Is your technology ready for the new digital reality?

For today's businesses, the only certainty is uncertainty. There is an urgent need for resilience and digital capabilities. Businesses must be able to respond to sudden and dramatic changes. 

Expectations for businesses, employees, and consumers changed suddenly. What will it take to compete going forward? Three elements are discussed here - a relentless focus on outcomes that matter, new ways of working, and savvy use of digital and technology. 

Digitally mature companies embrace all these principles. They are what are called bionic companies, blending human and technological capabilities to achieve superior outcomes. These companies spark innovation, efficiency, and growth. They have better visibility into their businesses and quickly make radical changes that crisis demand. In short, they are resilient companies.

Companies who have undertaken digital transformations have realized the limits as the crisis has pushed the digital channels and home working to its extreme. For all their plans, they are not yet as data-driven, customer focussed, and agile as they need to be. They have not yet fully embraced advanced analytics and AI as critical capabilities for adopting new trends.

To help companies prepare for the new reality and develop necessary resiliency the following approach that centers on four key imperatives need to be considered - ensure business continuity, reset investment portfolio, future proof tech function, and build adaptable digital and data platforms. 

In a crisis, a business must quickly answer some critical questions - what is selling, how do we interact with customers, what are the trouble spots in the supply chain, how do we support employees working from home. Leaders need to focus their efforts appropriately if they are to navigate the crisis. That means rethinking your approach to technology and to transformation - prioritizing actions to tackle your immediate needs, prepare for recovery, and build a new foundation for advantage in adversity.

Ensure business continuity

Technology plays a major role in keeping things running during a crisis. Think along two tracks - prioritizing a rapid response to the crisis in hand and fast-tracking initiatives that will help sustain business continuity. 

The rapid response would ensure employee safety, identify gaps and fixes. technology is proving to be a critical lifeline in efforts to solve operational issues. Business leaders should work with IT to accelerate the assessment and implementation of technology to improve and sustain key business processes.

Reset the investment portfolio

Crisis leads to a change in business needs once the immediate needs of business continuity are taken care of. Financial pressure forces companies to reduce resources and accelerate value creation. These may seem at odds with each other but a smart can mitigate the impact of the crisis and lay the foundation for a faster, more successful recovery.

A proper analysis of four groups of projects, as listed below, should be carried out quickly to identify what to focus on. 

• Digital Projects: many projects do not deliver value. Other projects originated in a business environment that no longer exists. These are the prime candidates for the reallocation of resources to more critical projects. 
• Long term projects to replace legacy platforms: These should be reviewed carefully. Projects near completion should continue. Other projects should be checked for the real business value it promises to deliver and if the value creation can be accelerated. 
• Projects that enable workspace of the future: These projects should be allowed to be completed, consolidated where possible to accelerate the value creation. 
• Business-critical projects:  Examine the projects from a strategic point of view. If it is critical, continue them. Regulatory projects have to continue but non-regulatory projects and consider if they need to be continued.

A project portfolio pruning as it will improve the cash flow with resources saved from halted/ scaled back projects. Prioritizing value-added projects sets the stage for near term recovery and long term gains.

Future proof tech function: Resilience is about how you work and what skills you can draw upon. The key is to make adjustments as precisely as possible using a three-pronged approach - pivot, accelerated, and stop.

• Pivot - Build off your existing talent plans to emphasize future-ready capabilities. Sourcing and location are two important factors to be leveraged. 
• Accelerate - Accelerate the build key skills, capacities, and efficiencies. In addition to insourcing critical expertise and hiring top talent, expedite training and upskilling. Find the right blend of hiring and developing employees.
• Stop - Some things need to stop. many of the indirect work becomes redundant with the work from home being implemented. By drawing a complete listing of current roles, you can zero in on activities you can eliminate. 

Build scalable and adaptable data and digital platform: 

By fostering agility and data-driven decision making, you gain immediate visibility and insight into your customers and processes. You can respond faster to evolving situations. Follow these principles - incrementally and pragmatically accelerate data use, build a robust data layer, and modernize your platform ith targeted investments.

Crisis work on their schedule, are relentless, sowing disruption, and uncertainty in its path. Resilience is a business necessity fueled by digital capabilities. Uncertainty will remain long after the crisis has passed but we can be ready for it and react quickly and flexibly to whatever conditions arise.

IS YOUR TECHNOLOGY READY FOR THE NEW DIGITAL REALITY?

By Karalee Close, Michael Grebe, Marc Schuuring, Benjamin Rehberg, and Matthew Leybold BCG June2020