Future-proof your business using the technology assets you already have

Global pandemic, economic sanctions, cyber-attacks and malware, labour shortages, supply chain disruptions, the rise of GenAI. These are just a few of the ongoing challenges that executives have had to address in the last three to four years.

How do you even start to future-proof your business given the pace of change?

The good news is that you probably don’t have to buy a lot of new technology. Maximizing your existing technology assets so they are solving core business needs is the best way to future-proof your business against whatever’s coming. 

Here are four ways you can increase your ability to make high-stakes decisions with speed and confidence by leveraging the assets you already have:

• Know your vendors: Bring your tech vendors into the conversation. Get to know what their roadmaps look like to ensure you’re getting the most value from the technology investments that you have. Keep an eye on future enhancements, upgrades and new services. Many of the mature technology vendors are solving problems with other customers that could be leveraged for your business as well. Look for opportunities to solve some of those problems together.
• Be strategic about your data: Maybe you haven’t been great about keeping your data up-to-date; maybe you relied on paper until a decade ago. Don’t let that stop you. You don’t need to go back and clean (or prepare) 20 years of data — you can derive significant value from what you already have. Start small, and proceed use case by use case, tapping into your data to create business value. Incrementally, you’ll be cleansing and enriching your data, without investing millions into new tech. 
• Automate and focus: The manufacturing engineering industry concept of Runner, Repeater and Stranger events is applicable across industries. Often, we focus a lot of our business efforts on preparing for the Stranger events, which are incidents that happen once in a blue moon, like a pandemic or a 100-year flood. But if you use your technology assets to automate or streamline Runner and Repeater activities — those basic tasks and actions that take up 80% of your day — you’ll have more capacity to tackle strategic initiatives to strengthen your readiness. Focus your efforts on the areas of your business that are constrained; these may be physical assets, processes, or people. By using technology to alleviate the bottleneck and unlocking value there, you will free capacity to address other challenges. (And you’ll probably save resources.)
• Invest in digital twins: A digital twin is a virtual representation of an asset (object, system, process, etc.) that incorporates analytics and data visualization to help you make critical decisions much faster. By implementing digital twin technology, organizations can proactively modernize existing assets, automate, and streamline operations to drive efficiencies, as highlighted by the use case below:

A public sector organization in Australia has created a virtual 4D model of a city’s natural and built environment to enable simulations of future developments. Using the digital twin drives efficiencies in the decision-making process around urban planning, enhanced collaborations for infrastructure development, and improved prediction and management of urban challenges (e.g., traffic congestion and environmental changes).

Remember, you can start small with your digital twin program. Advice to our clients:

You don’t have to spend your way into future proofing. Becoming a business-led, technology-enabled company is the best way to ensure you can move forward more quickly when new priorities arise. More good news: it’s possible to do this with your existing assets and without the need for excessive new spending, if you’re strategic about how you incorporate technology into your planning.