Evergreen Enterprises Need Evergreen Operations

Imagine the garden of a thriving, evergreen enterprise. You will find hydrated vines connecting people with their processes and technologies. You will find an ecosystem of supportive platforms, all fed by shared resources, all striving towards a common goal. You will find sprouts of innovation constantly taking root and expanding what’s possible. So, what is causing such luscious growth? Data. By designing systems and processes that constantly source and refresh new data, companies flourish through every season. Becoming evergreen is about adaptation. It means looking beyond your legacy business and competitors and imagining how AI and data can transform what you do and how you do it.

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1. Cultivate data as an investible asset. The data you have about customers, your business, and your markets is a critical asset. But it needs to be accurate. In a time of constant change, having accurate data that will keep up with the pace is central to a productive workflow. It also needs to be clean, united, and accessible. That’s why it’s imperative to invest in ongoing management of data. It’s about not just having a home for your data but also cultivating and activating  it to see what’s possible for your business. It’s all about re-imagining and reinventing ways to continuously improve your data. 
2. Partner your people with your AI. Business demands have gotten more complex in nature, calling for personalized customer experiences across various channels. You need capabilities such as real-time management of supply chains, adaptable platforms for employee collaboration, and the ability to identify and self-heal data without manual intervention. It’s too much for people alone to design, manage, and optimize. That’s why today’s enterprise needs to weave AI and automation into the business core, to expand the ability of people to deliver mission critical outcomes. Done strategically and efficiently, this can help employees reimagine their personal capabilities and the way they work. 
3. Continuously improve. The cloud has brought methods like agile and DevOps into widespread adoption—not just by IT but also across a range of businesses. These methods allow you to have a constant cycle of improvements. In turn, you can keep your business functions in motion while responding to realities as they emerge. Agility is critical in how you develop applications and manage your data itself. New sources of data can influence the quality of it – and if not proactively managed, can turn fresh data into stale data. Implementing processes that combat this are critical. This means providing incentives that encourage people to integrate new technologies and processes into their work, as well as designing business processes that automatically self-improve. 
4. Break down the office barriers. Across offices and functions, businesses are leveraging data, AI and machine learning in different ways.

Customer service chatbots use natural language processing implementation in one way whereas order management systems have another. An enterprise that is evergreen, is an enterprise that is connected. So, what does this mean? Your NLP capabilities, for example, should be connected in ways that give everyone who interacts with them a consistent, positive experience. If every part of the business – not just one – benefits, your business as a whole becomes stronger. When every part of the business is leveraging AI capabilities, that are connected, businesses show up as a unified, successful front. 

5. Scale to accelerate. When you see an opportunity for breakthrough diversity in data, you need the resources to help you scale and stay competitive. That said, it is key to be strategic and realistic about what you can accomplish. Today’s talent market means hiring isn’t enough, and the constant shifting of opportunities means that the employees and tools you need to build one capability are rarely the same needed for the next. Today, the core of a digital enterprise is an as-a-service relationship. Usage-based, outcome-focused services can help get you where you need to go quickly with the flexibility to expand or contract the relationship based on your needs.