Business Agility: The Key to Truly Effective Marketing

The pace of change in the business world isn’t slowing down. To meet that pace, organizations need to fundamentally rethink how they function: using rapid planning cycles, iterative workflows, visualization, and more to work smarter instead of harder.

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Less Control, More Empowerment

When managers and leaders are freed from the need to closely manage and control, they can begin to actually empower those beneath them to accomplish more.

Continuous Improvement

Nothing in business stays the same forever. By cultivating a culture built around continuous experimentation and improvement, you can ensure your business is always evolving to meet the needs of its customers.

Work That Actually Moves the Needle

Doing the right work at the right time means boosting your impact without boosting your risk of burnout. Teams feel better about their work because they’re able to actually move the needle on key priorities.

What Is Business Agility?

At its core, business agility is about embracing the change that defines the business world today. By utilizing rapid planning cycles and iterative workflows, organizations are able to quickly and efficiently adapt to new circumstances while delivering value to their stakeholders.

At the same time, rigorous prioritization, workflow visualization, and a strong Agile mindset enable teams to identify and tackle the right work at the right time. The result is teams that are more effective at getting things done without needing to overwork themselves toward burnout. This is how Agile businesses are able to achieve significant performance improvements that are actually sustainable in the long-run.

This entire approach to work originally came out of the software development world. There, work took far too long, resulting in costly projects only reaching customers by the time they were already obsolete. Rigid structures and hierarchies created silos that created immense amounts of rework and other inefficiencies.

Agility was developed specifically to tackle these problems.

Since then, Agile ways of working have been successfully adapted to nearly every function as well as at the organizational level. These more flexible, adaptive, responsive, and customer-centered organizations are then able to outperform their traditional counterparts.

Explore Business Agility

: Another way of appreciating the difference between Agile and traditional business models is to think of them as machines and organisms. Traditional business models are inspired by 19th century factories, using rigid structures to pursue efficiencies at all levels. That worked well in its time, because the business environment didn’t change very quickly.

However, today adaptation is far more important. That’s why the Agile business model functions more like an organism: evolving, adapting, and constantly changing itself to better suit its environment. Machines are efficient but brittle, while organisms are highly adaptable and robust.

That all may sound great in theory, but what does the Agile business model look like in practice? For one, it embraces flatter, more adaptable organizational structures. By rethinking the organizational model, managers shift their focus to people development, allowing senior leadership to connect with execution teams to ensure tight feedback loops that move the needle on KPIs.

Agile business models also strive to eliminate silos to ensure useful information can flow freely throughout the organization. But on a deeper level, they’re built on a shift in management mindset. Agile managers eschew old-school command and control in favor of servant leadership. Here, their focus is to provide the strategic goals and support teams need to uncover the best way to achieve those goals.

Compare Traditional & Agile Business Models
: Many organizations looking at business agility already have some experience with Agile software development, so it makes sense to wonder about the connection between the two. First, it’s true that Agile got its start in software development, but that doesn’t mean software is the end all be all of the Agile world.

The Agile ways of working originally created to serve software development today are just as applicable to HR, procurement, sales, marketing, and running entire organizations. In fact, a major reason for this proliferation has been the fact that Agile teams of all kinds simply work better with other Agile teams. So while various functions each derive their own benefits from adopting Agile ways of working, those benefits also compound for the organization as a whole.

That brings us to business agility. By taking the Agile mindset and practices that have proven themselves so effective in software development and other functions and scaling them across the entire organization, you get real transformation around how those businesses operate.

Even if a particular business is very traditional, operates in a highly regulated industry like finance or healthcare, or otherwise just assumes business agility won’t work for them, this isn’t the case. You can find successful examples of business agility everywhere from the Fortune 500 to small startups. The key is understanding how to approach that transformation and ensure you’re able to unlock all the benefits of agility in a single function like software development or across your organization.

