Enterprises worldwide are entering an era of accelerated innovation by abandoning legacy on-premise processes for cloud-based agility and embracing the business benefits of a truly connected enterprise. This begins by understanding what an effective organisation is, adopting a cloud platform, unifying data, and embracing agile strategies.
What is an effective organisation?
To address what’s behind a truly effective organisation, Accenture’s UKI Tech Transformation Unit Lead Richard James sat down with Atlassian for the session Charting A Visionary Course for the Connected Enterprise in 2024.
According to James, an effective organisation has “achieved a high level of integration and coordination across its various teams, systems, data, and processes to create a cohesive and agile environment that can respond to market changes and customer needs with speed and flexibility.”
7 key traits of an effective organisation
Alignment and Collaboration Across Teams
An organisationʻs workforce will be best positioned to drive highly-prioritized business outcomes when they can do three things together, effectively:
- Align on goals → When goals are measurable, agreed to, and visible, alignment flows across teams.
- Plan and track work → When everyone has a shared understanding of the who, what, when, and why behind work, progress is inevitable.
- Unleash knowledge → Knowledge is everywhere, yet nowhere. When individuals can build, share and harness their collective knowledge, they can achieve collective growth.
Unified Systems and Processes
The organisation leverages a unified system of work that connects teams horizontally and allows for vertical alignment through tools like Jira Align. Teams can also prevent silos across Dev, IT Ops, and Business Teams while reliably delivering excellent service experiences to customers and employees alike through the Jira Service Management platform in tandem with other Atlassian tools which all sit on a unified set of data and with complete visibility. This system supports connections across various teams and vertical connections that align goals, strategy, execution, and outcomes.
Visibility and Transparency
In an effective organisation, tools like Jira provide visibility and clarity into all teamwork across the organisation and how it continues to organisational outcomes. Reporting and insights are emphasised, with all data unified in one place and built on a common data model. Tools like Confluence and its AI search features centralise information into a single discoverable workspace across all data sources. Other features like the OKR hub in Jira Align confirm that each employee is working toward the enterprise’s strategic goals.
Adaptability and Resilience
These organisations are designed to be resilient and adaptive, capable of responding efficiently to external pressures and internal challenges. They are strategically positioned for transformation and can aim their energy at external pressures rather than spending time and resources fixing internal bugs and challenges.
Strategic Use of Technology
The organisation leverages a platform that connects all these teams horizontally and allows for vertical alignment. The platform is extensible, enabling integration with the tools teams need, and is built securely and compliantly to meet enterprise requirements. Tools like Atlassian Guard offer a zero-trust approach to data protection ensuring that your next big delivery is protected from idea to launch,
Continuous Improvement and Innovation
Effective organisations foster a culture of continuous improvement and innovation, where teams are encouraged to experiment and learn. They strike a balance between control and flexibility, standardising processes where necessary while allowing teams the freedom to work in ways that are tailored to their skills, preferences, and optimised workflows. Successful organisations make sure to focus on elevating DevEx by offering Dev-tailored tools hosted on a unified data set to deliver better work faster.
Focus on Value Delivery
The enterprise measures and understands the value delivered from strategy through execution. It focuses on delivering outcomes that align with the organisation’s strategic objectives. 76% of executives estimate that their teams are not focused on mission-critical work; an effective organisation prevents this by leveraging tools such as Jira, Jira Product Discovery with Confluence, Loom, Jira Align, and other Cloud-only features.
The journey to becoming an effective organisation in 3 steps
According to Accenture’s Richard James, in this economy, risks are everywhere, so for organizations early in their transformation journey, responsiveness is everything. Early on, organisations need to focus on responsiveness through agility while also harnessing tools that offer wide visibility to the enterprise.
To maximise value from tech investments in the current economic client, James sees three steps to an effective organisation:
- Connect the enterprise on cloud
- Enable modern ways of working
- Reposition for growth
A connected enterprise is the key to competitive advantage
Richard James, UKI Tech Transformation Unit Lead, Accenture
The true value of cloud
The driving factor for the rise in enterprise-level organisations adopting SaaS is the sheer value in time savings. By migrating to the cloud, your business no longer has to worry about on-premise expenses or the all-hands-on-deck nature of server downtimes. Additionally, integrable apps and features on a unified platform prevent silos created by proprietary tools, saving considerable time upfront.
In the webinar, The Connected Enterprise on Cloud, Forrester Analyst Tracy Woo states “The upside is considerable, taking this pressure away from hosting, managing, and maintaining software and hardware – it shouldn’t be your job”
In 2023, Forrester found that 42% of enterprise software decision-makers have increased their use of SaaS over on-premise-based software.
How cloud saves enterprises on technology costs
A migration to the cloud might not be a walk in the park, but in contrast to older migration strategies and support systems or the cost of setting up your own on-premise architecture, one could say it’s close. The initial costs of a migration pale in comparison to that of building a server room, let alone maintaining it. Without operational costs absorbing the budget, organisations that complete their migration find a swift ROI.
Having both tools and teams on a unified cloud platform speeds up work much faster than when operating on-premise. IT operations no longer have to chase down specific vendors or teams, nor do they have to sink time into Snowflake instances. With easy-to-access data, organisations can confirm that they are remaining compliant in an accelerated manner.
