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Risk Aversion vs Growth: Showing Decision Makers Opportunities In Crisis

It cannot be denied that COVID-19 has greatly impacted the business landscape. 

Budgets and forecasted revenue have gone off course from their projected paths while business priorities and investments are shifting due to the vastly different economic conditions than what was anticipated for 2020.

Due to uncertainties brought by the pandemic, C-suites are focusing on conserving their cash flow and holding off on investments to keep further risks at bay.

In light of the current buying patterns, how do you persuade decision makers that your solution can be of immense help to their business continuity and growth? How do you reverse their risk-averse decision making?

 

Financial Uncertainty

 

Excluding industries that are thriving or unimpacted by the outbreak, the majority of businesses that are negatively affected have taken steps to tighten their financial belts.

According to our latest Executive Trend Survey with over 1,100 decision makers, 59% of top-level executives across Europe are revising their budget plans to ensure business continuity while 42% are preserving their cash flow.

The budgeting strategies are due to expected revenue drops in the coming months, whereby 44% foresaw an economic downturn in the next 6 months while 22% estimated decreased revenue throughout 12 months.

The financial setback is also affecting businesses’ financial plans for 2021 with 38% predicting a lower budget for next year, thus explaining the aversion to taking risks in technology and solution spending.

 

More Stakeholders Involved

 

 

Cost-saving measures and coronavirus aside, businesses have also been seeing a longer decision-making cycle as more stakeholders are involved in investments and spending strategies.

Back in 2014, the average number of decision makers in a purchase was 5.4, but has since risen to 10.2 in 2018, which can include multiple C-levels, executive board members and senior managers. When more individuals are involved in a purchase, the situation can become complex as each person has their own goals and objectives to achieve.

 

“As more decision makers join the debate – procurement, finance, legal – so the decision-making process becomes extended and watered down.”

– More Decision Makers. Less Decisions

Seraph Science

 

For instance, Gartner reported that CMOs expect to increase marketing investments in 2021, but with the ongoing pandemic, “CFOs will turn their attention to profitability, and marketing [tops] the list of functions where finance will look to trim expenses even further.”

Although both hold high C-suite positions, the two have different priorities as the CMO is looking to advance the brand while the CFO is focused on minimizing costs. This difference leads to struggles in reaching a mutually agreeable purchasing decision.

 

Attend our events: Get more insights on C-suite business needs at our upcoming events.

 

Reset Their Thinking

 

When diverse C-levels come together on a possible purchase, they usually settle on a decision that saves money and avoids risks.

While almost all the decision makers may find this outcome desirable, it may not necessarily be favorable or progressive for their business growth – and that is what you need to show them.

Let’s take marketing for example. During the coronavirus outbreak, only 7% of companies have seized the opportunity to invest more in marketing whereas 50% of brands have cut their marketing budget. However, budget cutting may not be the most strategic move.

According to Roland Vaile in his published work, The Use of Advertising During the Depression, businesses that increased their marketing and advertising spend during the recession saw faster revenues and recovery than their counterparts.

The same sentiment is also expressed in a recent post  by Peter Field, a marketing and advertising professional, whereby “if the resources are available, the arguments in favor of brand building are stronger.” 

Another case example is the cutting of cyber security budgets, which Chief Technology Officer of Barracuda, Fleming Shi, sees as a bad move as hackers are taking advantage of the pandemic to target vulnerable organizations.

Show decision makers that they are facing higher risks and greater consequences should they decide to save costs and not spend on solving important pain points.

 

Find Their Direction

 

Market experts believe that organizations should take this chance to invest in opportunities that were once hidden or were not in the forefront of their business plans, such as retraining and upskilling employees, integrating digital innovations, and developing e-commerce business models.

Some companies are also seeing business gaps and weaknesses due to COVID-19 implications, and are taking steps to rectify these concerns, including strengthening cyber security and updating data analytics.

As pointed out by Arthur D. Little’s article, the key is to make decision makers “look beyond the short-term crisis and start preparing for the new world” with focus on both obvious business trends and major areas of uncertainty.

No matter how much organizations want to save their budget, there comes a point when they must spend in order to continue their business growth or be on the road to recovery. Discovering their direction and going deeper into their needs help greatly in knowing the exact solution they require, and the risks they face if they don’t address their concerns.

