Yusuf: Businesses Require More Resilience in 2022 and Beyond
Managing Partner at Verraki, a business and technology solutions firm, Mr. Niyi Yusuf, speaks on Verraki’s latest report and the need for business leaders to focus on growth, digital strategy, ecosystem partnerships and talent management, in order to remain competitive, among other issues. Emma Okonji presents the excerpts:
Can you tell us about Verraki’s latest report on ‘Trends and Leadership Priorities for 2022’?
As you are aware, the world has changed dramatically over the last decade. The COVID-19 pandemic and early adaptation and experimentation of digital-oriented service delivery models has brought necessary shifts in business thinking. The operating environment has equally become increasingly challenging, particularly for Nigerian businesses, with worsening insecurity, inflation, FX shortages, to mention a few. This is in addition to the changes that digitisation, innovation and technology has brought to the operating environment of businesses globally. Verraki Research put together the report: ‘Trends and Leadership Priorities for 2022 – What Matters Most?’, to highlight how businesses leaders can navigate these emerging challenges in the short to medium term. Indeed, we are again at that time in societal evolution when business leaders need to step back, take a breath, and consider how best to reignite growth sustainably. Some other priority areas for leaders as highlighted in the report include a robust digital strategy, ecosystem partnerships, digital talents, resilient supply chains and a working customer experience strategy.
How do you think businesses in Nigeria can reignite growth, given the present circumstances?
As of Friday 15 Apr 2022, Nigeria had only about 2,600 active cases of COVID-19, and the tempo of the economy has picked up significantly. The pandemic phase appears to be ending, unless a significant and more severe new variant of the virus emerges. Therefore, this is the best time for businesses to re-strategise and ensure that current business model, priorities and goals are aligned with their long-term growth ambitions. To reignite growth, it is important to first appreciate where one is coming from as well as the peculiarities of the present moment. For most organisations, the pandemic did slow the tempo of growth as they focused on survival and stabilisation, but for few others, it has been a catalyst that has supercharged their digital transformation, and growth. Given this background, the first line of action for leaders is an evaluation of the entire business model to establish and fix vulnerabilities that could have been exposed by the pandemic, or gradually embrace a new operating model where necessary. Leaders must then embrace emerging opportunities and challenges, and deploy ambitious, bold, and action-oriented leadership to create the required momentum for competitiveness, productivity, and sustainability. It is equally important for every business leader to clearly identify, analyse and understand its market niche. The business must then position competitively within this niche by offering exceptional customer experience. A third must-have is investment in the necessary digital technology. It is almost impossible to achieve any meaningful growth in today’s marketplace with obsolete digital tools, processes, and skill sets. This makes investments in digital technologies and talents non-negotiable.
What is business resilience and how important is this for leaders?
Good question. Let us reflect a bit on pre-pandemic Nigeria, when most businesses were just about to commence the implementation of their 2020 action plans. Then on February 27, 2020, the first case of the COVID-19 virus was announced, and the rest of the story is the new reality we are in today: supply chain distortions, business closures, job losses, remote work, fiscal crises, energy crises, among others. During unprecedented business disruptions and risks, some businesses struggle or fail, while some others innovate, advance, and even thrive. The difference is resilience. Business resilience is the ability of an organisation to quickly navigate unexpected disruptions while maintaining continuous business operations and safeguarding people, assets and overall brand equity. It goes beyond disaster recovery and often considers avoidance of costly downtime, reduce vulnerabilities and ring-fence business operations and market share. With rising uncertainties and technological disruptions, leaders must ensure that their businesses are wired to overcome perceived and unexpected distortions. There are few strategies that can help business leaders in this regard: accelerate digital adoption, diversify supply chains, explore untapped markets, invest in your workforce and be realistic about marketplace trends.
What is the best strategy for leaders pushing their businesses to align with digital disruption brought about by the pandemic?
The first and most important step is for businesses to realize that every business is a now a digital business, and that the need for digital transformation in every organisation remains existential. The pandemic accelerated digital investments, innovation, and awareness exponentially, fast forwarding digital transformation by decades. With this realisation, the leader must then institute a digital strategy that is robust and begins with the end in mind. Equally important is the institution of a digital culture that progressively and intentionally enhances the digital capabilities of the business, its people, and the broader stakeholders. Leaders must seek a realistic appreciation of vulnerabilities and opportunities, blend digital and corporate strategies, and rewire their organisation for agility. Leaders must approach digitisation comprehensively, embracing solutions that digitises operations end-to-end.
