Why Is Business Agility The Key To Digital Transformation?

Transformation, in any setting, is reliant on agility for success. Environments constantly change, especially in the technological sectors, and transformation without agility is actually just optimisation. COVID-19 and the subsequent forced economic shutdowns taught the business world just how important both agility and digitalisation are for continuity in the face of serious operational hurdles. We know for certain that agility is going to be a staple in any business moving into the next normal, but why? This article hopes to answer that question:

Why Is Agility Important?

Agile businesses, that have transformed digitally enough to facilitate their agility, will have competitive advantages over organisations that are slow to adopt digitalisation as the business model of the future. Apart from the competitive advantages, agile businesses can pivot easily as and when required. This will be a rather important trait moving into the uncertain future of climate change, viral outbreaks, and other threats to business continuity.

Embracing ‘Rethinking’

Transformation is, by definition, a changing from one state to another. This isn’t a case of optimising the archetype, but rather replacing it with a new system. This necessitates a new way of thinking, new risks that have to be taken, and a new way of managing business continuity. It’s daunting, and many businesses will end up slowing or even halting their digital transformation. Instead of running from change, businesses will have to rethink how they plan on navigating the change.

Building Agile Cultures

Rethinking is about realigning business processes to cater for failures – which are a normal and essential part of organisational growth. The work from home (WFH) revolution has shown both businesses and staff the need for agility in general life as well as at work. Business leaders should encourage professional agility and cultivate it within the very fibre of the corporate culture. After all, it’s the staff – who will physically have to use the new digitalised processes.

Transforming With Agility

An agile approach to business transformation has shown to be highly effective for more than a decade now. Still, it’s pretty rare to find on the upper levels of organisational management. Agile transformation does not set in stone a timeframe or cost of transformation. The goal is set and worked on as it is possible in the business. This means that there is time to make necessary adjustments to achieve the desired outcomes.

We’re slowly starting to get over the COVID-19 scare and all of the negative ramifications it brought with it. However, the next large-scale business disaster could be just around the corner. This is why agility has become so critical for future business continuity.

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