Building Resilience in

Turbulent Times

During times of economic turbulence, businesses are

building resilience and trust by delivering at speed, with
agility and visibility. To manage through the crisis and thrive
long into the upturn, organizations need to understand the
challenges and focus on these pillars.

Overcome the challenges

Uncertain times bring challenges for companies.

Enabling remote Optimizing supply

employees chains

1. Provide remote workforces with secure access to 1. Keep delivery promises while lowering stock
critical systems cost
2. Deliver support for fast decisions from real-time 2. Speed up reaction time to market trends
data
3. Simplify global supply chain model and
3. Provide intelligent processes for seamless outsourcing
teamwork

Managing Building intelligent

finance IT

1. Create new business models 1. Innovate despite IT complexity

2. Focus on core competencies 2. Reduce error and ineffectiveness of manual
processes
3. Build financial reserves
3. Accelerate business agility in response to
changes

The pillars of resilience

Businesses can survive economic downturns and emerge with greater strength. In a Harvard
Business Review article, McKinsey analysts have dubbed businesses that have successfully done
this in the past ‘the resilients’. Here’s how companies emerged strong from previous turbulent
times.

Drive deeper customer relationships Focus on core competencies

Enhance customer intimacy by creating new Build on key differentiators and rely on a
business models that resonate with ever- network of third parties to manage
evolving buying habits and preferences, for secondary capabilities including production,
example, by offering value-added services logistics, sales and services or even
in addition to products, usage-based billing elements of design and finance.
and experience feedback loops.

Streamline operations Retain working capital

Adjust supply chains, deploy new business Understand new business patterns to
models and realign workforces rapidly to manage resources and costs, so the
avoid disruptions that can reduce sales and business operates with preserved working
stakeholder confidence or escalate capital.
operational costs.

Build balance sheet reserves Adopt business intelligence

Increase financial flexibility and optimize Use artificial intelligence (AI) to understand
spend while building balance sheet reserves rapidly changing conditions and automate
to survive a recession and thrive during the processes while finding new patterns to
recovery. make faster, more accurate decisions that
seize opportunity.

Develop innovative IT Maintain business continuity

Build a strategy for speed, agility and Keep business running by protecting
continuous innovation which strengthens operations and managing change quickly to
every link in the data chain, from capture minimize disruption for customers,
and processing to reporting, analysis and employees and stakeholders.
insights.

Build systematic resilience

Intelligent systems can provide the speed, agility and visibility needed to
build resilience during turbulent times and emerge strong during recovery.
It can help you rapidly adjust to changes with your employees, customers
and supply chains while overcoming the challenges facing finance and IT.

SAP is here to help

▪ Deploy new business models and realign workforces through deep integration and industry
expertise.
▪ Get ready for growth by understanding customer needs to meet changing demand.
▪ Better manage resources through tightly connected systems, dynamic planning and
synchronized logistics.
▪ Retain working capital, build reserves and seize opportunity by using AI to understand
emerging business patterns and make better decisions.
▪ Avoid IT complexity through centralization and standardization of intelligent ERP.
▪ Provide continuous innovation and ensure sustained resilience through an in-memory
architecture which removes latency.

Learn how intelligent enterprises drive digital transformation during times of turbulence in the
IDC Market Spotlight.

See how intelligent ERP can help: SAP S/4HANA.

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