New-Age Smarts: Effective Ways To Keep Your Business Agile

If you’ve got a business, it’s crucial that you stay current to boost your enterprise. In this case, it’s all about implementing new approaches that work. Roughly 71% of companies are adopting agile practices, according to Capterra. With that being the trend, it’s good to know what that is, and how to adopt them. So what are the most effective ways of keeping your business agile?

What Does It Mean To Have An Agile Business?

Like the word “agile”, agile business is all about movement. Business agility is about an enterprise’s adaptability, resiliency and creativity in addressing market changes, according to Agile Business Consortium. Having those ensures that an enterprise has what it takes to remain current and competitive. If there was anything that the past year proved, it is that a business’s flexibility is crucial to its survival. Business agility is also about being able to pivot one’s services or products in a way that is both cost-effective and sustained in quality.

Use Resource Management Software 

A business needs to have effective resource management in order to thrive. This involves balancing both tangible and intangible resources like a clear schedule for people, projects, budgets, supplies, and many more elements. Traditionally, this was done manually with books and records. Now, you can tap into resource management software to get the job done faster and at less cost, as you won’t need a lot of people to keep things in line. It also ensures that all pertinent data can be accessed immediately so there’s less likelihood of miscommunication between your teams.

Always Measure And Quantify

Once you’ve employed agile practices in your business, it’s crucial to see if they actually work. A good way to do that is by measuring and quantifying key elements like employee engagement, customer satisfaction, operational performance, and financial performance. Having clear metrics to measure will give you a good opportunity to see where your enterprise’s weaknesses are. It also ensures that you are aware of what areas have drastically improved.

Create Multidisciplinary Teams

It is no good for a business if your employees constantly have to touch base before acting. After all, business agility is all about being able to adapt to situations swiftly. So it follows that your teams needs to be agile as well. Build teams that are capable of being autonomous, engaged, and committed to being agile. An effective way to do that is to ensure that your different teams have the right talent to support each phase of their project, such as someone who is well-versed in customer support, balanced with someone who has a good handle of operational technology.

Being agile in business is all about reading the writing on the wall and doing something about it. As with all new practices, there is trial and error involved. So when you’re thinking of adopting agile practices for your enterprise, it’s good to give yourself some slack. That way, you can roll with any setbacks and move forward with confident agile business.