The ability to be flexible and create a business environment that embraces transformation is critical to success. The faster and more agile an organisation is, the more likely it will be able to capitalise on changes and even create business opportunities.
Companies are becoming increasingly mature, evolving from being reactive, to managed, more proactive and ultimately, adaptive. Indeed, becoming an adaptive organisation, companies stand to benefit from more efficient utilisation of resources, added flexibility and more timely responses, among others.
In saying this, organisations have uncovered that IT exists in a non-optimised state. So, although business tends to adapt to the market`s every-changing demands, IT is slower to change and doesn`t easily shift to meet these new demands.
When organisations reach the adaptive stage, they will automatically start making changes via manual efforts triggered by processes or through the automation of technology triggered by metric analysis.
With clear benefits to becoming adaptive, there is little doubt that organisations should start down this path. However, there`s still confusion on what becoming adaptive will really entail.
Understandably, organisations are unsure about exactly where to begin - IT or business - how much change should they anticipate, and what technologies should they leverage.
Business processes will certainly change, but it will be rare that they will change first. The more common beginning of the adaptive journey is getting your house in order, therefore, consolidating resources, simplifying operations and focusing on strong processes and service management.
Adaptive abilities will then be implemented in the IT infrastructure that includes applications and operations, thus allowing for flexible use of capital (human and financial) and sourcing which includes selective outsourcing of processes.
With this critical foundation built into IT, the infrastructure will now have the ability to support business processes as they shift to enable the adaptive organisation.
Historically, when anything new arises in IT, it requires massive change for adoption, and unfortunately many believe the same goes for the adaptive organisation.
This couldn`t be further from the truth, an adaptive strategy does not entail a "rip and replace" approach. Instead, it is about getting the most out of what there is. And while it does require some augmentation of existing technology and implementation of IT processes, companies don`t have to replace their current servers with blades or rip out the storage environment and replace it with a virtual SAN (storage area network).
The more likely scenarios are that companies will layer adaptive "glue" on top of existing capabilities. For example, organisations can create adaptive server capabilities by adding dynamic provisioning and virtualisation to existing infrastructure.
The ultimate goal is to create an IT function that delivers competitive differentiation to a business. And although outsourcing forms part of the adaptive organisation, this effort should be directed at functions that are non-core, commodity and separable with minimal impact.
It`s important to remember that the most adaptive organisations know where their strengths and weaknesses lie. This level of internal understanding in return fosters intelligent and targeted use of outsourcing. This is not outsourcing for the sake of outsourcing, but because there`s a real business logic behind it.
The time is now - companies must all consider how they will strive to become more adaptive. Failure to do so will result in the inability to benefit from new market opportunities, and ultimately competitive collapse.
Also, organisations should not view becoming adaptive as a single, daunting project, nor should they plan to replace all technology, but should rather strive to understand where their core capabilities lie.
Becoming adaptive is not a quick fix, it`s an end goal that take years of gradual transformation, but promises to bring tangible, incremental benefits that sees a better-operating IT infrastructure coupled with a competitive business.
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