Before the appearance of the covid-19 pandemic, the world and business were changing in great part due to the revolution in information technology. To cope with these changes, companies had to adopt an agile environment and attitude to adapt and improve their value propositions to their customers. With the arrival of the pandemic, this environment became even more uncertain than we could imagine, and agility has become more necessary than ever. Now, all types of companies must reinvent themselves through the implementation of digital technologies to improve their processes and performance if they want to survive.
Within this context, business agility is nothing other than the ability of an organization to adapt quickly and efficiently to the changes of its environment, also in an innovative and creative way, and thus be able to offer better products and services for the satisfaction of the customers’ needs. Businesses that survive and strengthen in situations lacking stability and certainty are those that manage to be agile and flexible, thereby achieving a sustainable competitive advantage.
To achieve the objectives, business agility must be a constant in the organization, because changes are constant, then it must become a value for the organization. Therefore, it is necessary to involve the human factor in change, promote communication and collaboration around the objectives, processes, managers, etc. That is, create agile teams through collaborative leadership, adapted to new work circumstances, such as remote work in many cases. In these new circumstances, companies need to create the conditions that allow their staff rapid cycles of learning and adaptation, empower them, give them the time and space so that they can innovate, test, adjust products and services.
Likewise, agile organizations must be structured around the generation of products and services of value to their clients, and not around their traditional departments or areas (finance, human resources, operations). It is important not to lose focus that these exist to support the satisfaction of customer needs. As new technologies transform the way organizations interact with their end users, they expect to value their opinions and that companies respond quickly by improving their products and services, otherwise they may switch providers. To be successful then, you have to be able to respond agilely to the changing needs of the market.
Due to all the above, it is evident that acquiring business agility entails various types of changes, including: the processes of the organization, the attitude of people, and the adoption of new technologies that allow establishing quick solutions. To accomplish this objective, these technologies provide the skills and capabilities necessary to improve communication, collaboration, and integration between people of interest in organizations, allowing a comprehensive view of the business and its different areas, in real time, accessible from mobile devices, all of which is key to making decisions consistent with the value of business agility. Additionally, nowadays technological tools allow to implement information technology infrastructures in the cloud quickly, and at low cost, since there is no need to physically have the hardware in the office.
Business agility involves a change in the organizational culture of the company, and in all its areas, being one of the most relevant in these times, the adoption of new technologies that make such changes possible, such as allowing working in short and incremental cycles, improving learning times, and lead to the delivery of products and services with increasing value for the customer, which is its reason for responding to changing market demands.