The pandemic has had a devastating impact on the real economy, and its effects will extend to the coming months and years. We talk about this with Laura Amadesi, Management Consultant and Professor of Management Consulting and Laboratorio di Impresa at the University of Bologna and Professor for the course of Global Strategy of the MBA Part-time weekend at BBS.
“The industrial fabric must face an unprecedented challenge: profoundly reviewing operational models and re-adapting the tools to support primary and secondary activities in a digital-centric perspective.
All corporate areas are involved: communication and marketing will have to review how to create brand awareness and involve prospects with innovative manners; customer engagement and relation management will have to overcome the current ‘physical models’ (for example, the sudden cancellation of traditional Trade exhibitions); product and service study will have to be adapted to customers’ new needs; the entire supply chain will have the chance to make use of new efficient and flexible processes; personnel will not simply shift to ‘remote working’ but to ‘smart and collaborative working’ with their social and professional life at least partially virtual and with new forms of leadership and organizational management.
All in all, a complete change of paradigm, in which technology plays a role of ‘simple’ enabler: it’s not a question of doing digitally what was done before, but to leverage on the technology to thoroughly rethink the company business model.
Also, the strategic levers for growth are affected by the technological innovation that the pandemic generated: the possibility to use new channels and new internationalization methods, the aspects of evaluation of an acquisition opportunity, the search for capitals and finance.
The world of consulting will have to support companies, managers and entrepreneurs in this Paradigm shift, but in turn they will have to understand the way in which smart dynamics and customers’ new habits change the service model and the supply enabling model of traditional consulting and let new support needs emerge. Being a ‘healthy carrier’ of technological innovation in dealing with strategic, industrial, and business topics becomes increasingly the trump card.
Today BBS, with its Master’s courses, is developing precisely this crossroad: cross-sector business skills for the redefinition of new models and technological evolution of the tools necessary for the correct implementation of strategies in the future of a new normality”.
Author: Laura Amadesi