Agility, Adaptability Are Greatest Strengths Amid Crisis

“Think of something unthinkable, and then make sure you have a plan for it,” NuoDB CTO Ariff Kassam recently told PYMNTS. “For example, what would happen if Amazon failed and went out of business in a matter of weeks? How would that impact your company? Could you access your business-critical data if that happened? Could you switch to another cloud provider quickly, or would it take months or years for your organization to change?” Read how NuoDB plans for such unthinkable scenarios in Black Swan, a special report exclusively from PYMNTS.

The following is an excerpt from Black Swan, contributed by NuoDB CTO Ariff Kassam.

Your Greatest Strengths Are Agility And Adaptability

2020 has surprised the world with a new type of black swan event, one that is unprecedented. How can businesses continue to operate and transact with each other throughout the sudden and rapid shifts in cultural norms and expectations during the COVID-19 outbreak?

For businesses of all sizes, this disease is disrupting global supply chains and financial operations. What we can bring into the future is greater depth and breadth for our business continuity plan

Every company needs a business continuity plan for various unexpected black swan scenarios, such as the dotcom bust in 2000, 9/11 and the global financial meltdown in 2008. Each time these rare events happen, we see severe consequences that seem difficult to predict. However, our preparations as business and technology leaders help us weather these types of storms.

So, while this pandemic is unprecedented, we must add this scenario to our plans going forward. To weather unpredictable events, organizations must have these key capabilities:

Agility

This trait is incredibly important for companies when it comes to responding appropriately to black swan events. Business processes and technical infrastructure must be agile enough to ensure a quick response to changing requirements. An agile infrastructure allows companies to accommodate surges or reductions in demand. A firm’s connected ecosystem should enable this agility, which means choosing technology partners that support it.

Adaptability

It’s now more important than ever to ensure that your company can adapt to changing environments. More black swan events – and, to a lesser extent, normal day-to-day business operations – require companies to be able to quickly adapt to changing drivers. If your payments systems can be brought down by a single point of failure, you need to build greater adaptability into your solutions.

Technology

Today’s technology enables a remote workforce, but is your organization ready to send staff home? We hire people who we trust to do a job well, and for many in the tech sector, employees can perform their work superbly from anywhere. This is an incredible benefit of cloud technology as we work to stop COVID-19 from spreading and overwhelming healthcare systems worldwide.

We need to learn from past black swan events so we can best prepare for and predict what may happen in the future. Think of something unthinkable, and then make sure you have a plan for it. For example, what would happen if Amazon failed and went out of business in a matter of weeks? How would that impact your company? Could you access your business-critical data if that happened? Could you switch to another cloud provider quickly, or would it take months or years for your organization to change? Cloud technology is critical for agility and adaptability, so make sure you can take advantage of your connected ecosystems without being locked into a single cloud provider.

Read more insights and tips in Black Swan from PYMNTS.