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How adidas Used DPA to Succeed in Their Digital Transformation

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Implementing a DPA solution often seems a mountain to climb, especially if we believe the analysts who claim that 70% of all digital transformation projects fail. That’s why it’s so interesting to see how adidas succeeded their digital transformation project.

Building DPA projects from the bottom-up reduces the perceived implementation risks and helps users to reap the benefits fast. This is exemplified by adidas – whose blueprint ‘Think Big, Start Small and Advance Quickly’ underpinned their Gold winning success at the WfMC BPM Awards. Here are 5 top tips to digital transformation success:

 

Tip 1: Pick projects with a powerful punch

It may sound obvious, but cherry-picking those areas that adversely affect the most people especially across different business units is the quickest pathway to impact.

For adidas’s digital transformation, it was managing supplier on-boarding (4 months reduced to 40 days) and Supply Chain Management (5,000 purchase order changes per month).

 

Tip 2: Put BPM on the fast track

Projects selected, you need to act fast. 12 months? Two years? Forget it. Long implementation cycles and design by committee will lose you kudos quickly; each project at adidas was cleverly scoped to deliver results in a matter of 2 to 4 months.

 

Tip 3: Get business and IT engaged from the start

Instead of using Word or Visio, adidas encouraged business and IT to use the Bizagi modelling environment from day one. The effect was pretty impressive: project phases were executed in parallel (not sequenced), collaboration came naturally as business and IT found one communication language, the language of process; all injecting agility into every stage of the project.

 

Tip 4: Don’t undermine the ‘change’ factor – educate, communicate and listen

Understandably, users may see DPA as a threat to their existing systems so it’s important to be upfront from the start. By explaining that DPA is your ‘superglue’ that purely connects and ‘fills the gaps’, adidas was able to more easily handle objections and create a ‘pull together’ mindshare.

 

Tip 5: Establish a central team

Last but certainly not least, employ cross-functional advocates to champion the above. This team can help create a culture of sharing, re-use and ensure that the ‘bigger picture’ is in place which will be key to your long-term success and fast returns.

Owing the success to the vision and determination of the workflow team, adidas completed seven projects in less than two years while further 16 are under development; these processes deliver automation across various departments including supply chain, marketing, finance, retail and eCommerce, bringing multi-functional teams together.

The Supply Chain Management and Help Desk projects connect and improve the collaboration between 500 sales operations and 400 factories globally and yet both projects were delivered in less than three months.

If you would like to learn more about how adidas are using Bizagi, watch our webinar, ‘How Does adidas Automate and Integrate Digital Operations?’