Working methods that were brought on by the pandemic + gradually increasing customer pressure on speed, accuracy and quality of the goods, bring the need to assess new challenges in a radically short period. On the Lanner blog, Oliver Bird writes about planning resilient business.

According to him, managers are getting into the situation of switching from forced crisis management to thinking about strategic reactions to new operating conditions. “The ultimate aspiration for any business problem owner is to be confident that their business and processes are robust and sufficiently insulated from the numerous external sources of volatility outside of their direct control,“ says O. Bird while adding that digitization has never been more important than it is now.

“There are a number of digital technologies which can be implemented across an organization to enhance a company’s robustness to deliver to plan despite disruptions and volatility, but Predictive Digital Twins, powered by business process simulation technology, are becoming an increasingly utilized tool for answering all-important resilience questions, enabling businesses to thrive and not just survive in an uncertain future business landscape.” he adds. We present to you the points that he makes while explaining the topic.

A digital model allows you to ask questions

In the unprecedented times that we’re in, businesses need to liberate themselves from a crooked macro and microeconomic situation, they need to quickly react to the changing demand, as well as to the newly emerging competitors. “It can feel like a minefield to evaluate these new challenges and understand how potentially radically different business scenarios would affect your company’s ability to respond, and the penalty of failing to respond is significant. For example, a 30-day disruption caused by supply chain vulnerabilities can lead to 3-5% EBITDA margin gaps, according to McKinsey. Predictive Digital Twins make sense of such complexities by providing a virtual business to help you answer both tactical and strategic questions that affect your business’ ability to hit its KPI’s,“ describes O. Bird.

For example, you will get answers on whether investing in Industry 4.0 technologies can increase your ability to react, what risks will production consolidation bring or whether the risk of supply chain interruption could lower stocks of raw materials or final products.

“These complex, interconnected questions aren’t ones an individual engineer, analyst or manager can answer using a simple spreadsheet or ‘current state’ BI dashboard. They are characterized by having a myriad of dynamic variables, complex business processes, multiple disruptions and near-infinite potential interventions or resulting actions. This is where Predictive Digital Twins add huge value,” O. Bird says.

With a digital model, you can test assumptions

A lot of businesses compile the best, neutral and the worst scenarios within resilience planning. However, this approach works only when the assumptions are right. Using the question “What if?” enables testing the business resilience with more internal and external variables. According to Oliver Bird: ”You’re developing a ‘Predictive Twin’ (or, indeed, a “Twin of the Future”) of your business that can simulate numerous candidate business scenarios, producing invaluable foresight to your strategic “what if?” questions via comprehensive KPI analytics.”

Predictive digital twin makes zero-risk experimentation with various investment options and resilience plans possible – and provides company owners with the confidence to make critical decisions. 

From a digital model, you can foretell the future like from a crystal ball

“With a Predictive Digital Twin of your business processes, you can run any scenario and pre-test your business’ ability to respond to the variability, volatility and uncertainty that most organizations are experiencing in these unprecedented times. This engineers out the risk associated with important operational and strategic “what-if?” scenarios and identifies how resilient your business would actually be under any potential future condition.

In short, it arms you with both the insights and foresight required to make confident and future-proofed decisions as to the resilience risks your business currently faces,” O. Bird states.