Book Image

Enterprise Agility

By : Sunil Mundra
Book Image

Enterprise Agility

By: Sunil Mundra

Overview of this book

The biggest challenge enterprises face today is dealing with fast-paced change in all spheres of business. Enterprise Agility shows how an enterprise can address this challenge head on and thrive in the dynamic environment. Avoiding the mechanistic construction of existing enterprises that focus on predictability and certainty, Enterprise Agility delivers practical advice for responding and adapting to the scale and accelerating pace of disruptive change in the business environment. Agility is a fundamental shift in thinking about how enterprises work to effectively deal with disruptive changes in the business environment. The core belief underlying agility is that enterprises are open and living systems. These living systems, also known as complex adaptive systems (CAS), are ideally suited to deal with change very effectively. Agility is to enterprises what health is to humans. There are some foundational principles that can be broadly applied, but the definition of healthy is very specific to each individual. Enterprise Agility takes a similar approach with regard to agility: it suggests foundational practices to improve the overall health of the body—culture, mindset, and leadership—and the health of its various organs: people, process, governance, structure, technology, and customers. The book also suggests a practical framework to create a plan to enhance agility.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Enterprise Agility
About Packt
Forewords
Endorsements
Contributors
Preface
Other Books You May Enjoy
Index

Chapter 9. Technology

Until not too long ago, businesses across most industries viewed technology as a support function only. However, in today's digital era, technology has become one of the most important components of an enterprise, regardless of the industry to which the enterprise belongs.

Technology is now critical even for traditional industries such as banking, as indicated by Ralph Hamers, the CEO of ING Bank, who said:

"We want to portray ourselves as a tech company with a banking license."[i]

In the digital era, it has become imperative for businesses to have technology as an integral part of their strategic objectives. This is even more critical now that consumers have become technology savvy and expect businesses to create value for them by leveraging technological innovations. Technology needs to be at the core of a company, in order to enable the enterprise to leverage the fast-changing environment to enhance competitive advantage and to achieve customer satisfaction.

This chapter...