How trust accelerates transformation

“Trust is not something you can bolt on. It has to be designed in from the outset,” said Marco Vernocchi, EY Global Chief Data Officer. Trusted Intelligence embeds trust in a tangible way that embraces behaviors, processes, business models and outcomes as data moves through technology and the organization — accelerating transformation and the creation of long-term value.

Trusted Intelligence in action: the Xbox ecosystem

With thousands of developers, publishers, authors, designers, production houses and distributors, Microsoft’s Xbox gaming platform is a complex ecosystem of relationships. Collaboration across this ecosystem is key to producing a high-quality product that attracts the best talent and satisfies consumers – but Microsoft recognized there were points of friction that needed to be addressed.

A multitude of manual processes and siloed systems meant that developers and publishers couldn’t link complex calculations for royalties to the underlying data. As a result, they had to spend time and resources reconciling, validating and tracing back the transactions, then recalculating royalties to verify accuracy. Distributors found it difficult to reconcile data from different sources.

To cut through complexity and increase trust in the data, Microsoft and the EY organization partnered to co-develop the solution. The result was the first blockchain-based financial system of records for processing end-to-end royalty transactions, from contract creation through to integration with SAP for payments. The blockchain solution provides near real-time access to authentic trusted transactions data from source systems to game publishers, who can click and drill-down from transactions to source contract terms agreed with Microsoft.

The upshot? Publishers can access information on royalties earned in just 4 minutes instead of 45 days after month end. Royalties administration costs have been slashed. Increased trust in the royalties intelligence has given the ecosystem greater visibility of the underlying data. Microsoft benefits from faster, more efficient processes and lower operational costs.

With trust, everything moves more smoothly. Collaboration is easier. Innovation drives value. Technology can be deployed at speed.

Accelerated transformation

While digital transformation was well underway prior to the pandemic, COVID-19 stepped up the pace. In a recent EY webcast on the impact of COVID-19 on customer experience with nearly 2000 participants, 82% said they were accelerating digital transformation.

This confirms what we’re experiencing with our clients in the market. We know that those achieving radical and exponential value creation are responding to three key drivers:

• The ability to put humans at the center of what they do: When it comes to customers, value creators have shifted their orientation from “How do we get more customers to buy what we make or do?” to “How do we give customers more of what they want?” This change in mindset is backed by truly engaged employees who feel motivated and energized by their company’s purpose.  
• Deploying technology at speed: In other words, moving at the speed that today’s customers and employees expect and demand. This means automation through AI and other intelligent technologies, as well as cloud-based services. It means using agile methodologies and technology that helps you respond to dynamic conditions.
• Innovating at scale: Organizations need to innovate on two levels – survival today and success tomorrow. It’s like a muscle that needs to be continuously flexed. Collaboration is the name of the game, for example through leveraging ecosystems of partnerships and alliances. To turn innovative ideas into value that is embraced by customers, citizens, markets and societies, it has to be built using large volumes of data, intelligent technologies and cloud infrastructure that are trusted.

Each of these drivers is amplified by Trusted Intelligence. Embedding trust into data is how data links to value, and how organizations can reduce trust gaps and accelerate their digital transformation.