Digital Transformation for Business Resilience

Mark Lightfoot, Chess' CFO, reviews how technology can help you weather the economic storm and make your organisation more resilient to the changing business environment. He covers:

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In times of stability, most businesses focus on profitability and growth. However, in recent communications, we have shared insight to show that cyber security and compliance have become more important than previously due to economic instability. In this article, we will describe how business and organisational resilience becomes a main priority in times of uncertainty and upheaval. In this context, a resilient business can move quickly and adapt to its changing environment, ensuring operations continue while value and assets are protected.

Continuing astute business practice developed from the commencement of Covid-19 in many organisations, Digital Transformation now contributes more to organisation adaptability than ever before, with recent statistics suggesting upward of 75% of organisations will increase their IT and Digital budget despite the economic uncertainty. In comparison, only circa 10% indicate they will tighten their belt in this area.

Digital Transformation Benefits

The main benefits that organisations are seeing from the intellectual and financial investment in Digital Transformation can be grouped into four headings:

• Increased flexibility: Cloud-based technologies make remote/hybrid roles easier. Not only can organisations ensure they have the correct cultural fit of employees, often regardless of geography, but they can save employees time and money by avoiding increasing cost commutes to a place of work.
• Enhanced efficiency: Digital transformation can add automation to processes, ensure more accurate routing of customer communications in an organisation, reduce manual data entry, produce MI/BI which is vital for decision making, and offer knowledge management platforms and tools allowing employees to save time, find the answer quickly and use the gained time for productive pursuits.
• Employee satisfaction: The right technology streamlines jobs and keeps employees interested, engaged and aligned with the organisation’s goals. This, in turn, leads to providing better customer experience, boosting loyalty and spending and allowing further investment in technology.
• Disruption decrease: Cloud-based technologies and solutions typically incorporate enhanced cyber security provisions and safeguards than the on-premise solutions they can replace. In addition, public or Hybrid Cloud solutions can offer more functionality and flexibility through scale than more localised company-specific solutions.

Advice on Digital Transformation Planning and Spending

There will of course, be those organisations that can’t afford to increase or maintain their IT and Digital spending and need to divert resources and funding elsewhere. Much of the planning to ensure quality doesn’t suffer needs to take place before the time spent is cut, but it is never too late to implement those ideas in preparation for the future.

• The most effective cyber security products are those that eliminate threats before they arise and disrupt. So why not look at the proportion of expenditure on complex detection tools and software vs robust infrastructure that will stop the danger in the first place. Perhaps the ratio needs to change?
• Improve the interaction and communication between IT, Cyber Security and Compliance departments. Implement a continuous feedback loop and ensure all purchasing decisions are made through collaboration.
• Perform an audit of all IT/Security products and services. Are any of them collecting dust, redundant and can be scrapped? Are the expenditure and resource allocation directed to the most critical areas of technology, talent, operations and processes in the business? If not, it should be.

Economic instability is never welcome, but forward-thinking organisations can plan and think of how to maximise their performance through enhanced resilience by leveraging the benefits of IT, digital transformation and cyber security.

We can help you on your journey and advise on the best approach for your organisation. Contact our expert team and book your FREE technology consultation today.