As the globe and their economies continue in lockdown how will businesses large and small have to adapt?
The combination of scalable and agile capabilities is what will define all businesses going forward.
Businesses that use cloud are already surviving better than those who don’t through the pandemic crisis.
Artificial Intelligence and automation will become even more important, as manual interventions continue to be affected by social distancing, and the importance of limiting transmission risks persist.
Resilience will be at the forefront of every business strategy, along with flexibility
Supply chains will have to reconfigure themselves in real time. Coopetition (a neologism coined to describe cooperative competition) will be at the forefront of companies working together as manufacturers reinvent themselves.
We have learnt that bandwidth is a precious resource and not to be squandered.
Large populations confined at home have put serious pressure on the consumption of bandwidth and we believe that traffic prioritization and shaping will be needed to be put in place for core services and business applications. This may need legislation going forward.
Cloud is critical in supporting infrastructure for the crisis and our emergence from it. Cloud capacity, especially from the hyperscale vendors is currently getting us through this time. With a remote, home-based workforce, remote desktop technologies are essential for running core business functions. However, going forward native born-in -the -cloud applications will run core business functions.
In the workplace bring your own device (BYOD) has become a global trend in business technology. Those businesses and countries that have hitherto relied just on non-portable office-based workstations will have to quickly change their business models, or suffer accordingly.
We will change from privacy concerns to the logistics of safety and social distancing enablement. Apps are already appearing using big data and machine learning to both track the disease and facilitate social distancing. We predict that this will only grow.
Legacy technologies will become much more important also as less will be spent on technological advances, 5G goes on the back burner and the world examines its relationship with China.
A way Forward
Given the magnitude of the changes that dealing with the Covid-19 Pandemic demands, all organisations, be they Governments, NGOs or businesses need to examine their management processes, and explore how these might be evolved to map a process to tackle the unknown unknowns
DVC Consultants’ LOAF (Leadership and Organisation in Anarchic Flux) process helps organisations do precisely this. It as a proprietary consulting process for supporting our clients in being disruptors and challengers, rather than being on the receiving end of companies more innovative. It’s a four-part process designed to identify and analyse a wide range of different perspectives, and then to recommend actions on the back of that;
- Leadership: To provide leadership you need to learn from many different perspectives — even those you might disagree with. We are expert in a range of fields, including political analysis, branding, economics, technology and financial services.
- Organisation: Too often companies have the information before them, but key pieces of information are missed. Sometimes this is because people with one mindset are unable or unwilling to accept or understand what others are saying, and why. We are able to ensure that all key insights are kept in view, and synthesised and organised so they reinforce one another.
- Anarchic: To make sense of anarchy you need to analyse. There is no use in having the information to hand if it is not rigorously analysed and tested. Too often people do things on the basis of what they want to be true, rather than that which evidence suggests is true. We apply proper rigour — following Karl Popper — in analysing the challenges facing our clients.
- Flux: This needs fixing. Because we have worked in a range of industries, we know and understand how companies work, and the importance of making good ideas operate through day-to-day management structures, We are able, therefore, to support our clients in putting in place actions that will enable them to be the disruptors, not the disrupted.
About the authors
Quentin Anderson is Executive Chairman, DVC Consultants and CEO and Co-Founder of BankTotal. He has decades of experience in advising companies, and for 18 years was a CEO of companies in the WPP group.
q.anderson@dvcconsultants.com
Dr Peter Stanbury is Co-Founder of both DVC Consultants and Banktotal. He has worked all over the world for organisations as varied as NATO, The World Bank, Anglo American and the Governments of The Netherlands, UK and Switzerland.
p.stanbury@dvcconsultants.com
Thought Leadership- Cogitare
Cogitare-The Latin for “To Think, ” is the collective name for DVC Consultants thoughts, insights and perspectives on a broad and eclectic number of subjects. From Brexit to Global Poverty, Islamic Banking to Subsistence Agriculture, Disruptive Technologies to The World Bank. It reflects the wide range of sectors and issues we consult on. We hope you enjoy reading them.
DVC Consultants: Exploring unknown unknowns since 1995
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