Business Agility in tough times — Business Continuity (Part 3)
It has been validated through several reports that the Economic impact caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic is going to be like no other crisis the Industries have faced in the past several decades. While some Businesses are still struggling, some have been Agile enough to be able to respond efficiently. This multi-part series of articles provides insights into how Business Agility plays an important role in these tough times, how the market landscape is changing, and suggestions on the core areas of Business Agility in a neutral format not specific to Industry or Technology.
In Part 2 of this series, we looked deeper into the first focus areas of Business Agility — Customer Centricity, as well as suggestions on some immediate action items. In this part, we cover details on the second focus area — Business Continuity, and suggested actions for Organizations.
Business Continuity
The adverse financial impacts of the ongoing crisis have turned the balance sheets of most businesses upside down. With most business forecasts severely challenged and showing negative growth, it has become harder than ever for businesses to survive. Some of the most impacted industries are Travel, Hospitality and Entertainment, among many others. While there is no success formula that can be implemented in this case, Business Agility plays a big role here to survive in the market.
Some critical areas that the Businesses should consider as a response are:
- Innovative business solutions: Business Continuity is not just limited to alternative methods of being able to provide business services. Agile Businesses are able to spin up new business models or Products in a short span of time to ensure business continuity and delivery of services. This may include usage of a combination of Humans + Bots, remote work environment wherever the job allows etc. Hospitals providing video conferencing based Specialist Consultation services is a classic example. Uber in India has deployed a fleet of their vehicles to facilitate movement of Healthcare workers in collaboration with the Administration and Hospitals.
- Rethink Disasters: Disasters may not always be related with an earthquake, fire, or flooding etc. Organizations typically rely on geographically distributed Data Centers and associated expensive setups for data sync and testing on a regular basis. However, health related disasters are usually not as detailed in those plans, even missing altogether in most cases.
Although Disaster Recovery plans will take time to revamp, immediate steps will be to ramp up remote work connectivity and load testing, rope in alternative suppliers from different locations, contract workforce from available locations and validate Business operations — to name a few. The learnings from here will form the basis of longer term Disaster Plan updates.
- Business processes with supporting Operating Model: Financial institutions, for example, have very rigid and regulated Business Processes. Although FinTech has come a long way where Digital Platforms have provided significant advantages to businesses in the Customer facing Products. However, there are still several back-end processes that are heavy, tedious, long, needing multiple approvals travelling bureaucratic paths which may need overhauling with a Lean Mindset.
Additionally, the Operating Model in practice at an Organization has to be flexible enough to support alternative Business processes within a quick turn-around time. Hierarchical models perform worst in such cases, whereas Product based organizations with Lean processes are focused on the outcomes and tuned towards being responsive.
“The structure of an organization’s collaborative network has significant impact on its ability to produce emergent [innovative] results and ultimately on its very ability to adapt. ”
- Highsmith J., 2000, ThoughtWorks
The tactical partnership between China based movie maker Huanxi Media Group and ByteDance is a great example of how Business Agility can help in such difficult times. In January 2020, Huanxi group had a significant risk of losing huge money invested in a new year themed Movie scheduled to be released near Chinese New Year. However, due to the Pandemic, Theaters were closed challenging all business plans. Huanxi and ByteDance (parent company behind TikTok with huge online presence and Infrastructure) were able to strike a deal within 24 hours of meeting, and the Movie was released 2 days after on the ByteDance platforms nationwide providing a new year themed Movie to millions of viewers during the Lockdown.
Lean organizations have very little to no “Organizational Baggage” due to the highly optimized Operating Model. Due to this, they hardly have anything to trim down and are therefore able to respond much faster to challenging market conditions.
In the next part of the series, (Part 4 — coming soon), we will take a closer look at the third focus area in details — Employee Focus.
