The only thing certain about the new normal is that there won’t actually be a new normal — because the “normal” will keep changing. However, enterprises still need to look ahead and the critical question being asked right now is: “what lessons can we learn from the crisis to help us emerge stronger, better and smarter?”
A recent Forrester survey of more than 700 executives revealed that forward-looking enterprises are re-calibrating their business strategies, resources, and vendor relationships to emphasize three priorities that were important before the pandemic, but have now emerged as essential: accelerating the shift to digital business, reducing costs, and improving the use of data insights in business decision-making.
Accelerating the Shift to Digital Business
Accelerating the shift to digital business is an ongoing process through which enterprises continuously adapt operations in light of changing market conditions — both positive and negative. Central to this effort is leveraging comprehensive preparation and cloud-based tools that equip, empower and inspire team members to do their jobs from anywhere when (not if) unexpected shocks erupt or opportunities arise.
Enterprises that lack this capacity cannot make ongoing adjustments. Their inflexible policies, processes and technologies become liabilities and obstacles instead of accelerators and assets on the journey to digital transformation.
Reducing Costs
There is nothing new about enterprises wanting — and some needing — to reduce costs. This was a priority well before the coronavirus crisis. However, what is changing is how leading enterprises are approaching this. Instead of just slashing budgets, they are focusing on ways to improve workforce productivity and efficiency, and make every minute of work count. At the heart of this effort are new paradigms on automation and visibility.
With respect to automation, instead of just looking at how they can automate old manual processes, enterprises are focusing on how they can leverage automation to define (and re-define as necessary) workflows and processes in order to quickly address new market demands on an ongoing basis.
Another key aspect to increasing productivity is ensuring that every team has access to the right tools to help them manage their work effectively. Many teams find that using agile processes can help them deliver continuous customer value in short sprints. While other teams working on more complex projects may need a solution that provides more oversight to comply with company or industry guidelines.
To increase visibility, enterprises are centralizing how they work and establishing a single source of truth to proactively manage risks as they arise, and ultimately make better, faster and more profitable business decisions. Visibility also ensures that the data they collect and the metrics they use are efficient and accurate in light of changing priorities, customer expectations and marketplace shifts.
Improving the Use of Data Insights in Business Decision-Making
Enterprises can eliminate silos by centralizing workstreams on an enterprise-wise collaborative work management (CWM) platform, and using integrations to connect with teams that manage work in agile systems (e.g., Jira). This reduces the time spent manually aggregating data and cuts down on data discrepancy errors — both of which contribute to regrettable instead of successful decision-making.
At the same time, enterprises are using tools and technologies to tear down silos that block visibility and collaboration with their ecosystem of customers, vendors and strategic partners that support them. By extending their line-of-sight, enterprises can answer critical questions in real-time (or near real-time) about individual aspects of work, proactively address potential problems before they get out of hand, and keep an eye on whether the organization as-a-whole is working cohesively to achieve critical priorities and objectives.
The Way Forward
At Planview AdaptiveWork, our collaborative work management (CWM) solution is playing a pivotal role in helping leading enterprises in a wide variety of industries accelerate their shift to digital business, reduce costs, and improve the use of data insights in business decision-making — so they emerge from the crisis stronger, smarter and better.
Learn more by watching our our virtual summit “Embracing Uncertainty” featuring presentations from Planview AdaptiveWork’s CEO Matt Zilli, Forrester’s Vice President and Principal Analyst Brian Hopkins, as well as executives from McDonald’s, JLL, Root Inc., Siemens Energy, Publicis, Cisco Capital, and ADP.
The 3-part virtual summit is now available on-demand: click here.
