Planning for the unexpected [business agility]

Over the last few years, companies have been focused on increasing their efficiencies and in that process have tried to become lean. They have documented business processes and cut non value-added costs. In doing so, they have ensured that business processes are executed consistently and at low costs. However, they have not focused on how to adapt these business processes quickly to external events. This is where business agility actually comes in. In measuring the latency between the appearance of an external event and the implementation of the appropriate change, companies measure their level of agility. Performance scenario planning ahead of time to hedge risks can reduce this latency. In this paper, the author describes the importance of combining the efficiency element of lean with a level of agility. Organizational change, business process redesign, application transformation, and infrastructure adaptability needs to be addressed to increase the business agility of an enterprise.