 

Get more insights: Attend our events for the latest trends and topics on the minds of C-suites across industries.

 

Identify The (Real) Stakeholders

 

According to Google’s B2B Path to Purchase Study, 64% of the C-suite have the final say in signing off a decision, and among them are risk-active, risk-neutral and risk-averse decision makers.

CEOs tend to be relatively risk-neutral, but senior managers and other C-level executives who are not comfortable taking risks in business decisions may need more convincing. Therefore, determining the right executive sponsor and key budget approver of the project is pivotal in preventing delays in deal closings and moving investment discussions further down the pipeline.

In cases where the executive sponsor and approver are individuals with aversion to risks, involving ‘influencers’ in the decision can help the risk-averse chief executives to better see the benefits and returns of an investment. A total of 81% of non-C-levels actually have a say or influence on a purchase, and are able to convince the key approver on the final decision.

 

“Clearly, if you’re marketing only to the highest level, you’re overlooking the people who need to notice you.”

– The Changing Face of B2B Marketing

Think With Google

 

To Push Or Not To Push

 

The answer is not to push, but to assist. If they have available resources, organizations should take this time to implement technologies and solutions that have been held back in their plans.

As solution providers, the goal is to make the decision makers see beyond their current predicament and risks, and focus instead on growth potentials to strengthen their market standing and get a lead on their competitors.

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Evolving With The New Normal: Post-COVID-19 Survey

Management Events conducted a survey recently to learn how European businesses are adapting to the regulations that thousands of our EU delegates and solution providers are facing during our transition from physical to virtual events.

The responses highlighted a more concentrated effort from businesses to network in a socially distanced manner.

A major trend based on our survey shows that many would prefer to conduct meetings or attend events virtually as 70% are encouraged to not attend physical events in an effort to maintain social distancing.

Less than 30%, however, are interested in attending events that are related to their fields.

 

Engaging Decision Makers

One of the biggest concerns for virtual-based platforms has always been the absence of powerful face-to-face conversations that keep attendees engaged.

To maintain this social connectivity, Management Events introduced a variety of interactive elements that keeps our events engaging during an online networking session, such as Campfire sessions, roundtable and panel discussions, and matched 1-2-1 meetings.

Keep an eye out for our upcoming 2021 events for some of the exciting elements we have prepared, and take a look at our new format of C-level networking in the virtual space, connecting you to 20,000 top decision makers and 2,500 solution providers.

 

Moving Forward With Virtual Networking

Due to travel bans placed by the EU, as many as 80% of our respondents shared that their organization has placed restrictions towards international traveling. However, with fewer travel costs, businesses might be more willing to explore new streaming technology/virtual platforms to replace their networking strategies.

While there were interests by our respondents to attend smaller/intimate events, many chose to remain safe and practice social distancing by preferring to work from home as much as possible and network with other top-level decision makers through online or virtual applications.

 

 

Embracing The New Normal

The pandemic has shifted the way solution providers and organizations create business opportunities through event networking. As European companies continue to adopt more innovative solutions and technologies to further achieve their organizational goals, we expect to see virtual networking to be the new normal for years to come.

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Magical Journeys Towards Digital Retail

Over the past decade, the retail landscape has experienced eroding margins, the growth of e-commerce, declining visits to malls, the success of low-cost retailers, and changing consumer behavior/needs. As if that was not enough, the COVID-19 pandemic is still in full development. While many once-leading retailers have disappeared and more brands are in peril, often already since before the pandemic, others have managed to survive, and some even continued to thrive.

 

What drives innovation in retail today

Retailers need to understand that what drove the retail sector in the past differs from what drives it today. For John Brahim (CEO & AI Business Architect at Maistering BV), innovation in the global retail sector is partially AI-driven, highly virtual, and experiential. The pandemic fuels the fire, and strategic choices are imposing themselves much faster than expected. The real challenge to digital retail innovation is making good choices that are executable at the right speed.

 

Tips for managing innovation and resulting change

Change begets innovation and vice versa. Consumers now shop more mindfully and cost-consciously for local, sustainable, and high-value brands. They also consider their health, safety, and financial status often before making purchases. It is vital to take note of these trend changes to innovate effectively. Subsequently, Brahim understands that leaders can better manage growth and innovation through the following methods:

  1. Adopt and prioritize a “digital-first” approach to retail.
  2. Identify a portfolio of digital journeys from a mid-term perspective.
  3. Embrace new principles to orchestrate those journeys.
 

