Running a business during normal times is already stressful; ensuring its continuity during a polycrisis is an even greater challenge that requires careful re-evaluation of current processes, organisational culture, and workforce planning, rather than simply upgrading the IT infrastructure.
How should businesses address issues that did not exist pre-crisis, set new priorities, meet evolving customer demands, and explore new opportunities? To effectively devise a business continuity plan, consider these five questions.
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5 questions all leaders should ask themselves and their teams now:
- Can you weather the storm with the current business strategies and processes?
- How do you empower your workforce to become more flexible to cope with unexpected events, especially when they are working remotely?
- How can you help your clients navigate turbulent weather while ensuring service excellence?
- How can your back office enhance its performance and become more agile?
- How can you protect your business’ most valuable digital assets as well as sensitive client information?
Can you weather the storm with the current business strategies and processes?
Fluctuating oil prices, a novel government response, constantly changing regulatory requirements, an expanding pool of remote workers, etc., all these trends force companies to become more agile to respond to any disruption.
When the events of the pandemic unfolded, it became painfully clear that those adopting agile digital strategies rebounded faster and achieved a more stable position than those that lacked adaptability.
Agile organisations empower their teams to operate in rapid learning and decision-making cycles. The approach gives those closest to the information the right to make decisions, rather than the vertical decision-making hierarchy in traditional organisations.
But first, leaders need to have on hand some forms of analytics tools to generate relevant and timely insights. Undoubtedly, high-quality insights go hand in hand with high responsiveness and agility.
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The pressures that businesses encounter today are unprecedented. Enhancing agility yields a myriad of benefits, from shortening time-to-market to increasing collaboration, improving customer satisfaction, and delivering higher quality products and services.
Adopting agility at scale requires commitment from top management, as it involves changing organisational infrastructure. Organisations can begin by prioritising functions that must become more agile first – sales, marketing, client service, or project delivery.
By identifying teams that need transformation, cultivating an agile culture, establishing clear goals for everyone to work towards, and providing employees with the tools to respond to evolving client demands, organisations are more likely to move forward during uncertain times.
How do you empower your workforce to become more flexible to cope with unexpected events, especially when they are working remotely?
Working from home is already a trend that has gained significant recognition in the corporate world in recent years. However, for most corporations, working remotely is more of a “nice to have” perk than part of the company’s DNA.
Workforce management and development plans were initially built with the brick-and-mortar office in mind. Thus, when the entire workforce shifts to a virtual setting, it is only natural that the upgraded strategy is not thoughtful enough, and teams immediately run into issues surrounding:
- Communication and collaboration
- Personal interruptions (i.e., family members, pets)
- Technical support
- Continuing critical processes and workflows
- Connectivity and access to business systems
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Successful remote-friendly businesses redefine their talent management strategies, develop new performance metrics, and provide their valuable talent with adequate resources to minimise disruptions.
Leaders should revise the current organisational culture, structure, policies, and even the roles and positions of individuals to identify potential barriers to agility and innovative problem-solving.
- The culture: the legacy visions, beliefs, and behaviours might no longer be suitable for the new normal, thus requiring leaders to justify their goals. This means redefining how work is accomplished, developing new performance metrics, and evaluating alternatives to work hours and more.
- The people: remote work calls for unique skill sets, attitudes, and qualifications. Additionally, there are processes that must be performed on-premises, making remote work impossible for employees in these positions. Therefore, not only do organisations have toselect the right talent that fits the company’s culture and can cope with today’s chaotic environment, but they also have to reassess the business model and existing job functions to eliminate those that no longer fit.
- The technology: the shift in the workforce calls for new technologies to help enable, empower, and engage your employees. Companies that recognise and address the changing expectations of the modern workforce and the benefits new technologies can offer will be better able to navigate uncharted waters.
How can you help your clients navigate turbulent weather while ensuring service excellence?
Just as companies struggle to remain profitable as they navigate the bumpy road ahead, clients are also facing similar operational disruptions and unpredictable market conditions. Consequently, as companies’ expectations and priorities shifted, the clients’ needs and demands also evolved drastically.
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Now more than ever, companies must maintain trust with clients and continue to deliver quality solutions to help them unlock new opportunities despite constrained budgets. In other words, to operate effectively today, organisations need to reimagine the customer journey and incorporate innovative approaches to deliver services and engage customers remotely.
There is no better time to invest in artificial intelligence, analytics, and other client-centric technologies to understand customers’ changing behaviours and interaction patterns and deliver these insights to client relationship management specialists. More importantly, suitable analytical capabilities can help to create more personalised (and less transactional) client experiences while demonstrating that businesses understand clients’ new pain points.
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How can your back office enhance its performance and become more agile?
It is crucial to prioritise back-office performance as it directly impacts financial results. Technology plays a critical role in optimising new back-office practices, namely by streamlining processes, automating manual activities (e.g., invoice issuance and approvals), increasing data visibility, and improving planning and forecasting.
Accounting is one of the core departments that can greatly benefit from advanced technology. The function is known for endless repetitive tasks, mountains of worksheets, and time-consuming manual handoffs, especially when staff must consolidate information across intercompany or multiple, disparate business systems. Reporting, auditing, and compliance should be automated, and automation is key to reducing data errors and silos, improving efficiency, and ensuring business continuity.
How can you protect your business’ most valuable digital assets as well as sensitive client information?
The number of cyberattacks and security breaches has surged significantly in recent years. As organisations strive to become more resilient with an increasingly dispersed workforce, it is critical to protect their digital assets as well.
Employees access internal information and client-related data from home and, in some cases, use their personal devices. This puts pressure on chief information security officers and cybersecurity teams to implement top-notch preventive and defensive measures while keeping daily operations undisturbed.
However, transitioning from legacy, on-premises solutions to more remote-friendly ones is a daunting task at the moment, not to mention expensive and time-consuming.
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Cybersecurity and governance are crucial and deserve to be recognised as top priorities. Staff at every level needs to be educated about the importance, risks, and possible defence mechanisms to avoid potential attacks. Top management should address data security issues before incidents occur.
Let’s also not forget that security can be found in the cloud. Organisations that adopted cloud-based solutions have been navigating through this turbulent time with much fewer disruptions. And they continue to discover new opportunities, gain holistic flexibility and witness seamless collaboration despite being physically apart.
In times of crisis, the ability to rebound quickly, acknowledge changing weather and evolving market demands, and thus respond swiftly with suitable solutions keeps businesses ahead of the curve. No one can yet give a definite answer as to how long the recovery will last. Organisations must be unprecedentedly agile to cope with unexpected events.
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