Business is Changing
Presumably, the harsh reality is your situation as a business has changed dramatically and what’s more the situation of your clients has changed dramatically.
Trust me when I say, you aren’t alone. We are facing the same kind of challenges in our business and having to think well outside the box for our clients and teams. The current social and economic environment poses questions that haven’t been asked in generations. It will require a complete shift in how we deal with the workplace and approach our lives on a day to day.
We have seen an increase in online shopping, online education, online events, friends and family meet ups, among others. It is also likely to change how companies configure their supply chains, the ways their teams work and communicate from now on. Some lessons are already emerging about how we can cope with the social and commercial disruption of this kind. A key driver, it turns out, is digital technology.
If you ever consider Digital Transformation for your business, right now it is a great time to consider what this crisis has already changed, how else might impact your business and what you have learned so far.
Yes it’s important to reflect on what has and hasn’t worked in the past few months/years but back to the hard reality, things have changed in the last few weeks. They’re going to change even more. So it’s time to think about the fundamentals.
Take this opportunity with both hands. Use this time to get away from the minutia of your day‐to‐day metrics or even future plans (which are probably irrelevant in the short term anyway) and speak to as many of your stakeholders as possible.
Listen to your teams and clients; understand what they need from you.
How can your business drive better outcomes?
Operating models are ever-evolving, driven by feedback from employees and customers, the effectiveness of business processes, and evolving competitive landscapes. Leading organisations augment their capabilities through simple cross-functional processes, hyper-focused incentives, and best-in-class tools to drive simplicity, clarity, and speed in execution.
A research carried out by Harvard Business Review points to at least six ways to potentially increase your chances of building a model that can help guide a successful digital transformation:
• Nominate and empower function and business leaders
early to drive the cultural change required across the organisation.
• Define clear roles and responsibilities across businesses, regions, and
functional support groups.
• Create complementary incentives and goals for businesses and functions to
reduce conflict and optimize resource allocation.
• Establish cross-functional debriefs to keep relevant parties informed, and
nominate an owner to manage the process early.
• Institute a governance model with clear KPIs for each leadership team—one
that supports quick, independent decision-making.
• Standardise resource and knowledge exchange to ensure that skill sets are
cultivated and proliferated.
Transformation demands that leaders develop a clear sense of their strategic ambitions—where to play and how to win—and the business models they wish to employ, including target customer segments, channels, pricing, and delivery models. There are many questions to be answered.
How can you move forward?
In moving forward with digital transformation, the first step is to identify the holistic set of capabilities required to meet the enterprise’s strategic ambitions.
You have a better chance at succeeding if your operating model—or how the organisation creates value—is aligned to its strategy. And this means that for transformations to succeed, it is necessary to examine and possibly revise your operating model.
Think about you unique set of capabilities, are they aligned to the business strategy, do you already have, tailored metrics, unique investment profiles, and tight coordination across the value chain.
What Work Needs to Be Done?
Get your teams involved, generate a capability map. The capability set should include both existing capabilities and new ones (as needed) and address front-, mid-, and back-office functions across all product lines.
When brought together, capabilities comprise a capability map, representing the collective set required to execute against the strategy and business model.
A capability map provides a foundation on which organisations can build their target operating model. It can be used to determine skill set requirements, hire talent, set performance metrics, build teams, and identify partnership opportunities.
Decide what changes are priorities and what systems and processes have to be reviewed, specify all intentions clearly, communicate those to everyone involved, including your suppliers. Consider how agile do you want to be? For example, think on how the factories that produce perfume and makeup for brands like Christian Dior and Givenchy started making hand sanitizer during the shortage. A lot of restaurants and bakeries started offering home deliveries for the local communities and some created networks for public to donate for the supply of food to the medical workers which is delivered directly to hospitals.
Who Does the Work?
Once the capability map has been established, the next step is sourcing them. Several will likely already exist—some mature or fit-for-purpose, others recent arrivals. This step is often the most difficult to execute, as companies can be resistant to changing their existing ways of working when instead they can leverage the opportunity to freeing themselves from legacy processes and technologies.
You can develop, transform, or mature your capabilities internally (use as is); you can acquire capabilities through targeted hires, you can partner to access them; or outsource the capabilities and have them delivered as-a-service.
Once this has been defined, allocate the work to the most efficient parts of the organisation. Ensure there is a time line, and that the plan is closely linked to the strategy. Remember what the purpose is and review the progress often.
Natacha Santiago
can I get more insights on how to list my business capabilities?