Explore Business vs Software Agility
: Another common way of understanding business agility is by looking at 5 domains that encompass its main operating principles. The first is responsive customer-centricity. Agile puts customers and other stakeholders at the center, because if work doesn’t bring them value then it doesn’t have much purpose. But understanding what your stakeholders find valuable requires regular feedback so you can respond to their evolving needs.

Next is an engaged culture. In order to effectively experiment, adapt, and evolve, Agile organizations need to create psychological safety for their employees. When everyone feels comfortable sharing ideas, acting together, and sharing learnings widely, the organization is far better able to test and validate those ideas. This requires transparency, openness, and the breaking down of silos.

The third domain is people-centric leadership. Agile success requires abandoning old command and control styles of leadership. Instead, Agile leaders need to fundamentally change how they function. First, through leading by example. Leaders should help build the Agile culture the organization needs by being authentic, transparent, and accountable. Next, they need to practice servant leadership, focusing on how they can support team members to achieve their goals.

Another key domain of business agility is flexible operations. Agile organizations live and die based on how well they can evolve their ways of working. Operations are key to that evolution. Here, leaders need to create visions of the future before building a planning cadence around achieving those goals. In the process, Agile businesses must find the right balance between risk-taking and a base level of stability. This process is never complete, as operations must always look for new ways to improve processes, planning, and resource allocation.

Finally, there’s value-based delivery. Here, Agile values and principles really come to the fore as teams reorient themselves to deliver value to stakeholders faster. This is in part driven by ruthless prioritization, identifying the work that will deliver that value more efficiently and remaining focused on it until it’s done. This approach also means using fast iterative working cycles to regularly review priorities and take advantage of emerging opportunities.

Together, these five domains of business Agility encompass the primary ways in which Agile businesses operate. Note how they aren’t a rigidly prescriptive set of practices. Instead, they are broader principles that should inform the way specific organizations adapt Agile ways of working to their unique circumstances.

Understand Agile Business Better
: One of the worst mistakes some organizations make when embracing business agility is doing so for its own sake. Agile is only valuable insofar as it helps your organization achieve its strategic goals and serve its stakeholders. Agile for its own sake just doesn’t work.

That said, there are some key challenges that business agility can help organizations overcome. Thus, if your organization finds itself suffering from these challenges, it may be time to consider investing in business agility. One indication is that the work you’re producing frequently fails to deliver real value to your stakeholders. This may be because you’re not getting feedback from them often enough.

Another sign you’re missing some of the value business agility provides is that work is taking far too long to complete. This can result from many issues like bad processes, too much Work In Progress (WIP), or siloes. But using Agile tools like Kanban boards to visualize your work while tracking it via Agile metrics can dramatically improve your ability to complete work quickly.

Another issue that many don’t realize can be addressed with business agility is high turnover. Far too many employees don’t feel their work is useful or meaningful because they don’t see it bringing real value to their customers. At the same time, bad processes hamper their ability to get things done, creating a frustrating situation that contributes to high turnover. People on Agile teams tend to feel far more positively about their work, resulting in lower turnover rates.

5 Signs You Need Business Agility

What Are the Benefits of Business Agility?

To understand the benefits of business agility, it’s helpful to look at the key characteristics of an Agile business. How do they function? What does their internal culture look like? In our experience here at AgileSherpas, we’ve seen five main factors that really set Agile businesses apart from their competitors.

The first is a shared purpose and vision. When Agile leaders lay out a strategic vision for the organization while empowering execution teams to find the best ways to achieve that vision, you get fantastic organizational alignment. It’s clear what everyone is working towards and, through tools like portfolio kanban, it’s clear how everyone’s tasks and projects contribute to that goal.

Next, although senior leaders have their own roles, the organization generally has a flatter structure with more accountability. When leadership is about empowering people rather than managing them, you end up with less hierarchy and more accountability (though this doesn’t mean punishment). People have the space and resources to experiment and find better solutions to organizational challenges.

