Business agility can sound like another buzzword but is crucial to the growth and success of your business.
What Is Business Agility?
Business agility refers to the distinct qualities that enable an organization to adapt rapidly to change in the business environment without losing momentum or vision.
Put simply, business agility is the effectiveness with which you make improvements in your business processes. It allows you to grow and stay ahead of your competition.
Factors Influencing Change
The rate of change that your organization experiences is influenced by several factors
- The state of the economy
- Growth of the company
- Evolution in technology
- Dynamics of a market or geographic area
If your organization is to retain a competitive edge and exploit new opportunities, then business agility is critical.
How You Can Improve Business Agility
Here are five actionable steps to implement to improve business agility and scale your business.
Recruit for Productivity
If you want to create a productive culture at your organization, you need to attract and retain the right employees. This does not mean hiring employees based on a precise outline of skillsets, but rather, building a team of workers who are not restricted to one specific area of expertise. This drives synergy.
You must aim to hire for creativity, curiosity, and collaboration. The candidates that do not fit easily into a box might just be the right fit at your organization.
Keep a lookout for employees with these important soft skills
- Persuasion
- Collaboration
- Creativity
- Adaptability
- Time management
Employees hired for these soft skills boost teamwork across business departments. With a synergized team, innovation and agility become easier because there are fewer hurdles to overcome.
Introduce New Products and Services
When customers demand new products and services, or your organization needs to make changes to existing product portfolios, timing is often critical and limited.
When manufacturing, design, sales, service, finance, and other business functions need to come together, the location of individuals or teams, and different time zones should not be a barrier to business evolution and decision making.
73 percent of businesses in a Frost & Sullivan survey believe that unified communications technologies will improve productivity. Almost 40 percent expect that unified communications will accelerate decision-making.
Respond to Evolving Market Demands
Modern communication solutions allow organizations to access and measure performance data and market trends faster. If you have immediate access to company performance, product sales, and other key data, you can predict change and view it with a positive mindset.
Collaboration between teams in a company can be greatly enhanced by streamlining communication with technology.
Instant messaging and chat software can facilitate faster and more effective communication and also foster collaboration, a quality that is essential to improve business agility.
Ensure to Deliver Exceptional Customer Service
Retaining customers and turning them into loyal and lifelong customers can be achieved only when our business exceeds the expectations that customers place upon us.
Implementing a multi-media contact center that is flexible enough to receive and respond to inquiries via a variety of channels is one way to ensure your customers are always at the heart of your business.
Empower Your Employees
Take a hard look at organizational roles within your company. A strict hierarchy based on a traditional management style can be dispiriting for staff and could decrease their engagement.
It would be more effective to take an open-minded approach.
Empower your team to make their own informed decisions on how systems and processes can be optimized. Most times, employees have brilliant ideas that can lead to innovation, and if they are not motivated to share, you may struggle to grow a thriving business.
Encourage failure. Tell your teams that failure is not to be feared. Taking calculated risks is a reality of being successful.
Closing Thoughts
Embracing business agility and being adaptable in a constantly changing, fast-paced world enables you to race ahead of your competition. We hope you will use these ideas to improve business agility and achieve success in your organization.
