By Michael Cupps, Senior Vice President of Marketing at ActiveOps

Before the pandemic took the world by storm, the banking sector seemingly set out rigorous plans regarding the future of work. However, these pre-existing ideas quickly faded and led to a scramble for businesses as they sought out to adapt themselves for a new phenomenon, hybrid working.

It is a combination of remote and office-based working which has arisen in prominence throughout recent times. The hybrid model gives workforces flexibility, combining the organisation of an office environment along with the convenience of homeworking.

With hybrid working looking like the new normal, businesses operating in the financial sector must now focus on optimising productivity, employee engagement, and organisational agility, amongst other things.

In times of rapid change, organisations that have been taken by surprise can find themselves playing catch up and racing to gain control. And in doing so, may make the mistake of trying to carry on – business as usual, failing to see that many of the external factors have fundamentally changed. Now is the time to consider your core activity and where this fits in the new landscape and what needs to be changed. Blockbuster didn’t fail because people stopped wanting to see films, but the way they wanted to do that shifted almost overnight.

Following the acquisition of Determine earlier this year by US based Corcentric, we caught up with President and COO, Matt Clark to find out some more about the deal. Matt pointed out that the idea behind the move, was to shift the company’s focus towards delivering an entire end to end solution and consider what that might look like, delivered from a single platform. At Corcentric, while there was a firm footing in the worlds of finance and accounts payable, the executive team felt there was a need for something in the upstream eprocurement space to be able to deliver on their end to end vision.

By Ruud Van Hilten, Senior Vice President at Tungsten Network

In this period of uncertainty, many businesses will feel paralysed and also powerless about what they can do. Nevertheless, there are some essential steps that businesses should take to prepare for the myriad of potential outcomes that await.

by guest contributor, Charles Henri Royon, VP EMEA, Tradeshift

Managing supply chains effectively has become increasingly crucial to maintaining brand image and reputation. In the age of mass media, firms can’t afford to turn a blind eye – any irresponsibility or wrong doing in a far flung area of an enterprise’s supply chain will be exposed, and rightfully so.  

Guest post by IMD Professor, Nuno Fernandes 

The recent steep slides on global stock markets have been a long time in the making. As early as two years ago, it was becoming obvious that in addition to the contraction of global demand, as well as the general increase in the relative competitiveness of other Asian countries, China’s rapid rise was coming to a screeching halt and leaving excessive debt in its wake.

Finding a solution to what keeps CFO’s up at night might seem an impossible quest given today’s climate, but it’s one which Seal Software might just have the answer to. In the tangled world of contracts, Seal aims to represent the “single source of truth”. Curious to find out what that meant, we sought out their VP Contract Strategy, Lloyd Alexander.

Digital disruption is taking place across industries, functions and business processes, as they introduce cloud, mobile, social and big data.  But the problem is, not every organisation or industry is following suit. And businesses are now falling into two categories: those that have already been disrupted and reshaped by digital, and those that have yet to be.

Timpson - a name we’re all familiar with – their unobtrusive maroon signs part of the fabric of our high streets and travel experiences. Seems inevitable – a solid family business, a constant in a time of rapid change. Sounds dramatic – but when you look around and see gaps where Blockbusters, Woolworths and HMV used to be – being an established business is no longer a guarantee of unshakable foundations.

So looks can be deceiving, and success was by no means a certainty for Timpson, as John Timpson CBE explained. In fact, neither is natural progression to CEO, just because your father’s the Chairman. All boards and organisations contain different and sometimes conflicting personality types and one day in 1973 John Timpson’s father, Anthony found himself ousted by his uncle in a board room coup. John stayed with the firm and ten years later successfully led a management buyout.

With the growth of cheaper mass produced shoes, the shoe retail side of the business seemed to be in terminal decline – something which John recognised and he sold that side of the business for £15m, deciding instead to take advantage of the loss of traditional ironmongers from the high street to grow the key cutting business alongside shoe repairs. Something which is so ubiquitous now, it almost seems like an obvious fit – shoe repairs and key cutting – of course!