COVID-19 is forcing organizations to rapidly operate in new ways, and their resilience is being tested more than ever. Many countries are successfully flattening the curve, but even if we are able to fight the coronavirus pandemic and maintain continuity, its reverberating effects are likely to change how we do business for many years to come. To help accelerate response to the changes, I’ve identified five key areas to consider as we emerge into the new normal.
- Accelerate moving to the cloud
The effort to maintain operations during COVID-19 puts cloud computing at center stage, and organizations that have delayed making the move in the past will need to rapidly skill-up in response to challenges to their business model. Digitally agile firms are adapting to the ongoing crisis more successfully, and it is highly likely that we will see a new cloud-first model become the standard: it allows for scalability, reliability and distribution across zones and regions. For the larger enterprises, the move to SAP S/4 HANA will take on a heightened focus as they look to accelerate their cloud ERP migrations. This shift to the cloud was always inevitable, but the pandemic has proven to be a live-fire stress test of many initiatives that were still in the process of being rolled out.
- Reducing physical assets in your value chain
At the very start of the lockdown almost any process that could be rapidly digitized went virtual, such as video conferencing, document signing and electronic trading. This digitization will continue with a reduction in physical assets, which lack the flexibility and scalability that businesses need to survive this pandemic and any future disruption. Resilience will become the new buzzword as we look to reduce reliance on single points of failure. A digitized value chain strengthens capabilities in risk management, achieving greater visibility and coordination across the supply chain, and managing growing product complexity. IoT technology can also represent a huge change in how businesses organize and digitize their assets, offering real-time analysis of performance, trends, equipment status and historical data for optimum insights.
- Re-configure your supply chain
COVID-19 has driven home the need to reduce global supply chain vulnerabilities – the disadvantages of a system that requires all of its elements to work ‘just in time’ have now been exposed. Traditional structures are often optimized for cost and are not always equipped to cope with the unplanned disruptions and demands that lockdowns put on business. Organizations must re-configure their supply chains away from being rigid and linear to operating within agile, networked ecosystems. For flexible and resilient supply chains, enterprises should focus on building intelligence-based capabilities to help them prepare for, sense and respond to future disruptive events. While no one can foresee what’s in store for tomorrow, we can work on building a smarter global supply chain that uses technologies like AI, automation and IoT to better forecast and make decisions on future trends.
- Move to a hybrid work model
Even when this lockdown eases, controls may be lifted for short periods of time and reinstated intermittently to ensure that the healthcare system can cope with demand, making the remote working footprint part of ‘business as usual’. To prepare for future lockdowns, organizations must understand what response has worked with the current lockdown and retain it, as well as evaluating areas of weakness and improving or replacing them. Rather than looking at office vs. remote working, leaders will seek to find the best of both worlds, creating more flexible hybrid models of co-located and distributed work. These new work practices will prove their worth in multiple ways, from increased resilience to better utilization of real estate, and, in the future, businesses will mark their success with greater checks on overheads and lower capital outlays.
- Prepare for a post-COVID workplace
We don’t know what the future workplace will look like, but it is possible to consider the lessons of the past to think constructively about the future of the post-COVID world. Smart and emerging technology will penetrate our workforce, with AR and VR offering huge applications in delivering immersive learning content. I expect the traditional business structure, built on layers of management and hierarchy, will flatten, as trust and empowerment become more important than command and control. We may see an accelerated movement towards the gig economy as organizations question the need to hire full-time employees. Finally, the pandemic could give business leaders a broader mandate for sustainability; if ever there was a time for companies to demonstrate their commitment to the prosperity of their employees by addressing inequality in the business model, it is now.
Decisions made during this crisis may lead to greater innovation and productivity, and more resilient industries rising to the top of their markets. But the myriad challenges caused by the pandemic shows that companies will have to quickly adapt and flex their traditional business models to prosper.
Andrew Duncan
Partner & UK Country Head
Andrew is a life-long consultant with a very successful and diverse background, having served in MD or CEO roles for several technology and services companies. Andrew has over 25 years of technology leadership experience at an executive level, with a strong client background in the consumer, financial and professional services sectors. He’s lived and worked in Europe and North America and has built high-performing teams that have consistently achieved double-digit revenue growth. Andrew possesses a proven track record in the delivery of large-scale operations and technology transformation agendas across the B2C and B2B space. Andrew has also participated in numerous speaking roles over his career, most recently for Private Equity International, as well as the Business Forum at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
