Improving Agility for Small Medium Enterprises
What is Business Agility
Business agility refers to a company’s ability to rapidly respond to changes in the market, while also seeking out new opportunities for growth. This includes being able to adjust to evolving customer needs, new technology, and changes in the competitive landscape. By doing so, businesses can counter the negative impacts of volatility and uncertainty in the market. To achieve this, businesses need to swiftly develop and deploy new products and services, change business structures as needed, and make decisions quickly. Being agile is a crucial aspect that can help ensure success in the years to come.
Potential benefits of Business Agility for SMEs
The Ability to Capitalise on Growth Opportunities
Agility is crucial for the long-term success of small businesses, as it enables them to capitalize on growth opportunities, improve operations, and enhance the customer experience without having to start from scratch. Small businesses can maintain their proven formula for success while adapting to competitive changes. This allows small businesses to stay competitive and relevant in the face of changing market conditions.
Responsiveness to Customer’s Evolving Needs
Agility is important for small businesses to respond to changing customer needs and demands. It ensures that customers receive products and services in a timely manner and provides the best possible customer experience. Small businesses can gain a competitive advantage over larger businesses by being agile and quickly experimenting with new ideas and pivoting if necessary.
How to Be Agile
A Diverse Work Culture Coupled with Relational Capabilities
Benefits of a diverse work culture include identifying opportunities and threats more quickly, reaching new markets and customers, and fine-tuning business operations. Staying agile about hiring trends and employee benefits is important to attract the right people. Relational capability, including high-quality internal interactions and external partnerships, is key to business agility and leveraging valuable resources. Trust and a positive attitude towards relationships are crucial for fostering relational capabilities.
Capitalise on Digital Technology
Staying current with technology is important for adapting business practices and providing better products and services to customers. It also boosts customer confidence in a company and increases efficiency. Ways to stay updated include subscribing to publications, attending trade shows, and maintaining a social media presence. Digital technology supports relational capabilities and other necessary functions, but leaders need to be knowledgeable and skilled to fully integrate and manage the transformation of outdated work processes and systems using enabling technology.
Encourage Sustainability
Sustainability is more than just an environmental issue, it’s about prioritizing long-term success and operations that will withstand regulations and legislation. Embracing sustainable methods and values can attract top-notch employees and increase long-term growth. Today’s consumers are conscious of environmental impact and willing to pay a premium for sustainable products. Incorporating sustainable practices can ensure a business’s longevity and outlast competitors.
Automate for Efficiency
Small businesses can benefit from automating key processes to free up resources and enhance efficiency and accuracy by streamlining processes and eliminating potential for human error. Automating tasks such as invoicing/collections follow-ups, workflows, and payroll can save time immediately. Furthermore, businesses should strive to improve their agility even after achieving success, allowing them to remain flexible within the market and stay ahead of their competition.
Capacity for Innovation
Innovation is crucial for business sustainability as it allows for the integration of new ideas and solutions into a business model, processes, products, and services. Innovative capacity leads to two primary outcomes: product and service innovation, and process innovation. Business agility significantly enhances financial performance and improves the outcome of innovation activities, making small and medium-sized enterprises more likely to engage in innovation.
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Author: Sharon Manzini