A closely related characteristic of an Agile business is the feedback loops it uses to test ideas. Continuous improvement is not just a set of practices they do but a core part of the organization’s culture. Those feedback loops give structure to that experimentation, enabling teams to quickly learn lessons before applying them to generate real results.

Another characteristic that ties deeply into the others on this list is trust. All of this experimentation, accountability, lack of hierarchy, etc. relies on a safe and trusting environment. Without it, individuals won’t feel comfortable experimenting, sharing valuable insights with leaders, and calling out processes that need improvement.

Lastly, Agile businesses are ultimately driven by technology. While it’s a mistake to focus too much on the right Agile tools and neglect building an Agile mindset, the tools are still vital. They enable you to visualize your work, track key Agile metrics, and automate processes where possible. All of that helps drive the engine of transparency, clarity, and continuous improvement behind Agile success.

Explore 5 Trademarks of Agile Businesses

: Every organization, big or small, runs on processes. However, problems arise when those processes are no longer fit for purpose. In large organizations especially, it’s easy to assume the cost of change is simply too high. But even in smaller organizations, it can often take far too long to identify and address those bad processes.

Business agility tackles these problems by creating a dedicated space for identifying and discussing operational constraints. By holding these kinds of retrospective meetings on a regular cadence, it becomes far easier to identify areas where processes, technologies, and other tools just aren’t delivering what you need them to.

These meetings are also spaces to brainstorm ways to address these problems. That may mean trying new tools, using the ones you have differently, etc. The goal is to test these ideas to confirm whether or not they will bring you the operational improvements you’re after.

Taken together, this Agile approach to operations helps you both optimize the processes and tools you have and know when to make changes. The results can be felt in nearly every part of an organization as people have greater access to the things they need to perform at their best.

Supercharge Operational Performance
: One of the core tenets of business agility is doing the right work at the right time. The idea is that by doing so, you’re able to deliver far more value from the same amount of work. Or, as we like to say here at AgileSherpas: Agile is about working smarter, not harder.

This improved prioritization begins with understanding your stakeholders and what they actually find valuable. Then, by getting regular feedback from those stakeholders, you can ensure your understanding of their interests remains accurate and up to date. Armed with this vital information, Agile teams can ruthlessly prioritize a backlog of work to ensure the right tasks get tackled first.

Once work is in progress, Agile teams also use techniques like limiting Work In Progress (WIP) to ensure tasks get completed before new ones are started. This prioritization further helps shorten the time between beginning a task and delivering its value to your stakeholders.

Start Improving Your Prioritization
: A fundamental advantage business agility brings is the ability to quickly and efficiently adapt to meet changing circumstances. That includes things like intense competition and even economic downturns.

There are several key reasons business agility helps you perform better when times are tough. One is its focus on outcomes over outputs. Work is only valued if it can demonstrably move the needle on key priorities. By ruthlessly prioritizing this kind of work, you end up with organizations capable of delivering a lot more to customers without necessarily investing more resources. When economic realities make resources scarce, this capability becomes all the more invaluable.

Then there’s the way Agile businesses plan. Instead of expending substantial resources to make detailed plans months in advance (only to see them go out of date long before they’re fully realized) Agile businesses plan as needed. By using planning to set goals and then iterating around how to best achieve them, you’re able to evolve your planning as you learn new things.

Another advantage of Agile businesses is their increased use of experiments and Minimum Viable Products (MVPs). These are designed to enable teams to learn valuable lessons while expending minimal resources. So even when constraints are placed on them, truly Agile teams are still able to find ways to accomplish their goals and drive value to customers.

Learn How Agile Business Perform under Stress

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How Do You Measure and Access
Business Agility?

Being Agile for the sake of being Agile misses the point entirely. The purpose of business agility is to enable organizations to achieve strategic goals. Making that a reality requires the kinds of experimentation and iterative cycles that are built into the way Agile businesses operate. Continuous measurement and iteration form a foundational element to ensure that organizations reap the benefits of Business Agility.

