Why agility is vital to compete in the digital post-pandemic world
Knowing your market, having a tight rein on your costs and being able to twist and turn against every fluctuation in the business landscape will make the difference between surviving and thriving
Assaad El Saadi, regional director – Middle East, Pure Storage
With a vaccine already in circulation here, and many more on the way, it is reasonable to hope that recovery will soon be upon us. And relief is sorely needed. By one projection in July, by the IMF, real GDP for the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan (MENAP) would likely fall as much as 4.7 percent by the end of last year. Just three months earlier, the IMF projected a regional economic shrinkage of just 2.7 percent.
Business stakeholders in “start of the year planning mode” need to set aside the traditional resolutions of “more of the same” or error-fixing. The challenges ahead are thornier than ever before and even the most prepared of organisations have already been stung by the onslaught of empty malls and cautious customers.
There is no reason to believe that those strains will disappear overnight, even in the most optimistic recovery scenarios.
Learning lessons
2020 has shown that many businesses did not have their house in order. Leaders were caught off-guard by the digital transformation requirements of the pandemic, and many over-invested in short-term solutions, arguably at the expense of long-term flexibility and agility.
Sensible stakeholders must now take the preparedness lesson to heart; they must enter a new era of perpetual preparation. Disaster recovery used to mean having the right back-up solution in place. Not any more. Now enterprises must be capable of nothing less than total elasticity.
The scale of operations must be able to shrink or grow overnight as needed, and business models must be able to change shape entirely. Organisations will need a holistic view of where the pressure points in their organization are, so they can adapt supply chains to ensure minimal disruption.
For example, Emirates Catering — the subsidiary that provides inflight meals for the airline of the same name — responded to the upending of the commercial aviation sector by establishing FoodCraft, a business that delivers readymade food and ingredients across its native UAE. If you consider the possibility of a second wave, another pathogen or indeed any other circumstantial shock that leads to lockdowns, such a business model can endure.
The ‘graduates’ of 2020 will recognise that the longer-term solutions they put in place will need a greater emphasis on ensuring their organisations can remain agile and adapt to changing environments.
Zigging and zagging
Business models that cannot adapt to new necessities will collapse, and regionally there is evidence that the vast majority of workers expect to be given the option of working from home. Considering that employee satisfaction relates directly to productivity, and hence to competitiveness, businesses should gear up for technology infrastructures that can support these changes.
In general, decision makers realise that it is important to know when to zig and when to zag. But in the real world, especially following the experience of 2020, conditions can rightly be perceived as a lot more complex. Decisions on how to evolve are rarely a binary quandary of one direction or another. They involve an intricate mesh of budgetary and logistical factors with a tapestry of opinions and analyses, points and counterpoints with different stakeholders to please.
Serious contenders for longevity in the new normal must formalise how they will evolve into agile digital businesses. A transformation roadmap and crisis plan are vital. They must be designed and ratified by all stakeholders and outline the particulars — the “what”, “when” and “how” — of scaling.
One overarching element which isn’t going away is the importance of flexibility, especially from a budget point of view. The option to manage costs in a period when it may be difficult to predict ongoing requirements is critical. Being able to scale up and down depending on a business’ needs proved so important in 2020 and will continue in 2021.
While technology is the enabler and the cornerstone of any digital transformation, having a well-defined roadmap and clear goals is often the difference between success and failure of these initiatives.
Ahead of the curve
It is by no means trivial to liken a digitisation program to the building of a house. If the planning phase is the siting and digging, then the laying of foundations is surely the migration to the cloud. Cloud computing cuts costs; it adds flexibility and scalability; and it gives access to other vital tools that will be needed to implement well-conceived roadmaps.vThat being said, it’s important that leaders refrain from rushing to adopt a ‘cloud-first’ strategy, and instead opt for a ‘cloud-best’ approach.
As part of this cloud-best approach, leaders need to understand that technology is no longer part of an isolated delivery option, but should be folded into an all-encompassing strategy; including public and private cloud, on-premises enterprise systems, IoT edge, Software-as-a-Service and a variety of other solutions.
To deliver on this, they need a solution that unifies cloud and delivers a common set of data services across on-premises and cloud, enabling consistent storage capabilities, APIs, and resiliency so that applications can be built once and run anywhere. It’s therefore best that companies work closely with their IT vendors to remove the complexity of legacy IT infrastructure and facilitate a cloud-best approach.
The only broad stroke left, is to consider how the competitive business will know when to change. In the context of business agility, modern data analytics is an indispensable tool in the digital toolbox. The right solution, hosted in the cloud, can speed insights and empower enterprises to adapt to changes more quickly, as well as supporting the simplification of management and the improvement of decision-making.
It should be apparent to any savvy stakeholder that the world has changed. The ‘game’, while essentially the same (establish a winning customer experience, then get the word out through the right channels in the right format), has some new rules. Customers’ routines and attitudes have changed. They expect the companies they do business with to be more socially active and environmentally responsible. The logistics of delivery of physical goods has changed. People expect more bargains; their patience for errors is diminished. They will shop around.
Knowing your market, having a tight rein on your costs and being able to twist and turn against every fluctuation in the business landscape will make the difference between surviving and thriving. Your New Year’s resolution should now be clear: agility first.
