Is there anything in the enterprise world more divisive than buzzwords? The marmite of the English language, you either love how they can cut through and surmise complicated subjects and processes, or hate them for their ambiguous applications and overuse on social media.
Regardless of your particular position, one of the biggest market shifts that we have seen in this millennia can be captured by one such word: Agility.
Businesses’ ability to change at the drop of a hat was tested in the spring of 2020 through the mass evacuation of the office spaces, as we all took shelter in our homes. Now, as we start to move past the pandemic, the idea of hybrid working has created a new challenge for businesses to answer.
At the heart of the response is change, something that businesses have potentially been reluctant to embrace in the past, but have had their hands forced by the pandemic. Although 2600Hz Product Marketing Associate, Clint Mohs refused to call it the ‘new normal’, he said that the pandemic has demonstrated that the future is unpredictable and that the idea of business agility is to react to changes in the market in a timely manner.
“Although business agility was not a direct response to pandemics, the pandemic created the cultural circumstances for a huge market shift. Business agility is all about evolving in step with the market so that businesses can meet their customers’ ever-changing needs more quickly.”
Moving Past Covid
Naturally, the pandemic is a great example of how businesses need to adapt to changing market conditions. However, business agility also allows service providers, for example, to create new solutions depending on the market.
In order to do this, Mohs said that a new business methodology needs to be put in place. Rather than having rigid steps that different departments go through, systematically signing off their portion of the project without an opportunity for recourse, the agile business model calls for inter-departmental teams to take ownership over the development of their projects.
The model also enables changes to be made during each step of the creation process with Mohs adding that customer feedback can form a large part of the reason why agility is so important.
“One of the fundamental components of the agile model is the dynamic process for developing, engineering, and testing solutions. Rather than saying ‘we haven't fully tested this, so we can't go back to the design stage’, if something comes up in testing, they can go back to the design and fix it.
