How to thrive in uncertain times

We don’t know what we don’t know but we do know that we can do something to cushion our businesses from the worst effects of macro trends. We also know that there will be opportunities to thrive in a recession. The challenge is to spot them and take advantage of them.

What we don’t know:

• Are the predictions of a recession going to come true or is this yet more scare mongering by the media?
• With the pandemic fading into the background, are the global supply chain issues going to go away?
• Have the risks of a third world war faded?
• Will the uncertainty lead to less spending and take the pressure off prices of fuel and raw materials?
• Which industries are going to be impacted the most?
• What products and services are going to be most affected?
• Will the skills shortage continue or will those who left in the great resignation come back to work?

What we do know:

• In uncertain times customers become more cautious about how they spend their money
• They will want to see value for money
• The quality of service and customer experience becomes an even bigger competitive differentiator
• Existing contracts are likely to get recalibrated and reset increasing focus on all cost reduction levers including automation
• Every enterprise’s technology foundations will matter:
• Is it modernized?
• How much can be delivered digitally and automatically?
• How does it deliver value to the end customer – e.g. seamless cloud provisioning
• Process efficiency can make or break an organization. Having optimized, modernized and, where possible, automated processes can bring huge advantages in uncertain times by providing flexible capacity and data to analyze for insights and opportunities
• Having up to date skills can be a great advantage in particular making sure that installed technology is used to best advantage
• Employee job satisfaction can make a significant difference to productivity

We could make our organizations more resilient by making investment decisions based on limited data and gut feel but with process intelligence we could make significantly better-informed decision by gaining visibility into processes and operations at granular levels.

What we can know:

• What can be optimized and automated
• Where the hidden innovation opportunities are
• How we can improve our staff productivity and job satisfaction levels
• How well we look after our customers
• Where the gremlins are in our supply chain processes
• Which partners are delivering the most benefits to our organization

Next generation process mining brings visibility into the important trifecta of people, processes and technology. It is this kind of visibility and the ability to join the dots that enable organization to achieve many of the above, and to lay the foundations to survive and thrive in uncertain times.