Building Business Resilience
Following the unforeseen events of 2020, businesses are questioning their resiliency as they move forward. Lindsey Benaissa, Business Analyst Lead at Storm explores below how digital transformation is a key factor in building resilience for the future.
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Organisations are still working to recover and adjust following the unexpected events of 2020. While many had some form of a business continuity plan, the pandemic was an unexpected scenario that no plan thoroughly accounted for with many being forced to adapt almost overnight.
This led many business leaders to reconsider all aspects of their organisation and question their resiliency as a business. One common observation shared by many was just how much businesses relied heavily on technologies to continue throughout the pandemic. While some had the challenge of quickly rolling out a new technology to support new ways of working, other organisations already using this technology had a more seamless transition.
What is Business Resilience?
Business resilience is often understood as an organisation’s capacity to deal with stress, thrive in altered circumstances and recover or adapt critical business functionality. Resilience is about more than just bouncing back from a particular crisis, it also means moving forward into a new reality. According to a BCG study, a resilient company is regarded as one that responds immediately to safeguard itself from an exigency, recovers from adversity so that it’s in a situation to surpass its peers, and then reimagines the business to stay ahead in an ever-changing future.
Resilience is more important than ever as today’s business environment is becoming more unpredictable. From the continuing evolution of technology to greater global connections and an increase in awareness of global issues such as climate change and the risk of new disease outbreak.
How Digital Transformation Builds Resilience
The buzzword digital transformation has been a topic of conversation between business leaders for some time. Even before the Covid-19 crisis, many organisations were struggling to keep up with the pace of technological change and the new expectations of a more digitally savvy customer base. This challenge was only further accelerated by the pandemic forcing organisations to accelerate their digitisation. In fact, a recent Comcast Business Survey showed that nearly one-third of companies (31%) would have never implemented the technologies they did if not for the pandemic, with 23% projecting it would have taken them one to three years to realise such changes otherwise. In a very short space of time, the move to digital went from a useful tool to a critical part of business strategy.
The pandemic showed that the future of work will be more digital than previously imagined. It has also highlighted that the organisations that not only survived but also thrived were those who were already largely digitally transformed. The Covid-19 crisis showed many businesses that digital technologies will form a critical part of business resilience tomorrow.
Looking to the future, organisations are looking to continue their digital transformation and build business resilience to build a foundation for growth that ensures they can succeed even in unexpected circumstances.
Want to learn more? Register for our webinar 'Building Business Resilience & Preparing for the Future of Work' on the 25th May at 10:00 am.
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