Businesses that wish to take advantage of the global technological advancements are being encouraged to pay critical attention to some aspects of the tech world in order to advance and become competitive.
Ebo Richardson, Chief Enablement Officer at Absa Bank Ghana Limited while speaking on the topic – ‘Leveraging technology for business growth’ on the Citi Business Festival on-air series said it was imperative for businesses to channel some of their resources towards building robust IT structures in anticipation of unplanned occurrences in the business environment.
“As we enter into this fast-paced digitally-led era, COVID-19 or no COVID-19, we need to look at technology with a slightly different lens than we have done in the past. Technology is an integral part of every organisation now so we need to leverage on the right elements and push the right kind of leaders in order to get the outcomes that we want”, he stressed.
For Mr. Richardson, three kinds of investments remain major ingredients towards incorporating the fundamental technology elements to meet the dynamism of business growth amidst organizational threats.
1. IT infrastructure: The first is the infrastructure based on which everything rests. It includes the network that enables you to have connectivity and servers that run your application and must be as resilient as possible because you are going to have day to day challenges or unforeseen challenges like COVID-19. And it’s the resilience of the infrastructure that will come in handy and save you.
2. APIs and Microservices: When it comes to applications and the tools that you use to do the job, we have left the realm where you design application to do [a particular task]. We are now in the realm where you design capabilities that you can put together very quickly in order to respond to a need that you have or didn’t foresee. Things are changing so rapidly. Unlike 10 years ago, where you will have a five or 10-year strategy, it’s difficult to do that now. So you have to give room to a certain level of dynamism and durability to change. In the technology world, how we do it is that we don’t build a set of applications that enable [an employee to do a specific task]. We are looking at a set of capabilities to enable the employee do what kind of task when the time comes. That is done through technologies called APIs and Microservices. That is the future because that is the best way to enable us respond to uncertain future and rapidly changing landscape.
3. Systems: Systems lead to culture because that is what will always drive the energies towards the goals that you want to achieve. But certain goals focus on the mind and efforts. Both are required so you need to put in place systems that will create capabilities for you particularly in these times. But you need to have the goals of where you are channelling your energies into in order to ensure that you arrive at the right set of outcomes.
About Citi Business Festival
The 2020 edition of the Citi Business is with a line-up of radio and TV programs.
It will feature virtual business forums and will be live on Citi TV.
The month-long festival of business events and on-air activities provides inspiration, business ideas, and information for persons who are starting, building or growing their businesses.
This year’s edition of the Citi Business Festival is sponsored by Absa Bank, GIPC, Citi 97.3FM and powered by the most comprehensive business news website; citibusinessnews.com.