To date, Digital Twins have predominantly been used for high-value projects involving physically large structures or mechanically complex systems commonly used in manufacturing and in space. While these are valuable use cases, the applications of Digital Twins can go far beyond these examples to have a much greater impact on society.

Incorporating Digital Twins into an enterprise’s non-physical systems is now possible thanks to past innovations. By utilising Business Process Simulation (BPS), organisations can create Digital Twins of an entire enterprise. This brings several key commercial benefits, such as greater speed and frequency of advanced scenario planning, and improved alignment of commercial and financial objectives.

Enterprises can generate forward-looking analytics through scenario planning using 'what if’ scenarios by creating a large-scale Digital Twin based on real-time metrics generated by all departments. Monitoring processes and predicting upcoming challenges enables enterprises to make strategic decisions and take proactive measures. Having seen their simulated outcomes within a Digital Twin, an organisation can then execute these changes – or not - in the real world.

As part of the analysis stage of BPS, 'what if' scenarios are evaluated to identify where challenges may arise in the future. As a result, BPS can ensure resources are focused on process adjustments that will resolve upcoming issues. By connecting various processes across teams and departments and connecting them to business outcomes, it can determine how changes throughout the enterprise may affect its processes and ultimately business objectives. Digital Twins can help determine how prospective changes will impact each step in the process - The user is not limited to historical values or statistical distributions when creating such scenarios.

BPS can assess if additional process adjustments are needed to accomplish goals by identifying variations between intended and achieved outcomes over time. Process experts can then act throughout the deployment to enhance outcomes and client and customer satisfaction. 

A further benefit of BPS is the ability to accurately forecast margins and identify how they could be increased. A margin forecast is crucial to guarantee that the correct funding is available without leaving unnecessarily large buffers. Enterprises can make dynamic margin forecasts by building an end-to-end Digital Twin that gives a single view of margin on a product-by-product basis.  

For example, Digital Twins can be used for order-to-cash process processes. By using BPS twins, enterprises can identify where automation and digitisation of a process is required and most impactful. They ensure that an enterprise maximises the ROI of order-to-cash and ensure that cost, effort, and lead times are minimised. Digitising and automating order-to-cash process can provide a substantial competitive advantage such as improved cost-effectiveness. With time spent on laborious administrative tasks decreased and reallocated to more value-added tasks, business efficiency is increased.

Digital Twins will undoubtedly continue to transform aerospace and manufacturing in 2023 and beyond. However, Digital Twin technology will also further unlock our ability to plan and manage the complex organisations that are crucial for our continued economic progress within wider sectors, including those in financial services, telecommunications and manufacturing.

The next generation of decision-makers will routinely use forward-looking simulations and scenario analytics to plan and optimise their business outcomes. This year we will see a Digital Twin created for every complex enterprise.