The Evolution of Business 

As we approach another new year, with all its possibilities and renewed potential, this is often a time of reflection and development. This should be none more true than in your business. Evolve or fade; that is the reality of business today. Continuous, consistent transformation is absolutely necessary to keep pace in an age of unprecedented technological advancement and increasingly shifting consumer demands, and there's no better time to start than at the cusp of 2015.

Businesses need to continually strive to find a better way in order to stay competitive and relevant in the marketplace, either through a fundamental transformation or constant evolution over time. Businesses that have withstood the test of time, like Corning - who transformed from manufacturing glass casings for the light bulb at its founding in 1851 to currently developing leading fiber optics and electronic device technologies such as Gorilla® Glass - understand that adaption is innate to continued business success.

The trends impacting the evolution of business models today are unparalleled in their force and number. A recent survey explains that "business transformation has taken ahold across the broad corporate landscape due to the confluence of several important triggers, including a tipping point in globalization, a major slowdown in Western economies, significant shifts in technology and energy costs, and the challenges of regulatory compliance." Businesses must take note by strategically approaching these trends through continuous alignment of their business model. Flexibility and keen perception to changing environments and consumer demands are key, as even these transformation triggers will evolve and change over time.

So, where do you start?

ASSESS | Take into consideration the following when determining a change in your business:

• Consumer Demands
• Industry Trends
• Regulatory Drivers
• Economic Influences
• Market Competition
• Internal Revenue Streams and Cost Structures

SHAPE | Establish your strategic vision, and define the goals and objectives that are essential to accomplishing it. Organizations today must actively anticipate the needs of their customer, continually striving to be one step ahead of market trends while also accurately identifying how to achieve it within their business.

ALIGN | Align your people, process, and technology to find a better way. Your vision, influenced by the trending transformation triggers in the market, will guide your business' path, but in the end, leaders must align their business model to fit their direction. Define the depth and scope of your evolution, taking into consideration internal processes and procedures that are the foundation of your back-end business. The current state of your business must be built on solid internal acceptance of any of the practices you wish to bring to market. You cannot successfully bring a service, solution, or product to the market - even if there's established consumer demand - without embracing the technology and change in-house first.

EXECUTE | According to research, over half of businesses undergoing a change fail at achieving their desired trajectory. "In the current complex and fast-changing business climate, organizations often underestimate the significance of operating model refinements necessary to effect transformation across people, process, technology, data management and risk management components." Don't be a statistic; plan before you leap.

Change is inevitable, and today's world is moving faster than ever. Peter Drucker knew it and in 1992 penned an enlightening and altogether spot-on expose on the nature of transformation.

"In a matter of decades, society altogether rearranges itself - its worldview, its basic values, its social and political structures, its arts, its key institutions. Fifty years later a new world exists. And the people born into that world cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born. Our age is such a period of transformation."

If your business wants to remain relevant during a time that is seeing extraordinary transformation and technological advancement, it must evolve. Constantly. The process of change is not a check box, completed and removed; it is an ongoing frame of mind, engrained in to your business culture through every decision and every process. Business leaders cannot sit stagnantly in a state of complacency with their current revenue stream, because even if you are not adapting, the market and your competition are.

At Eide Bailly Technology Consulting, we are constantly realigning to the needs of our clients, expanding our services and solutions to continually find a better way to drive our clients' businesses forward through the use of technology. This has been realized recently in the growth of our ERP presence in a thriving, new market. Visit our newsroom to learn more about our expanded expertise and how we're transforming to provide additional value to our clients.