A Digital First Framework for a Changing Business Landscape – Basha Pillay

Digital First Framework for a Changing Business Landscape – insights from Basha Pillay

The business and retail environment has fundamentally changed over recent years, with the pandemic exponentially accelerating the digital shift. When the pandemic first arrived, the biggest focus was around business continuity. Then going into economic slowdown, and realising this to be a longer-term crisis, focus became around cost-saving and optimisation - how do we do what we do in a cheaper, better way? And now 2 years later, it’s about resiliency: how do we actually just survive through this period?

Especially pertinent to retail is the realisation that buying behaviour has significantly changed, and the consumer’s needs are very different. Hyper-personalisation has become progressively important, and consumers are realising they have a lot more choice, especially as it relates to an online world and in the metaverse. And they are demanding that choice, that convenience, and that ability to get something as they want it; on-demand is driving new business models and new modes of engagement. Moreover, risk has increased significantly: since the pandemic has hit our shores, there has been a 300% increase in cyberattacks. While technology is a great enabler, how you deploy it, and having a security compliance mind-set when you do deploy it, is crucially important when it comes to pivoting business models.?

How do you now cater for what’s happened, where are you now, and how do you factor in for future growth? A digital first framework helps connect the dots between business imperatives and technology. Moving from crisis to recovery to what is future enterprise encompasses 3 phases: business focus should be based on the particular phases you find yourself in, and the security that you have.

In the short-term, focus is on developing systems and services that support remote workers, be it a hybrid remote workforce or a fully remote workforce, in line with the move away from the physical office. Scale infrastructure has become increasingly relevant in a space like retail, as has ensuring the core infrastructure is elastic enough to scale in weak periods, slimming down when you don’t need it. Changing and pivoting your message to consumer or to your end customer is another aspect that’s quite relevant in the short-term. And all of this underpinned by security: how do you secure your workers and systems from critical systems that are under attack?

Medium-term it’s about redesigning your models, and redesigning the technology that you have within your space. So everything from your work models to allow for more digital parity, to looking at accelerating cloud and making sure that it sits as the core imperative for IT, and redesigning what your customer experience should look like. Security has gone beyond just protecting the network and device, it’s become redesigning security around an anywhere anyplace access.

Finally, in the long term it’s really around moving towards that new enterprise, that new future. Within the retail setting, there is a plethora of data available, and leveraging that data is integral to informing your new business models, and the way as businesses you are able to cope. Aspects of automation come into play from both a cost efficiency perspective, and also what it provides in terms of scale around the systems and services that a company wants to roll out. The network architecture has gone beyond the physical building: key to understanding whichever medium your people are using in connecting with consumers is redesigning the way those networks form, with embedded extensive security an imperative.

Most innovation sits within an organisation: technologies that build systems and processes that unlock social capital and unlock the innovation from within the organisation are key to resilience, success, and future enterprise. In every crisis there’s opportunity, with digital technology not only driving new business models and new ways of engagement, but also allowing organisations to pivot when adverse situations happen.?

Contact Basha Pillay MD of Poprush [email protected] +27 82 464 6187