If your goals aren’t measurable (like “being more Agile”) you can’t tell whether the changes you’re making are getting you closer to those goals. Without that information, there’s no reliable way to make continuous improvement a reality within your organization. But what does the process of selecting and using Agile metrics look like in practice?

You can break business agility measurement into three basic categories. The first is organizational efficiency, whose metrics focus on measuring the flow of work. Examples include predictability, efficiency, flow velocity, flow time, and flow load. Then you have strategic efficiency, i.e. your ability to meet OKRs, KPIs, and achieve employee engagement (NPS). Lastly, you have organizational competency, whether you’ve built a continuous learning culture and effectively adopt Agile mindsets and practices to foster innovation and experimentation.

Learning about these metrics and tracking them is essential for long-term Agile success. Ideally, your project management tool can help you automate much of this tracking. However you approach it, you need reliable data to test ideas and determine what works.

Learn How to Measure Business Agility

How Do You Build Business Agility?

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: Attempting to transition an entire organization to business agility all at once typically does not work. Agile isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. It must always be adapted to specific circumstances. But trying to do so at scale is expensive and difficult. Beginning with a pilot program enables you to learn those lessons quickly and without undue cost or risk.

While such a pilot can occur just about anywhere in the organization, marketing is particularly well-suited. Its connection to nearly all functions within the organization, challenging and complex workloads, variety of work items, and many stakeholders all present challenges you want to understand in an Agile pilot.

Another advantage is that you ideally want the participants of an Agile pilot to help share its learnings and promote Agile throughout the organization. While many organizations begin their Agile journeys in the IT department, Marketers are far better suited to translate agility for a wide range of functions.

Unlock Business Agility via Marketing
: From the pilot phase onward, the support of leaders and managers is crucial for the success of business agility. Resources are needed for things like Agile training and coaching, but beyond resources, building business agility takes time. Shifting people’s mindsets, getting them familiar with Agile ways of working, and iterating around the challenges you encounter all require a significant time investment.

Without the right support from the start, it’s easy for that time to get cut short when support is pulled. The result can be an enormous amount of wasted time and effort alongside frustration that can poison the Agile well for good. So beginning by getting alignment and buy-in from senior leaders is essential.

But the importance of leaders in building business agility also extends to managers. Middle management often assumes that it will become irrelevant in a flatter Agile organization, but in most cases, they still have a vital role to play. Managers often become focused on people development, as well as sharing strategic direction from senior leaders while supporting Agile teams below them in execution.

Taken together, these roles highlight the importance of developing effective Agile leadership from the beginning.

Master the Role of Management in Business Agility
: If you already have a few Agile teams or functions operating within your organization, you may be wondering if it’s time to scale Agile further. There are a few telltale signs that it’s time to invest in something like Agile transformation.

The first is that your organization’s non-Agile teams have become bottlenecks. We’ve long seen data showing that Agile teams prefer working with other Agile teams, and this is why. Issues like delays in feedback, different priorities, lack of alignment, transparency, or information sharing can all prevent Agile teams from reaching their full potential. If you’re experiencing these challenges, it may be time to scale agility further.

Similarly, if you have Agile teams that are already performing well, gathering key learnings, and really understanding how best to apply Agile ways of working in your organization, it may be time to put those learnings to use. Those successful Agile practitioners can act as evangelists within the organization, sharing vital insights and building support for scaling Agile.

Lastly, if your leaders feel ready to embark on a bigger Agile transformation it may be time to begin that journey. We mentioned elsewhere on this page how vital leadership support is for Agile adoption and transformation. If those leaders feel convinced that business agility is vital for their organization and that they have the understanding and resources to lead such a transformation, it’s probably time to take the plunge.

