Agility in companies is on the rise, but customer orientation still has room for improvement

Especially in the COVID 19 pandemic, agility pays off for companies. This is shown by the current Future Organization Report of the Institute of Information Systems at the University of St. Gallen and the management consultancy Campana & Schott. The study examines agility in those companies that say they are already working in an agile manner. According to the report, 21.1 percent of respondents in companies with a very high level of agility rate their corporate environment as easier to predict. As a result, employees at agile companies felt better prepared for the crisis and were able to manage the transition to remote work more quickly.

Agility in companies has increased

"The Future Organization Report 2020 shows once again that rapid changes can be better mastered through high agility," explains Anna Adler, Director Corporate Development at Campana & Schott and publisher of the study. "This is an important step towards a resilient organization that can cope with new situations more easily. More and more companies in German-speaking countries have recognized this." Thus, the perceived agility in companies increases compared to last year from an average value of 4.7 to 5.5 (on a scale of 1 to 7). In this regard, companies no longer see agility as just a trend, but as a foundation for their future development. 40.9 percent of respondents perceive agility in their company as strongly pronounced, compared to 27.5 percent in the previous year.

Agile mindset already broadly anchored

The increasing agility manifests itself in a pronounced agile mindset, which 71.5 percent of the participants already have. The respondents feel that they are predominantly agile. They also dare to tackle new tasks where they do not know all the requirements from the start (85%). They are comfortable with change, new ideas, and new technologies (83%), and they consider themselves flexible to rapid change (74%). In addition, 86.3 percent of respondents say their work means something to them (Purpose). 84.2 percent can organize themselves well, 76.2 percent prioritize their tasks according to benefit, and 70.6 percent feel empowered.

"This year's report again impressively demonstrates the importance of employees and in particular their agile mindset in agile transformations," says Prof. Christoph Peters, Assistant Professor at the University of St. Gallen and co-author of the study. "In this study, we have decoded the agile mindset for the first time and not only provide insights into its dimensions, but additionally show the success-critical correlations of the agile mindset with company agility and customer orientation, among others."

The agile mindset also forms an important basis for moving from the mere introduction of agile methods and tools ("doing agile") to a consistent agile corporate culture and anchoring the principles in the minds of employees ("being agile").

Customer orientation still has a lot of room for improvement

A central factor of agility is a strong customer focus. Around 70 percent of respondents say that their company exists primarily to help customers. Two-thirds of the companies determine customer satisfaction regularly and systematically. But there is still potential, with just half of respondents recognizing a high level of customer orientation within the company.

Although a lot of data on customers is already available and regularly collected, companies make too little of it. Although they take note of the information (sensing), they hardly translate it into new or adapted products and services (responding). However, this feedback is a decisive competitive advantage for companies if they pass on knowledge about customers and their requirements with defined processes or underlying systems.

The customer at the center

"Our study proves that the customer centricity of companies in German-speaking countries still has room for improvement," says Christian Schmid, Co-Lead of the Future Organization business area at Campana & Schott. "True customer centricity includes not only sensing, i.e. collecting customer information, but also responding. This means developing new processes and offers with concrete added value for customers. Currently, this is only carried out systematically in a few cases."

While many companies have so far focused solely on the end customer, pioneers are already looking at entire value networks. All stakeholders in the network, such as business partners, manufacturers or service providers, are orchestrated around the end customer. This increases the overall effectiveness of value creation.

Source and further information: Campana & Schott