The advantages of business agility have come into greater focus over the last year.  Agile businesses have the flexibility to adapt to any external environment and evolve to meet the demands of customers quickly and efficiently.  Businesses that employ an agile business strategy are more customer centric and are able to maintain a high standard of service regardless of external factors.  This provides a clear advantage, especially in the uncertain times we’ve been experiencing over the last year.  Here we take a look at a few of the key factors needed to create an agile business.

People

While every business needs people with specialized skillsets, an agile business model requires flexibility.  Those who are versatile and able to learn a variety of key functions are invaluable in this type of model.  Adaptability is everything when it comes to business agility, and that starts with the people.  Employing people with the ability to take on multiple roles and be cross-trained on a variety of skills allows you flexibility should you become shorthanded in a particular area for any reason.  It also helps you to scale more quickly as you’ll already have additional resources with the required skills to increase capacity.

Processes

Businesses that want to be agile will need a plan to be able to adapt to any changes necessary, whether it be portfolio management, product development, or any other critical business process.  Being able to adapt your product development to changing markets and demands of customers will allow you to better serve their needs and remain competitive.  Additionally, in order to remain on the cutting edge of innovation, employees need to be continuously learning new skills to keep up with changes in technology and market trends.  Communication across an organization may very well be the most important factor in creating an agile business model.  Taking steps to improve communications and encourage collaboration is a must to achieve agility and maintain business continuity.

Tools

The extent of the tools you’ll need to become agile will vary depending on your business model, the products and services you offer, and the structure of your organization.  There are some basic areas that every organization will need to address.  Communications, task management, storage, machinery and any software that is needed to maintain production and operations should be focal points of your initiative.  A VoIP platform such as RingCentral provides the ability to seamlessly communicate across your organization as well as with clients from anywhere in the world.  Meeting software allows teams to collaborate even when people are not in the office.  Messaging software such as Glip allow for real time communication and task management.  Marketing automation platforms such as HubSpot let your marketing team remain completely operational without any loss of data or functionality.  Most importantly cloud storage and computing allow you to operate from anywhere in the world and provides the ability to scale rapidly without exorbitant costs.

A move to an agile business model will take an investment of time, money and resources to come to fruition.  Additionally, there needs to be a companywide buy in to the idea.  Alto9 not only offers the expertise to guide your company through this process, we are able to provide the technology necessary to make it seamless.  Click below to contact us today for a free consultation.