Cases for Scaling Business Agility
: When we surveyed hundreds of marketers around the world for our 7th annual State of Agile Marketing Report, once again the biggest thing preventing Agile implementation was a lack of training or knowledge. More than half of all respondents cited this as a challenge. Effective business agility training is an essential foundation for future success, but what should that training look like?

Firstly, it needs to be balanced with coaching and implementation. The 70-20-10 model is useful for finding that balance, arguing that 10% of training time should be for structured learning, 20% for working with experts like Agile coaches, and the remaining 70% for applying those learnings. Too often, training focuses just on that 10%, leaving learners with plenty of concepts and little idea of how to apply them.

Next, you’ll need to select the appropriate training for your organization. That might begin with business agility fundamentals or something tailored for leaders. It’s important to begin with the fundamentals before advancing to more specific and tailored offerings because those more advanced training and courses rely on those fundamentals.

Make the Most of Business Agility Training
: We mentioned in the section above that, to be truly effective, business agility training needs to be paired with coaching. The reason is that business agility is not a one-size-fits-all approach. There are a nearly infinite number of ways to apply Agile values and principles to your unique business. Learning about Agile principles is an important first step, but learning how to apply those principles is something else entirely.

Business agility coaching can help you apply those principles and values to your unique circumstances, troubleshooting challenges along the way. Their deep knowledge of Agile as well as various ways to apply it is crucial when you run into tricky situations. In such cases, it’s easy to apply solutions that actually undermine your entire business agility endeavor. The right coaches will help you avoid such traps.

Ideally, you want to work with business agility coaches with experience working with businesses like yours. That means size, industry, etc. The way a small startup may apply business agility can vary dramatically from a bank or pharmaceutical company. Experiencing using business agility to tackle problems specific to your industry, like compliance challenges or stakeholder demands, can be invaluable.

Why Business Agility Coaching is Crucial
: If you’re investing in business agility training, you may wonder whether it’s worth getting certified at the same time. The main consideration here is how important it is for you or your team to demonstrate your Agile knowledge to others. Certifications work as a kind of short-hand, quickly and efficiently communicating your Agile capabilities to others.

So if your teams regularly work with outside stakeholders who expect a certain level of Agile knowledge and skill, certifications may make sense. Saying your entire team is certified in business agility fundamentals may create valuable confidence in those stakeholders.

For individuals, such certifications can help in the job market. Employers glancing through resumes are less likely to take the time to read through a description of your Agile experience. Simply seeing a certification quickly conveys their level of knowledge. So when evaluating a business agility certification, consider who you want to know about your Agile abilities and what that knowledge is worth.

Why Consider a Business Agility Certification

What Are The Challenges of
Business Agility?

: Adopting business agility necessarily requires making a lot of changes. These range from simple shifts in processes, meetings, cadence of work, etc. all the way to significant mindset shifts. Faced with the prospect of enacting these changes, people will often argue that their existing processes work just fine and there’s no need to change.

The issue here is that while you can simply mandate people change their processes, mandating they change their mindset is another thing entirely. That’s why overcoming this challenge requires the right training, coaching, and time to win people over and convince them that business agility will ultimately make their work far easier.

It’s also a reason why following best practices, beginning with an Agile pilot, etc. is so important. These approaches help you gradually build that crucial support and avoid making mistakes that can turn people off of Agile for good.

Explore the 5 Stages of Agile Transformation
: We’ve seen countless examples of teams and organizations who believe they’re using Agile practices only to find they’re not unlocking the benefits they want. The reason typically leads back to a focus on practices over mindset. But why is building an effective Agile mindset so vital even for teams that are doing everything “in an Agile way”?

In short, it’s because there are so many different ways to be Agile. Successful business agility in one organization may look quite different from a successful implementation in another. What ties them together is an adherence to Agile values and principles. These principles are what enable you to adapt Agile to your specific business needs without undermining its ability to deliver value.

