Outdated mindsets, inflexible legacy technology and too much bureaucracy are among the biggest obstacles in the way of organisations achieving agility and benefiting from digital transformation.
This is according to Oliver McKenna, CTO EMEA, Workday, who was speaking ahead of a webinar to be held by Workday on achieving a digital ready culture.
McKenna says a global study conducted by Workday among almost 1 000 business leaders in Asia, Europe and North America found that a third of respondents said their organisation’s approach did not enable it to respond quickly to shifts in the market. Only 15% of the survey respondents were identified as ‘leaders’ who had agility embedded in their day to day operations, 30% aspire to do so, and the bulk of respondents could be described as ‘laggards’.
The research found that ‘leader’ companies plan continuously; have fluid, integrated infrastructures and processes; actively seek to upskill their workforces; and support empowered decision making by giving all employees access to timely and relevant data. They also successfully measure the performance of digitally driven innovations, which gives them a ‘fail fast’ mentality.
Building agility into the organisation depends on an adaptable architecture and the right leadership from the C-suite.
Oliver McKenna, Workday.
“The difference between the leaders and laggards is organisational agility,” McKenna says. “In an uncertain market, particularly now that more and more of organisational revenue comes from digital streams, companies can’t wait months or years to know if a product or service is working. They have to react quickly to market shifts.
"Leader companies are responsive and adaptable. They have a fluid approach to managing resources, and can quickly realign their people and finances to match changing needs. Leader companies measure and manage the skills they have to ensure their future workforce can deliver on digital strategies; and they empower their employees with timely and relevant data that helps them make the best decisions for the business – quickly.”
Building agility into the organisation depends on an adaptable architecture and the right leadership from the C-suite, says McKenna.
“The CEO, finance leader, IT leader and HR leader play key roles in creating an agile organisation, and they have to work together to enable faster and more effective response to change. The CEO must champion an agile approach through strategy and execution, the CFO has to overcome the constraints of legacy technology and streamline company processes, the CHRO needs to break down silos and keep the workforce engaged, and the CIO has to seek integration and access data and tools to measure the performance of new digital products and service lines.”
Workday is at the front end of supporting its customers to remain agile in uncertain and fast-changing markets, says McKenna.
“We have around 8 000 customers and our customer community represents more than 50 million workers around the world, and the vast majority of that population moved to remote work seamlessly at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Every company in the world is now looking to understand where they are with their people and financials, and through Workday adaptive planning, there has been a 30-fold increase in the number of scenarios that companies have run. So companies are really using the software to look forward, run ‘what if’ scenarios, and use that to make decisions about how they run their business.”
Workday, in partnership with ITWeb, will present a webinar on 14 April on How Executives Can Embrace Digital Transformation – The Digital Ready Culture. To register for this event, click here https://www.itweb.co.za/webinar/workday-the-digital-ready-culture/
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