Getting Agile in the Digital Age

The VUCA World is a new reality with technological disruptions redefining traditional industries. The digital age is emerging at an accelerating pace of change with no clear patterns and lack of structured information. This brings organizations to the point when linear solutions do not work anymore. How to go through a digital transformation, turn challenges into opportunities and thrive in ambiguity? It requires organizations to think and act digital. Agility is a cornerstone of the transformational process. As mobile, IoT, cloud and AI become more relevant, digital agility is what can help to increase organizational flexibility to cope with complex changes.

The broad definition on Agility advocates that opposite to start-ups and bureaucratic entities truly agile organizations are both stable and dynamic at the same time. Stable practices enable efficiency and scale, while dynamic practices enable speed and adaptation. There are six digital accelerators that are structured around these two types of practices.

Stable practices to enable scale:

• Digital culture. People drive culture and change. Top-down hierarchy proved to be slow in identifying and seizing strategic opportunities that digital age can offer. Soft leadership, flat structures and self-organizing cross-functional teams are way too nimble in dealing with complex customer-centric problems. To build digitally-enabled organization, new roles within the workforce (i.e. UI/UX designer, data scientist, digital architect, etc.) must be supported.
• Cloud infrastructure. To foster digital transformation, organizations would need to leverage on technologies such as IoT, machine learning, big data analytics and few others. All these technologies require an expensive hardware with heavy computing power, networking and storage. A cloud infrastructure provides affordable services based on individual needs and lowers the risk of rapid deployment.
• Digital platforms. Online platforms are not just innovative channels but quite popular operating models in the digital age. Platform companies tend to build ecosystem and use cloud, big data, social media, IoT and mobile devices in a very scalable way increasing connectivity among owners, partners and even consumers.

Dynamic practices to enable speed:

• Advanced social listening. By using social media, organizations can keep on the top of changing customer sentiment. Tools for advanced social listening can provide rich customer insights and lead to superior customer propositions. Additionally, through social media organizations may not only learn how customers perceive their brands, but also produce completely new engagements in an environment where customers feel comfortable.
• Big data analytics. Digitization allows organizations to have a touch on customer insights closer than ever before. Understanding and addressing customer pain points is key. Big data analytics allows leveraging on large pools of information coming from everywhere, utilizing computing power of clouds and feeding competitive strategies with data-driven insights.
• Mobility. Handsets are the main channel of communication within the digital world. Smartphone users are now spending more than 80% of their mobile usage time to non-voice activities. As connected devices become more popular, the importance of mobility in the digital age is set to grow limitless. Hence, mobile-enabled experiences can be applied to all stakeholders including customers and employees.

Technologies alone do not drive digital transformation. Instead, businesses have to transform the way they strategize and utilize technology. Agile organizations benefit from turbulent environments because they are both stable and dynamic at the same time. Six digital accelerators can bring the business agility to a new level. Go digital, stay agile.

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Hehsed is a digital consulting company that assists businesses to realize their top digital potential by creating a culture of innovation, designing digital customer experiences and developing a digital transformation strategy, digital human capital, digital social & marketing strategy. At Hehsed, we combine strategy consultants with in-house high calibre digital experts to provide high quality services to our clients.