Shift from a Fixed to Agile Mindset
: Nearly all the business agility challenges on this list tie back to training in one way or another. Training helps you build an Agile mindset, understand how to adapt Agile values and principles to your business needs, and simply troubleshoot as you go.

However, simply providing team members with some basic Agile training isn’t sufficient on its own. To truly be effective, you need a blend of structured training, working with experts, and applying those learnings. This blend is crucial for bridging the gap between Agile theory and Agile practice. Here at AgileSherpas, we advocate for the 70-20-10 model that allocates 10% of learning time for structured learning, 20% for learning from others, and the remaining 70% for learning from experience.

This blend helps everyone from senior leaders and managers to execution teams grasp key Agile concepts and learn how to apply them to real-world problems. Learners can then begin building their Agile mindsets and get practical experience solving your business’ unique challenges with Agile ways of working.

Get the Most from Business Agility Training
: Every single business agility challenge on this list becomes far more difficult to address without active leadership support. In fact, we here at AgileSherpas don’t suggest attempting to implement Agile ways of working without such support.

There are a few key reasons leadership support is so crucial. First, cultivating business agility successfully takes both time and resources. If leaders aren’t willing to give teams those time and resources, they’re unlikely to succeed. When that happens, teams and leaders alike can get the impression that “Agile isn’t worth the trouble” or “Agile won’t work here.”

However, leaders need to go beyond simply authorizing the time and resources needed to make Agile work, they need to actively support it. Leaders play a vital role in business agility, helping set strategic goals, figuring out what teams and functions need for success, etc. Without taking this active role, sustainable and successful business agility is nearly impossible to realize.

Explore the Role of Leaders in Agile
: Our latest State of Agile Marketing report found the most common challenge marketers face to be reverting to non-Agile approaches. This challenge applies just as much to business agility as a whole. Even when an organization has successfully implemented business agility, it’s easy to become complacent and suffer from backsliding.

Put another way, business agility is like a shark: it has to keep moving to survive. Even after a successful Agile transformation, it’s important to find ways to increase business agility. That begins with ensuring you have strong and ongoing support from leadership, for example by collecting Agile metrics to show its ongoing impact on KPIs.

Next, you can look for non-Agile functions within your organization and help them adopt Agile ways of working. Outside of areas like IT and marketing, Agile can have enormous impacts on functions like procurement and HR.

Sustaining business agility also requires strong feedback loops within the organization. This is how you ensure leaders have awareness of on-the-ground realities and are able to provide the support needed to address issues that may arise. One effective way to boost this kind of awareness and feedback is through systems like Portfolio Kanban.

Explore Ways to Increase Business Agility

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Business Agility Examples and Case Studies

If you’re wondering whether business agility can work in your industry, it’s likely easy to find successful examples. World-leading companies in tech, aerospace, education, and many more have embraced business agility with outstanding results. At AgileSherpas alone we’ve seen companies realize millions of dollars of savings by implementing Agile in single departments.

Explore Business Agility Case Studies

Years of surveys have consistently shown that Agile can have an incredible impact on marketing. Marketers appreciate the ability to operate more efficiently and reduce the time between concept and execution for campaigns. In one example, a pharmaceutical company was able to reduce the days needed to complete a project by 20% while increasing the total number of completed projects by 35%.

Broader business agility also makes it easier for marketing to coordinate with other functions like sales. A shared Agile mindset helps break down silos and enable closer collaboration.

Within individual Agile marketing teams, visualization tools and experimental iteration help unlock dramatic productivity gains. This both helps realize revenue for the organization but makes individual marketers feel better about their work. Teams can clearly see how their efforts contribute to broader organizational goals instead of feeling unappreciated.

It’s hardly surprising that 83% of surveyed marketers report having a positive experience with Agile while another 98% say their Agile marketing implementation was successful. These marketers feel they’re better able to handle complex work, deliver real value, and avoid burnout.