Fostering innovation through leadership

Innovation comes from everywhere. Leaders must possess the ability to tap into current digital trends and understand how the COVID-19 pandemic influences them.

They must also understand the changing consumer behavior in a digital world, having strong convictions on purpose, authenticity, value proposition, and business models.

A handful of global platforms dominate the world; thus, a retail leader must feel the digital consumers’ pulse to lead the race in digital innovation.

 

New digital technological roles in leadership innovation

To innovate in the digital world, one must practice a digital way of working. Get handsy with mobile technologies, conversational AI, and next-gen collaboration. Brahim states that leaders need to embrace digital technologies themselves and re-think management as they formerly knew it. Partly because it is hard to modernize businesses if one is old-fashioned and because the speed of digital innovation is murderous, requiring an acceleration in decision-making & execution.

Innovative leaders have many parallel-running business journeys. Each journey with a different impact and objective. Such leaders have to keep in mind local sensitivities and maintain constant contact with their teams. The game aims to gather insights and materialize propositions that lead to higher customer delight and profitability.

Maistering BV understood this and created the unique platform Master Collections. It addresses this topic by providing leaders the ability to run magical business journeys with essence, beauty, and impact in a way that classical retail systems simply cannot.

 

Customers, partners, and other stakeholders roles in innovation

Innovation today has become a collaborative, instantaneous, and solution-driven process. It is about undertaking experimental journeys with customers and partners in joyful, swift, rich, and impactful ways.

“Business leaders must be on their toes – listen to customers across all channels, understand their local and global buying choices, respect safety concerns in stores, and provides a seamless omnichannel digital experience.”
– John Brahim

Retailers and suppliers must engage in multiple collaborative journeys to reduce costs and enhance the experience. Both stakeholders must also learn how to speed up collaborative innovation.

 

What established leaders can learn from new innovative leadership

The retail sector in the post-COVID-19 world will undoubtedly find itself with an accelerated shift from bricks to clicks. There will be surges in AI implementation from demand forecast to supply optimization and cognitive digital consumer experiences.

Established retail leaders must adopt two things from digital leaders. The acceptance that software eats the world and the unconditional willingness to speed things up. The Holy Grail for established retail leaders is to undertake collaborative business journeys that combine speed, sophistication, and common sense feasibility. Established retail leaders still have unparalleled strengths in the latter.

 

Future trends in innovation

Although we continue to witness unprecedented change and innovation today, the real revolution is still to come. Brahim postulates that artificial intelligence (AI) will completely change the connection between consumers, retailers, producers, and the product portfolio itself. Soon we will see a whole new world of contactless collaboration, conversational interfaces, cognitive abilities, machine learning, and adapting algorithms, predictive software, applied robotics, and next-best suggestions reaching the consumer in a myriad of ways.

Business leaders will learn how to adopt AI technologies to solve new problems, create new ways of working, orchestrate magical journeys, and master their retail leadership art. As digital retail transformation accelerates worldwide, consumers’ expectations at each stage of the customer journey – be it prepurchase research or browsing, the shopping experience itself, or post-purchase experience sharing – are changing.

The adoption of breakthrough technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain will help brands and retailers address these changing consumer expectations in a timely and effective manner, thereby deepening customer engagement.

Master Collections, as a new category platform, offers leaders the perfect toolset to engage in digital journeys and naturally fosters the synergies with C-Suite peers and others who require guidance and empowerment as we master digital retail.

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Silver Peak & Zscaler: Making SASE Work for You

As part of their digital transformation strategy, many enterprises are actively migrating applications to public cloud infrastructure and Software-as-a-Service offerings. Enterprise IT objectives and expected benefits of cloud migration include:

  • Increased agility
  • Higher application performance and availability
  • Improved application accessibility for users
  • Reduced data center footprint
  • Lower costs

Unfortunately, the transformational promise of the cloud often falls short of meeting these expectations.

Why? Because traffic patterns have changed.

They have changed not only due to the migration of apps to the cloud, but also in response to today’s “work-from-anywhere” world. Users now access applications from anywhere, from any device and across diverse WAN transports, including residential broadband.