Does all digital strategy lead to a positive outcome for businesses?
Not all digital strategies are right for all businesses. A winning digital strategy is one that is uniquely suited to the organisation’s vison and mission, and that facilitates sustainable value creation. Broadly speaking, strategies are designed to help businesses win in the marketplace. Strategy distinguishes a business from competitors, so that it somehow stands out and delivers unique user experience that is growth-enhancing. Therefore, it is right to say that a digital strategy must be the ‘right strategy’ to produce positive or desired outcomes for the business. A digital strategy should eventually lead to the creation of a concrete plan or roadmap, guided by a clear understanding of what digital means for the company. A business must also determine if it requires a digital strategy, or digital transformation as both as closely related but differ in scope. Digital transformation is more holistic, and drives change in three areas: customer experience, operational processes, and business models. A digital strategy is most relevant to changes in business models and uses technology to create the capabilities a company needs to become a digital business. That said, it is important that leaders seek for professional help to create a winning digital strategy.
How do you explain data as the new currency for any organisation?
In this new digital world, expectations and possibilities are increasing exponentially and this is made possible by data. It is said that 90 per cent of the world’s data was created in the last two years, and the global volume of data doubles every two years. Much of these data consist of personal details: where people have been, what products they have bought, what movies they like, which candidates they support, and the list is nearly endless. Today, as customers continue to demand personalised experiences, the large amount of data being made available by the billions of connected devices makes it easier than ever before for businesses to meet these expectations. Indeed, data has an economic value that can be bought, sold, and traded. As a starting point, leaders must ensure that the data collection strategy is robust and addresses the immediate needs of the business in a forward-looking manner. This is because data-driven decisions are only as good as the data they are based on. To efficiently utilise the power of data, leaders must invest in good big data technologies to evaluate, process and extract insights from data. This data infrastructure can be on-premises, single-cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid-cloud implementations. Equally important is the recruitment, training and retention of data analysts, data engineers or data scientists who will bring needed data analytics capabilities to the business and help transform data into business insights and intelligence to aid management decision. The digital age is here, and the opportunities are real, and big.
Your report mentioned ecosystem partnerships as one of the priorities leaders should focus on. How important is this?
Consider ecosystem partnerships as a network of partners a business creates and nurtures as part of its growth strategies, particularly with regards to facilitating innovation and new market opportunities. Specifically, ecosystem partners can facilitate partner-sourced/influenced revenue, access to new audiences through co-marketing, as well as help in co-development of new solutions. Ecosystem partnerships can be in the form of technology, channels, or strategic business partnerships. Let us look at an example- Stripe, a US based Fintech reportedly has 848 partners within its partner ecosystem. This includes 785 technology partners and 62 channel partners which include MySQL, Salesforce, and Google. To build ecosystem partnerships, leaders must understand who their customers are, the customer needs, their businesses address, and companies that provide solutions that address same or other needs of the customer. It may be instructive to focus on organisations that provide complementary products and services. This ensures that growth within the ecosystem is reinforcing. As technology continues to break barriers across sectors and business models, leaders must leverage the increased interconnectedness and interdependence of businesses to drive mutually reinforcing growth. Ecosystem partnerships is crucial for business resilience and innovation. When your partner wins, so do you.
Is there any other priority area you would like to highlight?
I would consider talent management and employee fulfilment as a major focus area, if not the most important. At the core of talent management are talent acquisition and onboarding, training and development, and succession planning. The way every organisation implements these goes a long way to impact business growth and resilience. Every business leader must invest in quality talents, ensure they get the right training and motivation, and create a digital-friendly and inclusive environment for career fulfilment. Leaders must accept that the workplace has changed significantly and need to provide clarity on how the organisation will operate remote and flexible work productively. Employees should be provided with the training and exposure they require to apply creativity, critical thinking and constant digital upskilling to solve complex problems. Team members need a sense of belonging and value in other to bring their best selves to the workplace.
