Making Your Business More Agile:
3 Steps You Can Take to Get There Today
In business, adaptability is paramount. With the business industry continuously changing, the ability to
respond to these changes plays a large part in their success and longevity. According to McKinsey & Company, agility in business requires two things: dynamic capability (i.e., speed, nimbleness and responsiveness), and stability. In fact, agile businesses witness 30 percent higher profits than non-agile organizations. They also grow their revenues 37 percent faster, says the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So whether you are looking to grow your business or withstand tough market conditions, finding ways to make your business more agile is a great place to start.
Automate Where Possible
Agility centers around a business’ ability to respond to changes while still maintaining efficiency. This includes eradicating bottlenecks in your business processes and incorporating innovation in your business. Automation of business processes can cut costs, speed up process times, and deliver great value. Investing in leading marketing automation tools for business processes like resource management and time tracking also means your business is ready for new market trends or emerging changes.
Another reason to automate is that it eradicates inefficiencies in your organization. Indeed, Journyx note the value of resource management tools to streamline business processes, including employee time, finances and stock. Resource management boosts business agility by allowing asset allocation early on in the cycle and enabling analysis of performance data for further optimization.
Leave Ample Room for Contingency Planning
An agile organization plans for the unexpected and the incidentals. Having a regularly updated business contingency plan helps businesses to be prepared for potential events and cuts down their response time if that event ever does occur. It can begin with creating standard buffer percentages in your project budgets and being prudent when estimating revenue inflows for upcoming periods. If executing a new business project or expansion, be sure to create alternative plans and pathways. Explore the market conditions and adjust your business planning with regular strategy planning meetings.
Create Well-Balanced and Multifaceted Teams
For a business to be agile, its culture and the people behind it must support it – including its employees. As a leader, it is recommended that you encourage agile behaviors within your workforce. Empower decision making and proactiveness from your employees, and don’t forget to foster communication and collaboration.
It is also important to create dynamic and multifaceted teams by including talent that is pulled from various business functions, including customer service, strategy, innovation, finances and technology. Each team member brings a different outlook and skillset to the team. If engaged and given the right tools, the result can be true adaptability and agility in a range of circumstances, including profit goal achievements. Agility can pay off well for businesses. Agile businesses have a 70 percent chance of ranking in the top performance quartiles.
Being in business can be a rollercoaster. As a business owner, you must be prepared to respond to sudden changes in the industry in which your business operates. While you may not have much control over industry and market changes, you can prepare your business to withstand these changes by boosting its agility. Starting with building a well-rounded team, planning for the unexpected, and embracing the use of technology to improve responsiveness speed, your business can be well on its way to becoming stronger today.
