business, data, analytics and data science practitioners, and organizational boundaries that cause friction in this partnership are bound to be removed. In any new future organizational construct – and there are bound to be several – DBM’s focus on simplification, collaboration and agility will continue to drive value and stay relevant.
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