VIEWPOINT
HOW TO NAVIGATE THE CHANGING BUSINESS LANDSCAPE MARK ACKERMAN, AREA VP, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA, SERVICENOW, SPELLS OUT FOUR POINTERS FOR BUSINESS SUCCESS IN 2022.
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ear end. It is a time for predictions, is it not? We are supposed to look at the horizon and tell others with confidence what lies beyond. The past two years have made this easier. The pandemic closed off so many avenues to the region’s businesses that we could almost taste the future. Digital transformation, followed by digital transformation, followed by more of the same. Perhaps this year, we should take a step back. Perhaps we should look at where digital transformation has led us and concentrate on how we capitalise on our lessons and hone existing
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CXO INSIGHT ME
NOVEMBER 2021
practices into new winning formulas. So instead of predictions, I offer four pieces of advice to optimise digital transformation and other business areas in 2022.
1
Focus on the employee experience to get the full benefit from hybrid work Heading into 2021, arguably the safest prediction was “hybrid work is the future”. Companies came to the gradual realisation that employees, eager for more flexibility in their work lives, would no longer tolerate environments where remote work was not a given and as a consequence, several trialed hybridworking models.
As we head in to 2022, we will see which regional organisations will crumble and which will rise because of hybrid work. To ensure success of hybrid work models, companies should focus on the employee experience (EX) as much as the customer experience. Those that do will prosper. Those that do not will hemorrhage talent to those that do. EX is about how people navigate the information and solutions they need to be engaged and productive. With one-click ease, employees should be able to interact with all functions of the business (not just IT) from a single pane of centralised access, while being relieved of their mundane tasks by automated workflows.
