The Key to Growing Through Chaos is a Relentless Pursuit of Value  

Amidst global challenges, learn how your organization can thrive and grow in uncertain times. Mitch Lee, Profit Evangelist and VP of Product Marketing at Vendavo unpacks antifragility, digital transformation strategies, and the importance of quantifiable value.

The first half of 2023 has been a roller coaster ride for many organizations with high inflation, persistent global conflict, financial industry turmoil, and large tech layoffs. These and other headliner realities all contribute to what’s being described as a rocky economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Despite the global misfires, some organizations have managed to perform well and grow in these last three tumultuous years. With a shift in mindset and a few strategy changes, you could do the same. 

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger 

In 2014, Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder. A part of the best-selling series, Incerto, the book introduces antifragility as a characteristic of things to thrive amid stressors, volatility, or mistakes. Antifragility is used to explain resilient organizations, systems, and even people. Taleb’s idea became particularly relevant just a few years after publication as every company was forced to work through a global pandemic and subsequent economic uncertainty.  

In the paper, Bring Uncertainty Inside your Business to Thrive in a Volatile World, Gartner describes antifragility as the state of being able to do even better in times of uncertainty, or at least better than competitors. There are different ways to accomplish this, the analysts say, and all of them should be considered for organizations to find ways to thrive during times of uncertainty, not simply survive.  

Achieving excellence with value 

Digital transformation is one area many organizations expedited to achieve greater efficiencies, smoother processes, and happier customers. According to a study by KPMG, 74 percent said their digitization of operations and the creation of next-generation operating models accelerated by a matter of months/years through the pandemic. Digital transformation is also a great use case for applying antifragility principles. 

While mission-critical to overall advancement, these digital transformation projects can also be both expensive and time-consuming. According to Gartner, one strategy for boosting antifragility is continuously ensuring your projects deliver quantifiable, bottom-line value. Beyond implementing new technology and onboarding teams earmarked for digital transformation, identifying the initiative’s return on investment, and mapping out the value it brings to your business models will maximize growth and expedite time-to-value. 

Knowing precisely how your digital transformation projects affect revenue generation and growth is job number one for the Vendavo Value Acceleration Team. Including answering important questions like: 

• How does the digital transformation impact your margins, per transaction?  
• How do customers perceive your offerings?  
• Where can you optimize for desired outcomes?  

Using a standardized framework, our value acceleration experts partner with organizations to address key growth topics. Together, they tailor a growth and profitability plan that helps identify potential profit opportunities, deploy best practices to capture value along the project’s continuum, and meticulously track the outcome of those actions.  

Benchmarking framework 

The Vendavo Value Acceleration framework includes a full catalog of analytics and solution support with industry-leading measurement sets and value benchmarks. 

In the last 12 months alone, Vendavo customers have averaged $52 million in increased annual incremental profit. To learn more about how they are quantifying ROI and boosting their antifragility during these prolonged challenging times, read how Xylem, the world’s leading water technology company, has found benefit in this case study.