{"id":1424,"date":"2020-02-12T08:53:05","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T00:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-my\/blog\/?p=1424"},"modified":"2025-10-10T13:46:40","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T05:46:40","slug":"how-leaders-manage-complexity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-my\/blog\/how-leaders-manage-complexity\/","title":{"rendered":"How can business leaders manage complexity in an evolving world?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStrategy, Legal & Operations<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tHow can business leaders manage complexity in an evolving world?\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\tRobert Sinfield<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Growth has always been a traditional marker of business success. It\u2019s crucial to long-term survival, with the expansion of a company resulting in an increase of its market presence and profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, with growth comes complexity, especially in an interconnected global business environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To grow, your business needs to cope with different markets, increasing product and service categories, compliance challenges, and numerous customer segments and channels. And this is why you and your C-suite team<\/a> has to manage complexity to achieve that goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The continued pressure for growth inevitably leads to complexity, which can be detrimental to some of the qualities that may have made your business work \u2013 whether that\u2019s decision-making, productivity, customer service or innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can your business manage complexity and what are the factors behind it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Discover how 3 technology trends can help you overcome today\u2019s top 4 industry challenges.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload eBook<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The complexity issues business leaders must solve<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When an organisation gets larger, business processes and IT can get to a point where employees, customers and partners need to jump through a lot of hoops to find what they need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a business becomes more complex, it can become siloed. This results in employees concentrating on their own jobs and failing to collaborate in ways that can benefit the whole organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Particularly problematic is the fact that complexity hinders innovation, which is crucial to businesses that want to create new product and revenue streams. Complexity kills collaboration and the ability of businesses to share information across teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can also impact other functions such as the supply chain<\/a>, HR, product development, and customer service. Products will take longer to get to market, opportunities could be lost, and businesses could rapidly lose the competitive advantages they began with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Issues with complexity are particularly true in uncertain economic times, whether dealing with regulation, geopolitical uncertainty, exchange rate volatility, or even the availability of key skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pressures that lead to complexity for medium and large businesses and that you should be aware of include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mergers and acquisitions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

These are a key driver of business growth but will increase complexity with the addition of new data centres, applications and environments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decentralisation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As businesses get larger, they may decentralise, with certain business units making their own technology decisions and running separate systems and applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will cause problems for organisations looking to present a single source of financial or performance truth, or meet international compliance needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greater business needs and demands<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The digital technology that businesses need can put pressure on creaking IT infrastructure, which might not be in the position to handle the real-time decision-making, speed and agility that organisations require to handle changing and challenging business conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Businesses might also be under pressure to support new products and services quickly. Servitisation, which means companies are offering new bespoke services, is becoming a factor. Some are even looking at changing their business models to differentiate themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disparate systems and changing requirements<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Often systems will have been implemented at different times, which means connecting them up can be a complex job. Over the years, business needs may have changed, due to the introduction of new products and services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can your business manage complexity?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Here are two opportunities where your business can manage complexity through technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Build in flexibility and agility to change business processes where needed<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To successfully innovate, you should look at building fluid business and technology functions, with the simpler deployment, integration, and use of IT. There are a number of ways<\/a> you can look at doing this as part of a digital transformation programme:<\/p>\n\n\n\n