See Why Agile Marketing Is Crucial to Business Agility

: Years of surveys have consistently shown that Agile can have an incredible impact on marketing. Marketers appreciate the ability to operate more efficiently and reduce the time between concept and execution for campaigns. In one example, a pharmaceutical company was able to reduce the days needed to complete a project by 20% while increasing the total number of completed projects by 35%.

Broader business agility also makes it easier for marketing to coordinate with other functions like sales. A shared Agile mindset helps break down silos and enable closer collaboration.

Within individual Agile marketing teams, visualization tools and experimental iteration help unlock dramatic productivity gains. This both helps realize revenue for the organization but makes individual marketers feel better about their work. Teams can clearly see how their efforts contribute to broader organizational goals instead of feeling unappreciated.

It’s hardly surprising that 83% of surveyed marketers report having a positive experience with Agile while another 98% say their Agile marketing implementation was successful. These marketers feel they’re better able to handle complex work, deliver real value, and avoid burnout.

See Why Agile Marketing Is Crucial to Business Agility
: One key function where business agility can have an outsized impact in sales. The main benefit is around alignment. Too often, functions like sales, marketing, and customer support have different and even conflicting priorities. As a result, they can often work against one another, or at the very least fail to support each other effectively.

Then there’s the issue of siloes. Sales, marketing, customer support, and other functions produce data and information that other functions can effectively use. However, in most cases that information remains within a single function. By enabling closer collaboration between these functions, they can share information and insights to create a rising tide that lifts all boats.

But the impact of business agility on sales goes further, fostering a mindset of creating value for customers instead of simply fulfilling quotas. This shift has far-reaching implications, helping improve the customer experience, retention, and ultimately the ability of sales to perform its function within the organization. Instead of being distracted by vanity metrics, salespeople can focus on serving customers and internal stakeholders like marketing.

See How Agile Supercharges Sales
: A function that is far less often connected with Agile ways of working is HR. Yet, it’s vital for HR to embrace Agile ways of working alongside other functions for broader business agility to work. More than that, by embracing business agility HR can derive serious benefits as well.

One reason HR needs to adapt to business agility is its focus on flatter organizational structures. HR needs to be ready to provide career development paths and talent enablement policies that make sense in such an organization. In this role, they should help support the broader mindset shift that’s so critical for Agile success.

HR also needs to reconfigure its hiring and onboarding process to meet the needs of business agility. That means hiring people who are more amenable to Agile ways of working alongside leveraging training and onboarding to further support that Agile mindset.

The advantages business agility brings to HR are also substantial. Business agility enables them to change and improve processes far faster than is typical. It streamlines HR’s ability to work closely with other departments. Above all, it provides HR with a vital focus on serving stakeholders, not just senior leaders but also customers themselves.

See the Benefits of Agile HR
: While you rarely hear about business agility being applied to logistics, supply chains, and procurement, it’s actually quite well suited to these functions. The reason comes down to a fundamental shift in how teams think about procurement.

Traditionally, procurement is very transactional. A team is given a description of what is needed and they go out to find solutions to meet those needs. However, this simple structure ignores the reality that organizations and teams often don’t know precisely what they want. Or their needs may change and evolve through the sourcing and delivery processes.

Agile procurement tackles these realities in several ways. First, by building a single cross-functional team to handle both delivery and sourcing, inefficient handoffs are eliminated. In some cases, these teams may even include compliance experts to enable them to align around goals and execute independently.

These Agile procurement teams can become proactive instead of simply reactive, gathering information from stakeholders to help them better determine their needs. By looking at their vendors as stakeholders as well, these teams are more effective at building long-lasting and mutually beneficial partnerships.

See the Benefits of Agile in Procurement

In just 3 months, we are seeing a significant improvement in project duration and while our project volume is actually increasing across all of our Agile teams

Darci Helbing Executive Director, Global Marketing Operations, Charles River