Digital Twin Example 3: The Enterprise Digital Twin

It’s easy to think of Industry 4.0 as a technology-led initiative, but the goal is to boost customer value and operational efficiency. Using digital twins with various applications and capabilities can help you achieve this. In this 3-part series, we look at different digital twin examples to give you a clear idea of what they do and how they drive real business value.

We’ve already looked at the asset digital twin and 3 types of operational process twins. In the final article in this series, we delve into the enterprise digital twin. This sits on top of your operational processes and assets to help drive digital transformation.

What is an enterprise digital twin?

Enterprise digital twins are designed to give managers more control over the processes and resources that allow the business to function. Their objective is to capture the holistic operating model for control and management purposes.

Gartner put it succinctly, describing it as “a business operating system that uses a digital representation of the business operational model to guide planning for how to execute digital business transformation.”

How an enterprise digital twin adds value

Enterprise digital twins should be used to take control of your business.

Organisations use them to coordinate the critical interdependencies between resources (people, processes and technology) so that they can understand, manage and optimise complex processes. For example, they’re useful when performance is inconsistent but the root causes are either unknown or too challenging to resolve. Or you need to understand how changes are impacting the customer experience.

If you’re spending more time managing exceptions than planning strategic improvements – or if risk levels are blocking transformational action – then the enterprise digital twin can help.

Start by asking the right questions

Digital twins are proven to de-risk decision-making, as demonstrated in our customer case studies. The key to success? Being clear on the business value the twin must deliver.

From the outset, you must understand the opportunities that exist in your organisational context. As with any technology deployment, this means considering your strategic goals and performance improvement ambitions before you focus on digitising specific processes or assets.

That way you can use twins to help stakeholders understand and appreciate the benefits of change – and ensures your digitisation plans have the certainty required for implementation success.

Learn more about how to maximise value from digital twins

Download our Executive Briefing – Industry 4.0: Demystifying Digital Twins:

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