Traditional business models lack real-time insights. Digital twins act as a virtual replica, providing a 360-degree view to optimize processes, reduce costs, improve customer experience, and boost workforce productivity. Learn how this technology is revolutionizing businesses.
Imagine you're on a road trip. You've got your snacks, your favorite playlist, and a printed map.
Yes, a map made of paper, not your phone's GPS. Feels kind of outdated, right?
Many businesses today operate like drivers clinging to outdated paper maps in a world of dynamic GPS navigation. They rely on static process models that can't keep pace with the ever-changing complexities of modern business. This lack of a clear picture of real-world processes is a major reason why so many business transformations end in frustration and failure.
Paper Maps are unable to detect traffic jams, identify detours, or suggest faster routes, while a GPS can offer updates in real-time, giving you all the optimum guidance you need to move along your journey.
A Digital Twin acts as a real-time GPS for your entire business, providing a digital replica of operations, technology, and people.
Gartner predicts that by 2027, over 40% of major global corporations will leverage digital twin technology alongside Web3 and AR Cloud in their projects. This surge in adoption underscores the immense potential of digital twins to unlock significant revenue growth.
Let's unpack why!
A Digital Twin is a digitized version of something real, such as systems, processes, and people. It uses live data to mimic and study how real things work and perform.
Digital Twins allow enterprises to simulate, analyze, and optimize their operations in a virtual space, mirroring every aspect of the business processes to uncover insights and predict outcomes before implementing changes in the real world.
Imagine trying to improve any business process that is no longer linear – something as challenging as landing an airplane in foggy conditions. It’s dangerous and complex; the pilot needs to take various factors like altitude, wind conditions, terrain, runway length, visibility, and gradient into account.
Similarly, improving any business process involves navigating through factors like process efficiency, delivery times, unit costing, resource utilization, skills gap, automation possibilities, and much more.
Just as instruments give pilots vital insights to navigate the complexities of flight, a Digital Twin offers enterprise leaders a 360-degree view of their operations to assist them effectively in any business process transformation.
For example, a leading energy and utilities company saved $1.14M annually by creating a digital twin of their enterprise and partnering with Skan. Skan helped them pinpoint a critical 30-minute variance in task completion times and identified high-consumption tasks in core applications. With recommendations on a balanced workload distribution and automation for routine activities, the customer was able to further streamline their Accounts Receivable process. This strategic shift not only enhanced productivity but also cemented substantial cost savings.
Data-driven insights merely hint at the strategic value of deploying a digital twin within an organization. Delving deeper, let's discuss why it is essential for enterprise leaders to understand digital twin technology.
You’re an enterprise leader; you’ve got this massive, intricate beast of operations that's as clear as mud.
It’s your "Operations Black Box."
You know what you’re feeding it and what you’re getting out, but what happens inside? It’s only as accurate as anyone’s guess.
And, as your company grows through geographical expansions, product launches, or even mergers and acquisitions, understanding the inner workings becomes even more challenging.
This ‘Operations Black Box’ becomes more like a Rubik’s Cube, with each color representing different customer segments, geographies, and product lines.
Your team is in the thick of it, pulling data from various sources and trying to make sense of it all. Yet, much of their effort is consumed in coordination and navigating mountains of information, making it difficult to gauge exactly what employees are doing.
This struggle to map processes accurately is what hampers real operational transformation. Amidst this complexity, operational costs inflate, and the capacity to scale becomes muddled, leading to unfavorable outcomes.
Here, the Digital Twin acts as the master key, adeptly solving the Rubik's cube of business complexities. It brings essential clarity to the forefront, enabling informed decisions, streamlining processes, and elevating the customer experience.
The cherry on top is the ability to test the hypothesis in a virtual environment without disrupting live operations. Allowing you to dissect and refine your processes in a low-risk, virtual environment.
This breakthrough slices through the complexity like a knife, offering a level of strategic oversight that was previously unattainable.
Whether it’s the pursuit of achieving operational excellence, reducing costs, boosting revenue, or improving any other aspect of business, digital twins have actionable insights to offer.
NASA pioneered the use of digital twin technology in the 1960s during its space missions. It built exact replicas of its spacecraft on Earth, allowing its teams to study and run simulations, providing crucial support to astronauts on their space missions.
Digital twins have evolved from space exploration to a key player in driving improvements in various business metrics across manufacturing, automation, and construction. For instance, Boeing, an aerospace market leader, has improved the quality and safety of its airplane components by 40% by leveraging digital twins.
The good news is that with the advent of AI and Gen AI, it’s now possible to create digital twins of enterprises that operate in non-factory-like settings, like the ones where most of the work is done by employees on their computers, such as banking, insurance, high tech and many more.
With that in mind, let’s look at three compelling use cases of a digital twin:
Ideally, as an enterprise leader, you want to minimize the high-cost processes and drive up the volume of lower-cost processes to increase profits. However, as you would agree, it's extremely challenging to identify the unit cost of the processes due to the complex web of human-system and human-human interactions.
But, a Digital Twin can accurately map the core business processes end-to-end, providing you with full visibility into unit costs.
For instance, in an insurance company, a Digital Twin can analyze sub-processes like customer correspondence and claims analytics by tracking various metrics like the volume of information processed, time taken, mouse clicks, keyboard events, and more.
It can then suggest what percentage of processes can be automated using Gen AI, along with the metrics on its accuracy and impact.
The best customer experience is a smooth ride—every touchpoint strengthens loyalty and trust. But the real world throws in bumps like inconsistent service, long waits, and scattered interactions, making this smooth ride a bit of a bumpy one, risking customer satisfaction.
Spotting what makes your customer tick can put you leagues ahead of the competition. By diving into their needs, pain points, and likes, you're in a prime position to boost their experience.
By creating a Digital Twin of your business processes, it's no longer a rough journey.
In an ideal world, every employee would be a productivity powerhouse. Yet, reality shows us a wide range of productivity levels among team members, shaped by their skills, workflows, and other factors.
Identifying what makes your top performer a top performer can be a game-changer. By understanding their methods, skills, and knowledge, you can provide actionable ways for the rest of the team to level up.
Additionally, analyzing a Digital Twin of your operations can help you identify automation possibilities in employee workflows to save them from mundane, repetitive tasks, thus reducing burn out. Automation allows them to focus their efforts on more meaningful work, further improving their productivity.
For example, a top insurance company enhanced underwriting productivity by 30% through a detailed analysis of its team's activities. The company pinpointed inefficiencies and variability in tasks across different groups and redesigned its Standard Operating Procedures(SOPs) to eliminate unnecessary work.
Skan is the key to unlocking the hidden potential within your organization. We go beyond traditional process models, providing a real-time, comprehensive view of your entire business ecosystem.
Opting for Skan means shining a light into the 'Black Box' of operations. It's about making every part of your core processes visible, diagnosing issues with precision, and tracking the impact of changes on outcomes.
Skan understands the importance of data privacy. That's why we offer a solution that prioritizes security. Processing occurs entirely on-premise within your secure environment, guaranteeing compliance with stringent data privacy regulations like GDPR.
For Enterprise Trailblazers who seek to navigate and disrupt their industries, don't settle for a paper map. Let's leverage the power of digital twin technology as your real-time GPS, guiding you on a transformative journey to operational excellence.
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