The Perils of Failing to Prioritize Business Agility

You’ve known colleagues who are resistant to change. It’s the guy down the hall from your office who hates an organizational adjustment or seems to recoil at even the thought of a new software application or update. They may complain for days when holiday policy changes or when they are assigned to a team project. It’s the last person you’d think of as a champion of business agility.
Then again, what if that person is running your company? The failure to embrace business agility affects every aspect of the way a company works to outpace competition, implement new technology, or train employees. A company that is not eager to embrace change is likely to seem outdated and out of touch with customers.
Cloud adoption: This may be the biggest area where business agility is separating the leaders out ahead of the pack. Adopting cloud technology that is designed to promote business agility helps some companies leave their competition far behind.
For instance, the customer experience is currently a dominant theme across business priorities because customers are demanding a personalized, mobile interaction with businesses. If a page takes too long to load, a site isn’t optimized for mobile, or what they’re looking for takes too long to find, they bail out. Quickly.
This is a simple example, but cloud applications allow for continual updates and new features that make it easy to be agile and meet customer expectations.
Big data: This is another segment of business strategy that offers opportunities in the area of business agility. Companies that utilize real-time data to make informed business decisions are able to move faster on their decisions and abandon practices that aren’t profitable and pursue those that are.
There’s a lot of data available on customer behaviors, but companies have to know what to do with that data. Quick processing and analysis allow an organization to make better decisions, but many companies are leaving this opportunity untouched.
Business agility means having flexibility, reacting nimbly to changes in the industry and quickly embracing opportunities that are good for business growth. It’s a long-term strategy that helps companies avoid being left behind by their competitors.
What does business agility look like in your company? Contact us at Clarksys, and we can help you identify the technology that fits best for both where your company is today and your goals for the future.