IT has quickly come to realize that making incremental investments in their legacy routers and firewalls didn’t yield the desired outcomes. Traffic bound for the internet was still backhauled to the corporate data center, adding unnecessary latency and negatively impacting application performance.

What’s required is a complete transformation of the wide area network, and this transformation has fueled the biggest evolution of the WAN in two decades: the software-defined wide area network, or SD-WAN.

The combination of workers accessing business applications from home and remote locations (e.g. airports, coffee shops), along with the explosive growth of IoT devices is rendering the traditional enterprise security perimeter ineffective. Today’s cloud-first enterprise must arm workers with a security service solution that follows them wherever they go.

As we’ve already seen, continuing to use a hub-and-spoke architecture, backhauling internet-bound traffic to the data center for advanced security inspection, results in a sub-optimal user experience. What’s needed is a complete transformation of security infrastructure, and this has driven the rapid adoption of modern cloud-delivered security services.

WAN Transformation + Security Transformation = Digital Transformation

Only by transforming both the WAN edge and security architectures can the full promise of the cloud be fully realized.

In a report published by Gartner in November 2019, they proposed a new model called the secure access services edge – SASE for short. The model describes the integration of core WAN edge capabilities such as SD-WAN, routing and WAN optimization at the branch locations with a comprehensive array of cloud-delivered security services such as secure web gateway (SWG), firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), cloud access security broker (CASB), zero trust network access (ZTNA) and more.

A key design principal of SASE is the transformation from complex hardware-laden branches to thin branches with cloud-native security services. The promises of the SASE model are many:

  • Improved user experience by delivering better application performance by breaking out cloud traffic locally over the internet from the branch
  • Operational efficiency by simplifying branch WAN infrastructure and through centralized orchestration of application, network and security policies
  • Reduced risk with consistent, always-up-to date, business-driven security policy enforcement
  • Increased business agility by significantly reducing the time to bring new sites and applications online or to update application and security policies

But simply adopting just any SD-WAN solution and cloud security offering is not enough to maximize the return on cloud investments described earlier.

While those individual solutions might deliver on the app performance/availability and accessibility promises and enable the shrinking of the data center, that approach falls short of delivering increased business agility and lower costs. And it won’t address consistent security policy enforcement across all users, locations and devices to mitigate risk to the enterprise.

What’s needed is fully automated orchestration of the WAN edge network functions and cloud-delivered security services. This is a 1 + 1 = 3 benefit for IT and the enterprise.

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600Minutes Executive IT: How IT Leaders Develop Agility In Times Of Crisis

The recent 600Minutes Executive IT held by Management Events revealed in-depth insights from over 300 top-level IT executives and solution providers from leading organizations in Sweden. 

In group discussions during the virtual event, CIOs across the industries lent their thoughts and opinions on leading in the virtual landscape and through times of crisis.


 

Virtual Leadership

As known the world over, the coronavirus outbreak has brought unprecedented circumstances to the business world, from urgent business continuity planning to lengthy operational disruptions.

As C-suites sought to keep their business operations running, remote working was widely established throughout organizations. But for many IT leaders, managing and leading a remote workforce is a novel experience, and they are faced with different levels of difficulties.

 

Obstacles and Challenges

There were multiple concerns expressed by the event attendees during the group discussions.

One IT executive mentioned that it’s a challenge to keep track of how employees are doing while another stated that it’s harder to pick up on what’s going on when they, as the leader, are working away from the team. Yet another participant expressed worry on the flow of information not reaching the teams.

But among the many hurdles, face-to-face communication and socialization seem to be the most worrying aspects of remote work. Participants were concerned on how to keep the teams together when they’re no longer physically meeting or interacting with each other.

This is especially the case for new hires, whereby organizations need to ensure proper onboarding of the employees and help in building relationships with the current teams. As an IT leader aptly explained, “Now, we are riding on the current company culture from the physical office, but for new hires, there’s a challenge to transfer the silent knowledge and culture that ‘sits in the walls’.”

Stagnancy is another worrying issue among leading IT directors and C-levels as teams don’t share as many ideas or brainstorm as much as before.

As one IT leader commented, “New ideas get lost as most meetings are within the same function. It’s important to keep in contact with decision makers in other functions in order to develop new ideas.”