Assaad El Saadi, regional director – Middle East, Pure Storage
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Why agility is vital to compete in the digital post-pandemic world
Knowing your market, having a tight rein on your costs and being able to twist and turn against every fluctuation in the business landscape will make the difference between surviving and thriving
Assaad El Saadi, regional director – Middle East, Pure Storage
With a vaccine already in circulation here, and many more on the way, it is reasonable to hope that recovery will soon be upon us. And relief is sorely needed. By one projection in July, by the IMF, real GDP for the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan (MENAP) would likely fall as much as 4.7 percent by the end of last year. Just three months earlier, the IMF projected a regional economic shrinkage of just 2.7 percent.
Business stakeholders in “start of the year planning mode” need to set aside the traditional resolutions of “more of the same” or error-fixing. The challenges ahead are thornier than ever before and even the most prepared of organisations have already been stung by the onslaught of empty malls and cautious customers.
There is no reason to believe that those strains will disappear overnight, even in the most optimistic recovery scenarios.
Learning lessons
2020 has shown that many businesses did not have their house in order. Leaders were caught off-guard by the digital transformation requirements of the pandemic, and many over-invested in short-term solutions, arguably at the expense of long-term flexibility and agility.
Sensible stakeholders must now take the preparedness lesson to heart; they must enter a new era of perpetual preparation. Disaster recovery used to mean having the right back-up solution in place. Not any more. Now enterprises must be capable of nothing less than total elasticity.
The scale of operations must be able to shrink or grow overnight as needed, and business models must be able to change shape entirely. Organisations will need a holistic view of where the pressure points in their organization are, so they can adapt supply chains to ensure minimal disruption.
For example, Emirates Catering — the subsidiary that provides inflight meals for the airline of the same name — responded to the upending of the commercial aviation sector by establishing FoodCraft, a business that delivers readymade food and ingredients across its native UAE. If you consider the possibility of a second wave, another pathogen or indeed any other circumstantial shock that leads to lockdowns, such a business model can endure.
The ‘graduates’ of 2020 will recognise that the longer-term solutions they put in place will need a greater emphasis on ensuring their organisations can remain agile and adapt to changing environments.
Zigging and zagging
Business models that cannot adapt to new necessities will collapse, and regionally there is evidence that the vast majority of workers expect to be given the option of working from home. Considering that employee satisfaction relates directly to productivity, and hence to competitiveness, businesses should gear up for technology infrastructures that can support these changes.
In general, decision makers realise that it is important to know when to zig and when to zag. But in the real world, especially following the experience of 2020, conditions can rightly be perceived as a lot more complex. Decisions on how to evolve are rarely a binary quandary of one direction or another. They involve an intricate mesh of budgetary and logistical factors with a tapestry of opinions and analyses, points and counterpoints with different stakeholders to please.
Serious contenders for longevity in the new normal must formalise how they will evolve into agile digital businesses. A transformation roadmap and crisis plan are vital. They must be designed and ratified by all stakeholders and outline the particulars — the “what”, “when” and “how” — of scaling.
One overarching element which isn’t going away is the importance of flexibility, especially from a budget point of view. The option to manage costs in a period when it may be difficult to predict ongoing requirements is critical. Being able to scale up and down depending on a business’ needs proved so important in 2020 and will continue in 2021.
While technology is the enabler and the cornerstone of any digital transformation, having a well-defined roadmap and clear goals is often the difference between success and failure of these initiatives.
Ahead of the curve
It is by no means trivial to liken a digitisation program to the building of a house. If the planning phase is the siting and digging, then the laying of foundations is surely the migration to the cloud. Cloud computing cuts costs; it adds flexibility and scalability; and it gives access to other vital tools that will be needed to implement well-conceived roadmaps.vThat being said, it’s important that leaders refrain from rushing to adopt a ‘cloud-first’ strategy, and instead opt for a ‘cloud-best’ approach.
As part of this cloud-best approach, leaders need to understand that technology is no longer part of an isolated delivery option, but should be folded into an all-encompassing strategy; including public and private cloud, on-premises enterprise systems, IoT edge, Software-as-a-Service and a variety of other solutions.
To deliver on this, they need a solution that unifies cloud and delivers a common set of data services across on-premises and cloud, enabling consistent storage capabilities, APIs, and resiliency so that applications can be built once and run anywhere. It’s therefore best that companies work closely with their IT vendors to remove the complexity of legacy IT infrastructure and facilitate a cloud-best approach.
The only broad stroke left, is to consider how the competitive business will know when to change. In the context of business agility, modern data analytics is an indispensable tool in the digital toolbox. The right solution, hosted in the cloud, can speed insights and empower enterprises to adapt to changes more quickly, as well as supporting the simplification of management and the improvement of decision-making.
It should be apparent to any savvy stakeholder that the world has changed. The ‘game’, while essentially the same (establish a winning customer experience, then get the word out through the right channels in the right format), has some new rules. Customers’ routines and attitudes have changed. They expect the companies they do business with to be more socially active and environmentally responsible. The logistics of delivery of physical goods has changed. People expect more bargains; their patience for errors is diminished. They will shop around.
Knowing your market, having a tight rein on your costs and being able to twist and turn against every fluctuation in the business landscape will make the difference between surviving and thriving. Your New Year’s resolution should now be clear: agility first.
Assaad El Saadi, regional director – Middle East, Pure Storage
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