Greater business value on cloud
Many organisations struggle to find their approach to technical debt avoidance. For example, when a business deals with a bloated application portfolio containing unsupportable versions of software, the amount of work it would take to untangle the mess across teams becomes a heavy lift. However, on a centralised platform with seamless marketplace integrations, businesses no longer have to devote time to strategising their technical debt avoidance.
That’s the great thing about these much larger SaaS platforms, is that they have this whole ecosystem of connected apps and platforms that make it easier for you to fill in those specific gaps”
Tracy Woo, Senior Analyst, Forrester
Atlassian Cloud customer: Sun Life
Part of Sun Life’s 150-year success relies on its motivation to remain future-fit. According to Cynthia Brind’Amour, Sun Life’s Technical Product Owner for Confluence Cloud, “In 2021, when we started our digital transformation and adoption of Agile methodologies, we needed the tools to help us get there.”
By working with solutions partner Adaptavist, Brind’Amour and team were able to create a sandbox environment and transition their organization efficiently. Through Confluence, they were able to enhance accessibility, leading to less duplicate work across teams. This resulted in measurable wins such as:
- 80% time savings from Confluence within ten months of implementation
- $250,000 in savings
- 97% satisfaction score from an internal user survey
You got to move with the times, and the time is cloud, and then when you’re in there, you keep moving forward with everything that’s coming.”
Cynthia Brind’Amour, Technical Product Owner for Confluence Cloud, Sun Life
Atlassian Cloud customer: Clearwater Analytics
A hyper-modern fintech enterprise, Clearwater Analytics manages over $6 trillion in global assets. According to their Process Engineer, Erica Larson, Clearwater Analytics had been struggling with managing backend issues and needed a way to free up IT resources while streamlining teamwork. With Atlassian’s ironclad security, Larson finally saw the cloud as an opportunity as she saw that the “competitive writing was on the wall.”
Larson’s team decided to partner with HyperVelocity to help smooth out their migration as internal bandwidth was limited at the time with Larson managing a product launch. Through this partnership, Clearwater Analytics was able to see instant cloud wins. And right away, Atlassian Intelligence was one tool that became a big favorite organisation-wide.
When Larson surveyed her teams to see how they were adapting to their software solutions, she found ample cases of disparate tools
- The inability to get teams the resources they need when they need it, or overall slow decision-making, is usually an indication of limited visibility
- Failed attempts at cross-functional collaboration and missing delivery deadlines are often caused by a lack of standardisation
- Lower product quality and other unpredicted roadblocks are usually symptoms of poor accessibility and underutilisation of data
They might be working alongside each other – they might even be working next to each other. Maybe they’re working 5 feet away from each other, but if they are not talking to each other, if they are not connected, if their operational processes and structures aren’t integrated, then they might as well be on opposite sides of the globe”
Tracy Woo, Senior Analyst, Forrester
Based on Forrester’s analysis, leaders should monitor:
- Lack of communication between teams
- Work that’s not completely in alignment with the larger team or organization’s goals
- Teams that seem to deliver work at a slower pace than others
- Poorly integrated tech stacks
- Completely isolated and disparate operational styles
What Atlassian Cloud customers can expect
There are a lot of areas of cloud that five or six years ago people wouldn’t have used at all, and now it has completely changed to a newly evolved environment out there. And overall the future of work is changing, and cloud is where the industry is headed and these are where your top-notch tools are being created and developed. So, you don’t want to be left behind”
Tracy Woo, Senior Analyst, Forrester
Before the cloud, the roadblocks listed in the last section would be considered normal drawbacks of doing business. Fortunately, with Cloud, enterprises have an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage over industry peers who remain on-premise through:
Connected data provides complete visibility and alignment to shared goals enforced by data aggregated in one place under one model on a completely secure and trusted platform
Connected tools offer a unified system of work through one tech stack that can handle all teams’ specific needs including dev, IT, and business while also creating total visibility allowing teams to move faster and collaborate more easily
Connected teams allow integrated processes and teamwork practices with access to advisory services to ensure that all teams can speak in a common language
To put it simply, enterprises are together on the cloud… it becomes much, much easier when it is all on one consolidated platform in one consolidated environment”
Tracy Woo, Senior Analyst, Forrester
Forrester estimates that on average Atlassian Cloud customers:
- Save developers one day per week by automating tedious tasks and enabling better collaboration
- Experience 277% ROI after a four-month implementation period and a six-month payback period
- Accelerate productivity by 20%
According to one TechValidate survey, Atlassian users who migrated reported a 43% increase in the speed of quality code shipped.
Explore your migration options
Atlassian Cloud powers the effective enterprise. Unify tools, teams, and data on a single platform with a diverse, integrable toolset so that your teams can work in a way tailored to their abilities while continuing to stay aligned. As the cloud becomes the industry standard for remaining future-fit, contact a cloud migrations specialist to find the right strategy for keeping your teams and tools connected.
Connect your enterprise
For those of you who’ve already begun your transformation journey by migrating to Atlassian Cloud, take your next steps with our comprehensive suite of Cloud solutions. Whether it’s enhancing visibility and alignment with Jira Align, streamlining service delivery with Jira Service Management, or fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing with Confluence, we have the tools to support your journey. To learn more about how our Cloud solutions can help you plan, pivot, and deliver customer value, get in touch with our specialists today.