Published on the 19/04/2023 | Written by Heather Wright

Surviving and thriving amidst disruption…

Adjusting to ongoing disruption and economic ambiguity has become the norm for businesses, but while resilience is a critical business imperative, there’s a big gap between aspiration and reality.

“Just 46 percent of executives believe they’re fully equipped to face disruption.”

A survey by analytics firm SAS of executives across 12 countries – albeit not Australia or New Zealand ­– found the vast majority of executives felt resilience was important for their business, with 80 percent currently investing in resiliency planning and strategy. But, after three turbulent years of disruption, 53 percent of executives say their company isn’t where it should be.

Even fewer – just 46 percent – believe they’re fully equipped to face disruption and struggle in addressing challenges such as data security (48 percent), productivity (47 percent) and driving technology innovation (46 percent).

The report, Resiliency Rules, says just 26 percent of organisations covered by the nearly 2,500 survey respondents were deemed highly resilient. Twenty percent were classed as having low resilience.

While the resiliency gap might be today’s reality, 81 percent of respondents nonetheless believe resilience is attainable with the right guidance and tools.

The five core resiliency rules 

Getting the right data and analytics into the hands of executives is a key step in starting to close the resiliency gap, says SAS, which launched a free ‘resiliency assessment tool’ based on the resiliency index alongside the report. It enables companies to check out how they stack up alongside other organisations in each of the five principles the report says organisations need to adapt and keep pace with – or outpace – market changes.

• Speed and agility: The ability to adapt quickly to market changes and remain competitive. High resiliency executives are using technology tools including data analytics and AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, IoT, data visualisation and even augmented reality (40 percent) more than their less resilient counterparts.
• Equity and responsibility: Ensuring strategies and solutions are ethical, equitable and sustainable to help build a reputation as a trusted, responsible corporate citizen.
• Curiosity: A drive to seek new information, explore new possibilities and ask the right questions as a foundational imperative to find new ways of working, develop new innovations and better adapt to changing market conditions. Respondents reported using data and analytics to encourage curiosity by improving data literacy, analysing and tracking performance, motivating and rewarding employees.
• Innovation: The ability to unlock new business models, workflows, solutions, products or services through technology. The report says organisations are harnessing data to help with learning and development programs, identifying skills gaps and decision making to ensure innovations are grounded in the practical needs of the organisation and the audience it serves. But while 78 percent of high resiliency executives believe data insights drive new innovations, just 17 percent of low resiliency executives believe the same.
• Data culture and literacy: An organisational culture that values data and evidence-based decision making and a workforce skilled at understanding and using data and analytics to power the way they work.

Speed and agility topped the list, considered the ‘most important’ rule to adapt quickly and remain competitive. Across the board, high-resiliency executives placed higher value and invested more than low-resiliency executives in each area.

More than 90 percent of executives cited data and analytics as important in achieving each rule. They also turn to data in the face of disruption and view it as important to a resiliency strategy. Businesses deemed ‘very resilient’ were more likely to implement a data strategy (93 percent) than their less resilient counterparts (22 percent) and nearly all high-resiliency executives (96 percent) used internal and external data and analytics to inform decision making.

And the hinderances to implementing resiliency? Unsurprisingly, they’re tied largely to a lack of investment and data quality.

A key takeaway from the research is the role of data and analytics in implementing the resiliency rules. Nearly all (96 percent) of the highly resilient executives say they use internal and external data and analytics to inform decision making. That data included sales, operational, inventory and supply chain data, along with customer and website analytics and social media data on the internal sources front, and transaction data, market research, shipping, government, industry and employment trends data from external sources.

They’re also more likely to claim to implement data tools more than their less resilient counterparts (93 percent versus 22 percent).