Digital Twin technology is essential for strategising process transformations and overseeing operations within UK enterprises. The capability to simulate and replicate business processes has become immensely sought-after by UK business leaders who seek to mitigate risks, optimise performance, and achieve business outcomes.
69% of UK businesses claim to already use Digital Twin technology to inform their business planning, with 22% planning to introduce Digital Twin technology into their business over the coming years. Gartner analysts expect the market for Digital Twin technology to reach $183 billion in revenue by 2031.
In simple terms, a Digital Twin is a virtual representation of a physical object. This has evolved to encompass business processes, allowing Digital Twins to scale up and mirror entire organisations. This technology facilitates the creation of reliable simulations, enabling the evaluation of diverse scenarios and their impact on company processes and performance. By replicating processes or the entire enterprise in real-time, Digital Twins provide valuable insights into performance, efficiency, and forthcoming challenges.
By leveraging these insights, businesses can make well-informed decisions and determine the most advantageous courses of action, including process redesign and capacity management.
Digital Twins in the enterprise
Enterprises are now embracing Digital Twin technology beyond physical systems, and with Business Process Simulation (BPS), organisations can create Digital Twins of their processes that scale up to their entire organisation.
Through the development of Digital Twins utilising real-time data from all departments, businesses can harness forward-looking analytics via ‘what if’ scenario planning. This empowers them to monitor processes, anticipate future challenges, and make tactical decisions. For instance, BPS can be used to test and optimise peak and low-volume capacity, enhancing customer satisfaction while reducing handling times.
To navigate an uncertain economic environment, it becomes crucial to employ sophisticated simulation models that offer valuable insights. This includes insights into how current fluctuations in variables like capacity and demand will shape future business outcomes. By analysing this information and integrating it with a Digital Twin, organisations can establish a direct link between present-day process changes and their influence on vital commercial performance indicators (I.e., KPIs). This assessment enables them to determine whether the intended process changes will lead to the desired outcomes.
Additionally, BPS can optimise the performance of the delivery process. By creating a Digital Twin of a process, BPS can simulate the consequences of decisions like headcount reduction. Through these simulations, enterprises can evaluate changes suggested by process mining, assess their future impact, and determine their influence on commercial KPIs. The significance of BPS lies in its capacity to measure the effects of process modifications on essential commercial outcomes.
The advancement of Digital Twin technology
Looking ahead, Digital Twin technology is poised to revolutionise how we plan and manage complex organisations. Decision-makers will reduce their reliance on traditional “gut instincts” and “human intuition” in boardrooms and regularly leverage forward-looking simulations and scenario analytics to optimise business outcomes.
Leveraging Digital Twin technology for critical decisions offers a significant competitive edge, especially in today’s market. Through simulations, insights gained virtually can be applied to the real world, enabling enterprises to adapt and respond to changing conditions. In a swiftly changing landscape, maintaining agility becomes crucial to uphold a competitive edge.
