How seeing your digital technology as a whole helps keep your business healthy
Every business, no matter the size, has a network of companies or personnel that intersect; this is because producing or supplying something requires an interconnected world. As such, one of the many challenges industry leaders face is how to maintain a healthy business ecosystem.
How do you, as a leader, interconnect with your clients, your suppliers, your contractors, and your workers? Moreover, how do you reduce the number of tools you use and keep that connection durable?
What is a business ecosystem?
According to Investopedia, a business ecosystem is:
“the network of organizations — including suppliers, distributors, customers, competitors, government agencies, and so on — involved in the delivery of a specific product or service through both competition and cooperation. The idea is that each entity in the ecosystem affects and is affected by the others, creating a constantly evolving relationship in which each entity must be flexible and adaptable in order to survive as a biological ecosystem.”
A healthy business relationship is one with complementary needs where collaboration can coevolve over time. The strategy of focusing on your broader ecosystem – that is, how you connect to everyone your business comes into contact with – creates value and invites growth. Technology must help you in this endeavour for it to be worth its salt.
Focusing on the right tools
Regularly reviewing your systems is crucial as it allows you to understand how technology does (or doesn’t) work for you. It enables you to focus on whether your tools are:
- Too many or too few.
- Ineffectively used, or
- The right fit for your business.
To nurture a healthy business ecosystem, analyse your systems and processes, identify pain points, and recognise when you are duplicating work. Moreover, consider how inefficiencies affect the companies you work with, your employees, and your customers. Healthy ecosystems create efficient business environments where all tools, resources and employees are comfortably working at their full potential.
Cultivate a healthy ecosystem
By connecting multilayers of complexity, it creates a clearer strategy that allows you to build relationships across all industries. A proficient business ecosystem is one that reduces the number of systems and platforms used to collaborate with your worlds.
For example, you could need:
- A supplier to provide you with products and services.
- Someone that is insured and fully qualified, and
- The ability to educate them on the safety risks associated with working at your site.
They need:
- To have clients to be in business.
- For their workers to be safe, and
- No delays when arriving at your site.
For these requirements, you could implement a single platform that is a collaborative, complementary, and coevolving environment that meets both parties’ needs. The aim is to foster a setting where you can connect to more suppliers, and they can connect to more clients (and vice versa).
Enhanced connectivity
Growth and strategy go beyond your business’s ability to gain customers. By focusing on your business’s ecosystem, you can examine your resources and make sure they are deployed effectively.
The following excerpt and image are from Kasey Panetta’s 8 Dimensions of Business Ecosystems article for Gartner:
“Ecosystems enable organizations to respond and exist in an increasingly digital world, assuming that CIOs and senior IT leaders consider the eight dimensions when making strategic decisions about how to participate and when to change tactics.”
When you cultivate an in-sync business ecosystem, you add value to your business by supporting an environment where your relationships and leadership roles can strengthen. A robust strategy and implementing the right technology are key aspects in achieving this endeavour.
Our workplace management software is one easy solution to cultivating a healthy business ecosystem. A single platform, it delivers all the tools you need to manage contractors, risk and compliance in one place. Learn more about Sitepass today and sign up for a free trial to kick start you ecosystem cleanup.