Driving enterprise acceleration in a pandemic world

Enterprises today are rising and falling at a tremendous rate. Just looking at the level of turnover in stock indices from Asia to Europe to the US, it's clear that there is a worldwide trend of companies making it big, only to lose their place to competitors scant years later. And the reason is that they fell behind, according to Holger Mueller, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

"Some of them went out of business—a small portion—a bigger portion got acquired," said Mueller during his keynote speech at the second day of TechHR 2020. "But the biggest part of companies that are no longer part of these financial indices? They just did not grow fast enough."

The speed at which enterprises need to grow is determined by macro trends, and there are plenty to cope with today, Mueller pointed out. COVID-19 is just the latest : even before the pandemic, there was the incessant pressure of globalization, the newer but even more disruptive move towards digitalization, and the looming issue of an aging population which will gradually drive organizations toward greater automation.

So how can enterprises be fast enough?

The most immediate need, of course, is to adapt to life in the new normal—a life where nature is taking back city streets, where retail amenities that used to be fixtures can no longer operate, where entire business models have become inoperable almost overnight.

"What we've learned from the pandemic is that you have to automate what you can automate," Mueller said. Previously, he pointed out, companies would take both affordability and effectiveness into consideration, but now, they are willing to settle for either lower affordability or lower quality.

He listed nine drivers of enterprise acceleration: business user-centricity, the use of big data, machine learning, lean recruiting, an understanding of talent depth, trans-boarding, a better approach to performance management, more effective learning and upskilling, and the ability to apply solutions subjectively, rather than monolithically, taking into consideration the varying needs of each department, function, or vertical.

"You need to be comfortable that the speed at which your enterprise can move, adapt, change, and execute is higher than the speed at which your markets are changing," he added, pointing out that if the market is changing faster than your enterprise, "that's not a very good sign for you."

The post-pandemic playbook

What needs to happen across the company? Firstly, said Mueller, leadership has to be considered in a more strategic fashion throughout the enterprise, at all levels. There needs to be dual leadership so that the burden of decision making, ideation, and even networking can be more evenly shared; succession planning has to become more tactical to account for new contingencies that the pandemic has brought. Secondly, in the workplace, there has to be a shift towards better security, cleaning and deployment protocols, and on-site healthcare, while remote work needs to remain enabled. And finally, globalization, as challenging as it is, will become a solution: simply by being in multiple locations, companies can continue to operate in some form even under a variety of circumstances and restrictions.

On the HR side, Mueller listed various factors that can accelerate the enterprise. There needs to be business empowerment—providing the tools for people to succeed, moving away from siloed thinking to thinking about what people need to do. There has to be greater flexibility in payroll and benefits. Talent acquisition—finding, onboarding, and training—has to be accelerated. Talent mobility, both locally and internationally, needs to be factored into people management strategies.

Success strategies

The first fundamental is technology: it is the one irreplaceable factor that no business can do without. In today's context, that refers largely to software, be it AI, data analytics, process automation, or simply communications platforms. "Software is eating the world," Mueller said. "Your software determines the success of your enterprise."

The second fundamental is the fitness of the business model. Today's enterprises must have the agility to react much more quickly, and they need the infrastructure—be it physical, virtual, or simply in terms of workplace practices and processes—to move fast. "You have to think about capacity not just as how much you store in your warehouse, so that you can operate longer without disruptions to your delivery, but also as the capacity of your workforce: how much you can upscale it, what they can do," Mueller said.

"You need to be able to change between different work environments...you need to be able to move from one business model to a different one."

A third fundamental is the implementation of a sentient enterprise or listening enterprise, where strategies can be created and executed. "You need to use new platforms—you can't do this under the existing old systems—you need to have new best practices," Mueller said. "You need everything your enterprise creates to draw on digital, you need to empower your business, and you need to prepare for the biggest transformation in the next five years."

That transformation will be deep learning, according to him: software learning by itself and extracting practical things people are doing from the digital footprint of the enterprise, and automating it for the kind of speed and efficiency that's needed to keep businesses going and growing in today's disrupted, fast-changing world.