Navigating Disruption: Pivoting Business Models to Succeed in Disruption
When a crisis strikes, organisations must act with speed and agility. Accurate, real-time data can deliver insights that enable leaders to act with confidence.
During disruption, organisations are forced to pivot and quickly respond. While you can plan for potential events, it isn’t until a change occurs that the organisation is tested. Resiliency is rooted in data. When organisations develop a response plan, they need transparency and an understanding of how to leverage and optimise data. Make your data a competitive advantage – especially when disruption requires quick action.
A data strategy is crucial to truly maximise the value of enterprise data. As a general rule, any data strategy should be evaluated every three to five years to ensure it continues to align with the long-term goals of the overall business.
But with unanticipated disruption – whether internal to the organisation or resulting from external factors such as a storm or economic downturn – immediate action is required. To weather the storm, disruption demands organisations act swiftly and with agility. They can only do that with accurate, real-time data. It needs to be collected, evaluated and optimised – on a moment’s notice.
Plan, Activate, Evaluate
To survive disruption, organisations needed to leverage data more effectively, get scrappy and evolve. Every industry was impacted – some more than others, but no one was immune. Companies quickly shifted to a remote workforce, technology projects were delayed or expedited, and many had to reduce headcount. Companies able to stay open in some form were required to rethink how they deliver their goods and services. The supply chain was squeezed, and organisations at all ends of it had to adapt. Unprecedented change forced immediate adjustments for survival. Instead of having weeks or months to plan and make decisions, organisations had to act in a matter of days or even hours.
The pandemic is an extreme example of market disruption. However, we continue to experience disruption with rising inflation, surging energy prices, chaotic governments, and the Ukraine war putting pressure on workforces, supply chains and margins. In the face of any uncertainty, the value of data is paramount. It is the difference between gut feeling and evidence-based, informed decision-making. Leveraging data, organisations can make real-time decisions with confidence; it enables and influences their ability to be agile, work smarter. And agility is critical in order to respond to disruption. Organisations need to plan a business model, act on collecting data relentlessly and reconfigure the business model if data suggests the plan isn’t working.
Often, disruption isn’t immediately apparent. Change happens incrementally, almost imperceptibly. That’s why businesses need to be in the proper position to take advantage of data insights. Across industries, data is driving the future, enabling digital transformation, empowering automation and informing businesses’ evolution. All are working with similar goals in mind: to reduce costs, increase revenue, mitigate risk and improve the customer experience. Data analytics acts as a leading indicator with the power and potential to guide industries through their evolving business strategy as they aim for these goals.
Take healthcare. Patients have encountered virtual healthcare, personalised, in-home health assistance and telehealth delivery. Not only do these innovations enhance the customer experience, but they also create efficiencies for healthcare providers.
In manufacturing, there’s a push toward self-sustaining, localised operations, automated quality, predictive maintenance, intelligent supply/inventory management and transportation management. These efforts drive efficiency and ensure goods are delivered at the right volume, at the right time and place.
Data has enabled financial services organisations to implement autonomous fraud prevention and loan approvals, which reduce risk, save money and improve the customer experience.
In retail, features such as smart checkout, virtual personal assistants, augmented reality applications that let consumers “see” how products work and look, and recommendation engines help predict buying preferences to enhance the customer experience.
Data has powered and informed these future-facing solutions and helps organisations save money, increase revenue opportunities, reduce risk, and improve the customer experience.