By Jessica Constantinidis, Field Innovation Officer EMEA, ServiceNow
You need to change. Your Middle East business is under pressure from a range of issues beyond its control. Inflation rates may be normalizing but there is still that lingering sense of looking to the horizon for the next crisis. And change is hard. What do you transform and how? You must figure this out because 2023 is a year for boldness. Macroeconomic factors will redefine your business if you do not redefine it first.
To be the author of your own destiny requires a pivot. You must discover your strengths and amplify them. The Middle East, and especially the Arab Gulf, has some experience in doing more with less. Past market shocks have inspired some great innovation here, with new business models that challenged the norm and exploited market gaps. This is a time for deep introspection and bold steps.
I’m sure all of us in business have, at one time, come across a success story and wondered how they did it. What is the secret sauce? The truth is, there often isn’t one. Innovation can often come out of a simple push to cut costs and increase margins. And that process is merely a matter of looking at everything you do, keeping what matters, and getting rid of what does not.
Where difficulties arise in this apparently simple exercise, they come from data volume and complexity. Sometimes the data is stored for the sake of it, but even when it is considered useful, there is an expense in collection, formatting, storage, and availability. All of these costs and burdens are targets for improvement. It is worth sifting data into essential and non-essential piles and then carefully considering how to store it properly so it can be used effectively.
This may sound like a rebuilding project, but it is not. Streamlining your systems and business architecture involves consolidating them into a single data layer that brings greater value to the sources and tools you already have. And there are business solutions in the market for doing that. Once you have done the consolidation, you can begin the amplification process.
Amplifying value starts with the people who know your business best. They can point to the most profitable revenue streams and the most valuable resources. These are the business stakeholders who are best placed to not only know what happens in the business on a daily basis, but to know which data can best be leveraged to increase efficiencies, cut costs, and gain insights. Assuming the data on hand is accurate, clean, and stored in a way that makes it readily available, automation and hyperautomation, including machine learning, can start to deliver smoother, smarter workflows; and technologies such as AI can deliver actionable insights that may even be predictive in nature.
Once this smart-technology layer gains momentum, it can suggest changes to practices and strategies that no human could ever have seen. And the humans who would previously have worked on these fruitless analyses can turn their talents to more imaginative areas that machines could never tackle. With human business acumen and machine insights working in tandem, your business is finally within reach of speed and efficiency savings, and an agility that allows you to alter operations quickly and reduce your time to market.
A smarter, more agile, and more cost-effective business is more profitable. And notice that we are not replacing humans with machines. We are using machines to give humans greater power over their data so they can get more value out of it and make smarter decisions. Humans train AI, they tweak it, and they supervise the use of its results to ensure responsible actions occur.
Here is an example of how this works. The UAE is home to some of the world’s busiest airports. As passenger footfall increases, problems can arise from queues at customs. But your data tells you about the passengers — where they are, what time their flight boards, and so on. By assessing the length of queues, the average wait time, and other data points, you can take action in real time, especially if you automate the analysis. Red flags can be raised when queues are too long. Alerts can be relayed to the appropriate teams to create more capacity. And given the right tools, you can even keep passengers updated, informing them of foreseen problems from schedule boards in the airport, or perhaps via mobile app before they even reach the terminal.
This can all potentially happen automatically, without human input. We know this because it is already happening at scale across industries in a range of enterprises, from Amadeus to Dubai Airports. Every business accumulates data. But often, it sits unassessed and unused. Until, that is, an innovative enterprise recognizes its value potential and puts it to work. If you are not one of these businesses, you can be. Your data mountain is just two steps away from delivering slicker workflows and smart insights that can shave costs and empower employees.
With data now available in a single pane, you then have the insights needed to perform the necessary pivot. The value you create will be a shield against the crises around you and all those that follow. This year, above all others, inaction is folly. Failure to invest now will mean that circumstances will dictate the terms of your future. Act, and the macro-environment will be the stage for your success, rather than becoming your puppet-master.