Other worries and issues presented during the discussions were:

  • Investing more 1-to-1 time for the same output;
  • Difficulty in following up with their teams and getting concrete actions;
  • Lack of boundaries between work and non-work, resulting in potential burnout;
  • Struggles in starting new projects; and
  • Micromanagement.
 

Positive Outlook and Solutions

Even though there are concerns with coordinating a remote workforce, a number of participants are positive that working offsite, or telecommuting, can bring good results. As one attendee stated, “[Remote work] should not be seen as a cost, but an opportunity.”


 

For instance, a decision maker participating in the group discussions claimed that due to the outbreak and subsequent remote working situation, there’s now a stronger focus on innovation, which can help companies to discover business opportunities that were once neglected.

Others corroborated with his statement, saying that the coronavirus inadvertently led to the organization gaining momentum in digitalization, and they should use the ‘new normal’ as a chance to initiate strategic changes.

One example given is the use of iPads for the company’s operators for communication and training purposes, which in the past would have taken a very long time. Others mentioned how their organization now works more digitally and has increased efficiency in some areas, and how people are more innovative without so many contradictions.

 

As an IT director said, “Productivity increases during periods where we are forced to be more innovative.”

 

Additionally, it was a general agreement among the IT leaders that working remotely led to more efficient online meetings as staff seems more prepared, with specific agendas and smooth subsequent information flow and discussions.

Even though a number of attendees voiced out the challenges they’re facing in creating a successful digitalized workforce, they also suggested solutions to overcome the hurdles.

Some of the solutions for effective and progressive remote workforce management given by the participants include:

  • Developing policies and reinforcing them;
  • Raising morale through interactive and non-work-related activities, such as music quizzes;
  • Connecting more often with peers, teams and others from the company to gain different perspectives;
  • Having more dialogues with the workforce on handling the crisis and other work issues; and
  • Scheduling fun meetings and engaging sessions, such as a virtual coffee break, to replace physical socializing.

However, given the pros and cons of working remotely, quite a few of the top executives are looking to develop a hybrid solution of working from home and office.

 

Towards A Hybrid Landscape

“Remotely, productivity remains the same, or is even better, But for some cooperation and creative process work, there’s a need for physical meetings.”


“Virtual hiring is possible. However, physical meetup is still needed to hand over computers and phones, and to provide basic training on how to perform the job.”

 

The above statements are just a few comments from IT leaders who believe in having the best of both offsite and onsite worlds, and were discussing how to maximize value and efficacy in a hybrid office landscape.

Aside from providing possible solutions to the difficulties of building team relations and maintaining the innovation and development arenas, the hybrid solution also addresses the issue of trust.

As a participant mentioned, “If you don’t see your teammates and staff every day, more trust is required,” while another explained that, “In the past, it wasn’t part of leadership to ensure that their groups do their jobs from home.”

An IT executive in the discussion suggested a day or two per week working from home with the rest of the days in the office. Such a solution not only provides the flexibility for employees needing time to take care of family and personal business, but also answers the needs for department heads to have their teams for certain face-to-face tasks.

“A flexible workforce can lead to higher productivity,” a participant asserted.

 

Moving Forward

 As a top IT executive observed, “People react differently to the changing environment and working conditions.” However, overall, it seems that employees, and even customers, have adapted to the ‘new normal’ relatively fast, and companies are witnessing faster digital transformation and innovation than before.

Perhaps it’s true what a decision maker from the IT function said during the discussion – “We need more crises to develop further.”

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Dany De Budt: Smarter & Simplified Digital Transformation

The virus outbreak has pushed many companies to hasten the digitalization of their processes, especially with their back-office functions.

Facing challenges such as manual processes, paper-reliant procedures and limited operations visibility, C-suites are quickly realizing that their systems are in dire need of a digital overhaul.

Dany De Budt, Country Manager of the Benelux for Basware, shares how digitalization solutions help companies maintain continuous cash flow and business continuity even through the worst of times.

A SNIPPET OF BASWARE

A provider of cloud-based purchase-to-pay and e-invoicing software, Basware has helped to simplify invoicing and streamline procurement processes for clients in over 50 countries.

Offering services such as e-Procurement, AP automation and analytics, Basware’s solutions have been widely recognized by Gartner, IDC, Forrester Research and more.