As we dive headfirst into 2022, we’ve taken a moment to look back over the last couple of years and identify key trends that will be instrumental in how ambitious, forward-thinking companies will adapt and digitally transform over the coming year.
As a supply chain software platform with thousands of users, we’ve tried to aggregate the conversations, objectives and sentiments of the business leaders we’ve encountered. We’ve then broken down their strategies and goals into the four elements of digital transformation, to give you both insight and crystal-ball predictions to help you succeed this year and beyond.
People
One of the main changes in how people work has been the widespread adoption of remote working, with many businesses remaining flexible to this practice moving forward.
We feel that in 2022, the initial shock of moving people to this way of working will subside and there will be new challenges on two fronts. Flexible working and capabilities and competencies.
Flexible Working – A New Normal
For the context of just how many companies are embracing flexible working…
Percentage of Organisations Mixing Remote and Office Work:
- 79% of organizations will have a mix of workers in the office and at home.
- 35% view role type as a determining factor in the feasibility of the hybrid work model.
(Info-Tech Tech Trends 2022 Survey)
Return-to-the-office appetite:
- Only 18% of employees want to return to the office full-time.
- But 70% of employers want people back in the office. (CNBC, April 2021)
So, if this is to be the way forward… HOW do we make it work long term.
This is where we begin to move to hybrid collaboration models and from facilitating the work scenario to survive, to one where talent thrives within their organisations. We talk later about t
This also poses a cultural challenge, as companies redefine roles and generate new opportunities to hire a talented, engaged, and diverse workforce.
Capabilities and Competencies
This leads us to the changing shape of the workforce and the new challenges operating from a remote base with IT, technology and data-led practice poses for organisations.
Roles have shifted, not only in working location but in their process and capability requirements.
This is where there has to be engagement from business leaders across a multitude of departments to reassess the core of the roles people are performing and support them to do their role best with both training and new technology to make them more effective, efficient and driving toward company objectives.
Process
We believe that the biggest change in processes and the trend for 2022 is intrinsically linked to the above transformation in working practices.
The digitisation of the workforce, bigger reliance on remote workers and hybrid collaboration models have fundamentally forced a rethink of processes. What could have been a quick informal deskside chat may become a more formal Teams call, involving more stakeholders and unnecessarily burdening the productive talent in the workforce.
To overcome this, heads of department and management should:
- Reconsider their processes from the ground up – looking at the purpose of the process and the core objectives. This reflection is often quite culturally difficult and can cause conflict.
- Adopt a new lens through which the people operate within the process, whether remote working, IT skills or data and analytical competence.
- Consider the tools your talent has to complete the process.
- Revisit the data architecture – what do we know and what would be the panacea?
- Implement a pragmatic approach to technology and assume that both data architecture and platform provision may not be suitable in the new paradigm shift.
Data
We’re noticing more than ever, the overall management of a business’ data stores, including technology, governance, and people that manage them is becoming higher on the agenda.
The drive for better, evidence-led decisions to achieve a range of objectives from revenue growth to risk management is making businesses rethink how they collect, store, analyse and manage their data for success.
Businesses are simply handling more data than ever before, from customer data in CRM’s to supply chain data in platforms like SourceDogg it can be overwhelming.
We see many companies transitioning from ERP platforms that aren’t designed to fit the objectives of forward-thinking teams or legacy systems of documents and excel files held either on-premise servers, or even worse – individual computers and inboxes!
Even a shift to cloud collaboration technology doesn’t necessarily fix this pervasive problem, whether it’s Google G Suite or Office 365, the inherent problems of good data management remain. Is your mission-critical, supply chain data:
- Complete
- Accurate
- Relevant
- Consistent
And do you have good governance in place for this data?
This raises several challenging questions – do you have the technology, management processes and people competencies and capabilities to unlock the power of this data?
Technology & Innovation
As we’ve already discussed, many companies have invested in some sort of technology tools that helped them cope with the pandemic.
If we use the figure above, that 79% of organisations will adopt a flexible working (hybrid) model going forward, the investments into work tech stacks – including web conferencing tools, document collaboration tools, and team workspaces – are expected to continue into 2022.
But as we progress into a more mature digital transformation on the working location, this maturity must fall in line with the technology being deployed to help people complete their work effectively. This can only happen by auditing the tech stack against the role objectives and working practice as this is baked into the people and process elements of digital transformation in 2022.
New and innovative may be exciting, but the enthusiasm for solutions that promise a lot, deliver little and are costly or time-consuming to implement may be lower amongst the more risk-averse and traditional employees.
Summary
2022 looks to be a promising year of both recovery and reflection. On one hand, getting back to business as usual for the most part, but dealing with the inevitable hangover in the supply chain from the disruption of the last couple of years.
In addition, the reflective task of understanding the current people, process, data and technology platforms being used is a great place to start.
Maybe less of a New Years Revolution – and more of an evolution, digital transformation will be here to stay and many ambitious leaders and executives are already asking the question “What next?”
We’d love to show you around the SourceDogg platform and help you achieve your digital transformation objectives. Contact us for a personalised demo today.
