If you believe in the saying, “The best time to prepare for a disaster is before it strikes,” (it’s also why we have Disaster Recovery Plans), then you likely should also believe the best time to prepare for recovery is when we are still in the middle of the crisis.
Regardless of how and when the pandemic and its related economic turmoil ends, it’s highly unlikely that everything will just go back to the pre-COVID’s “business as usual.” As a result of such permanent shifts, there are key areas of business recovery and continuity organisation leaders should be evaluating.
When the COVID-19 hit, digital transformation was still no more than a buzzword for many organisations. Now, it’s the top of pretty much everyone’s wish list.
Given the current economic climate, it is unrealistic to pursue every fancy digital transformation initiative with all the bells and whistles. There must be some priority. But what should it be?
I believe digital agility is key to business continuity and recovery during and post-crisis. An agile organisation can think, make decisions, and act exceedingly fast. It can function beyond the departmental boundaries of a traditional hierarchical organisation.
The concept behind the agile organisation is not something new. The challenge is how to put it into practice. This is where going digital and hence Digital Transformation is absolutely necessary.
With the right digital tools and processes, organisations can rapidly create virtual teams whose members can be drawn from any department, and any corner of the globe. They can be full-time employees, contractors, interns, and outsiders.
These teams are characterised by data-driven decision-making, self-learning, and self-improvement cycles. Consequently, an agile organisation can be much more, well, agile. That is, it can shorten time-to-market, deliver products and services of higher quality, and increase both client and employee satisfaction.
In the spirit of agility, you may want to apply the agile approach to a few selected aspects of your operations first before going all out across the entire organisation.
Going agile is not a one-off project but requires a consistent effort. And it can only be sustained by strong support from the top management, coupled with changes in not only the technology but also organisational culture, people, and processes.
With that being said, having the right digital technologies in key areas is a prerequisite for an agile organisation to be successful.
In a post-COVID world, the first key area is technologies that can facilitate a remote, virtual workforce, such as collaborative tools and automated workflow software.
As TRG and many of our clients and partners have demonstrated, going virtual, even 100% virtual, is not only possible but also effective and sustainable. What you need are a remote workforce and a digital strategy. Sounds simple enough. But of course, as always, the devil is in the detail.
Remote working, in my opinion, is among the “Business As UnUsual” #BAUU activities that will eventually transform into “business as usual” in the post-COVID new normal.
Several months into the pandemic and its subsequent social distancing measures, organisations and employees have, for the most part, adjusted to #BAUU and found ways to maintain productivity from home.
When (if?) this is all over, will employees welcome the return of the physical office? Or will they resist the transition back to what was once considered the norm?
If we continue to perform tasks efficiently and effectively despite being geographically dispersed, who is to say that remote work will not become the norm in the foreseeable future? And an agile organisation, by nature, will empower your remote workforce. I personally am embracing the agile and virtual way of working and it is now our modus operandi.
In addition to that, the pandemic has proved how crucial disaster recovery planning is, and how devastating a lack thereof has been. As a result, increasing your business resilience and minimising disruptions to daily operations is another critical area where digital technologies can make a difference.
Another key area of digital agility is generating more insight to drive data-based decision making. Data analytics’ 1,300% ROI just seems too good to pass up, but there are some caveats. You need to identify the right use cases and ensure data quality. These are the often-overlooked aspects of data management.
Before you can think of analytics, machine learning, or A.I., there needs to be enterprise data management, data lake, data cleansing and compliance, and so on. Agile decision making would not be possible without a solid foundation of high-quality data sources.
The world’s economy is not out of the woods yet. That’s a given. But don’t get discouraged as Jack Canfield once said, “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” To get you started on your digital transformation journey, we have a series of webinars dedicated specifically to this subject, called TRG Talk Virtual: Digital Transformation, where all participants can obtain hands-on advice from experienced professionals. Check out what we have in store for you and register today.