The winners and losers of the pandemic have already come into focus. Successful businesses have put innovation into overdrive by facilitating remote work, virtual doctor appointments, online shopping for groceries, and more. As prices shake every business to its core, the way out for organisations would be to accelerate innovation. But in these times of flux, it is easier said than done.
Impact on Innovation
Innovation has been the life-blood of businesses. We have seen how the pandemic affected and impacted several organisational models. “Most people agree that things that typically from a technology innovation perspective, that would have taken 3 to 5 years have all happened in 12-18 months”, Balaji Rengachari, CIO, Tata Consumer Products said while speaking at the ETCIO Spectrum 2021. Tata Consumer Products, from a business perspective, have only increased their pace during the pandemic. “There are some business initiatives that have gone faster than what we expected”, Balaji Rengachari adds. He explained that while a lot of innovation has gone further ahead, there are some areas where businesses need to look at ways to increase the pace even further. We know that a time of crisis is also a time for opportunities when it comes to businesses,
“I think one of the most critical factors that are going to step in is about how to do it at a faster pace. The market pace has to double or triple. If something was done in 30 days, then how do you do it in 3 days and eventually in 3 hours maybe”, Manoj Madhavan, CIO, Blue Dart. It all comes to how businesses can converge some of the technologies that are available around us to make sure that we are able to turn things around faster. “How do you stage-gate these things and embed them into your normal process; I think that’s the key element of how we can drive and create value in a short period”, Madhavan said.
One aspect of aviation that will suffer the most for several years is innovation. It is one of the sectors that got badly impacted by the pandemic “Airline sector is typically a very thin-margin business as we all know and the airlines which have succeeded around the world have been able to manage their cost-structure more efficiently than the others, and that’s where the focus is”, Sourav Sinha, Chief Information Officer, Indigo explained.
Innovation is not something that can start happening one fine day and have a start date and an end date. “It has to be a mindset, it has to be imbibed in the culture and DNA of the organisation and typically what has changed over this last year or 12 to 14 months is typically in terms of relevance and priorities”, Sinha added.
“We are all living in a world where we have to transform our businesses”, Tarun Sareen, MD, Asia Service Centers, Sun Life said. Businesses need to transform their technologies so that they go to the future. “There are two quadrants in which I look at innovation; one is internal, improvising on our stage through processing, efficiency, productivity, being digital-first internally. The other one is external; changing the way we engage with the advisors and their interactions with clients.”
Open Innovation- What it takes to be successful?
All the older companies who have been there for a long time, this is not the most structured model they have in place already. “Everybody is learning a little bit and doing something which is different, something they are not used to. If I look at it, there are five things that are needed to succeed in this”, Divya Kumar, Chief Data Officer and Global Digital Chief Financial Officer, IKEA Retail said.
The first thing she talks about is a “mindset shift”; the second one is a “top-down approach”- something that small businesses and teams cannot work on easily and requires strong faith and belief from management teams. Thirdly, she talks about companies “coming out of their comfort zones” and they should be willing to take more risks. Fourthly she mentions “focus” points where companies can co-innovate with other companies. Lastly, she talks about “choosing the right partners” because not every company is the right partner. This is a long term process, and so, an ideal partner company is necessary.
“Lot of people have been calling it the honeymoon period for digital because it is the first time ever that projects and initiatives are done in a matter of days and not even in weeks or months because a leadership team is aligned. That shows the opportunity that’s available from an innovations perspective”, Mankiran Chowhan, Managing Director – India, SAP Concur said.
The technology-driven innovations that were considered transformational in the previous era have now become table stakes for staying in business. Transforming for the business, customers and for one’s self has become the essence of transformation today. “Large scale movement of thousands of employees to remote work, rapid migration of commercial operations are all digital movements that have made a tremendous impact in the entire business environment. The digital transformations are over now. Organisations are figuring out what the gains are and progressing with the next phase of transformation and that’s where it’s about enhancing customer engagement, generating revenue, serving customers and employees through channels”, Chowhan added.
Accelerating Innovation in Organisations
Every business has its own way of implementing innovation into its business models for acceleration.
“Traditionally we have done it very physically, in the sense that we, of course, have planning tools but relied on home furnishing experience of our co-workers. During this (pandemic) period, what we did last year is that we bought a company called Geomagical labs which does 3D modeling. We bring in co-worker’s home furnishing experience into the planning”, Divya adds.
“We did tie-ups with Swiggy, Dominos, Flipkart, etc, to be able to reach the consumers for essential commodities better. That’s how we tried to take advantage of the digital technologies and be able to service our products to the consumer”, Balaji said.
“There is a huge focus across the companies on digital. As a leader, we are looking at the business outcomes and then also change the business operating models. We are making sure the entire workforce is productive”, Sareen said. A lot of virtual onboarding has also played an immense part in his company’s productivity.
“We have looked at innovation not only in terms of technology but people and process as well”, Sinha explained. They have done that in their in-flight operations for their cabin crew, pilots in terms of a touch-less environment. They maintain social distancing policies for customers on-board and on the ground as well.
“Even before anybody else was able to start delivering shipment, we were out there doing the job of managing the pick-up to delivery for Pan India,” Madhavan said commenting on his company’s acceleration. They were able to seamlessly scale up and scale down based on the pressure of the business throughout the pandemic.
“Part of our work is about finance transformations with companies. We are seeing an acceleration in decision making happening, whether it’s for people, paperless, mobile, cloud or different reasons but we are certainly seeing an acceleration happen for taking an inefficient process and making it efficient,” Chowhan added.
The covid-19 pandemic has altered the way we live, but it has also inspired innovation. The coronavirus may be the current accelerant but it’s also important to reflect on what the next drive will be.
