Top OPEX trends in North America
Uncover the insights of NA-based senior PEX professionals that help inform OPEX trends
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PEX Network’s annual, global state-of-the-industry survey gathers the insights of a range of process excellence (PEX) industry experts, to offer a view of how PEX has evolved over the past 12 months and shed light on how it promises to develop.
Ahead of the release of The PEX Report 2023: Global State of Process Excellence, we take a look at some of the key findings from the survey specific to North America (NA), offering suggestions for why we are observing these results today.
There is a focus on grassroots transformation
A total of 28 percent of survey respondents highlighted bottom-up, grassroots transformation that focuses on continuous improvement as the overall transformation strategy being employed by their organizations.
Grassroots transformation means that the primary driver for change in an organization comes from its employees who are its largest and arguably most powerful element.
This accounts for 10 percent more than the two transformation structures which tied for second place, which were top-down transformation and transformation that takes place at the unit or department level (18 percent each).
Change management is the primary solution supporting OPEX initiatives
The top solution being deployed by survey respondents to support their OPEX initiatives is change management, picked by 42 percent of them.
Effective change is an enabler of successful transformation. If change can be embedded into a company’s culture in a continuous and scalable way, this can serve as effective transformation and drive OPEX in the long term.
This ties in with the first finding of this survey. If a change leader is seeking to implement major transformation across their organization, it makes sense to onboard the people who will be implementing that change in to the initiative from the get-go. They are much more likely to live this change and enforce it on a daily basis, making the process of improvement continuous and scalable.
Related content: Managing change during uncertainty
Digital transformation is the main solution invested in
The primary solution businesses will be looking to invest in over the next 12 months is digital transformation, according to almost half of the survey respondents (47 percent). Digital transformation can be seen an overarching concept that includes all three of the next most popular solutions for investment that were data analytics and business intelligence (36 percent), AI (33 percent) and workflow automation (33 percent).
Related content: Using intelligent process automation to build business resiliency
It appears that business intelligence, AI and workflow automation are the primary vehicles that will get organizations where they want in their digital transformation journey.
Another solution that can help organizations digitize quickly is low- and no-code. While only eight percent of respondents claim to already have a full low-code platform in place, more than half of the PEX experts (58 percent) declared intentions for some level of investment into low- and no-code solutions over the next 12 months and beyond.
Have you noticed any of these trends taking shape in your own organization? Let us know in the comments below.
