Trust is a key determinant of buying behavior. Customers want to know you can deliver products and services reliably and, increasingly, ethically. Think about the long-term impact on your reputation and revenue if you can’t meet your delivery commitments to customers or if you find out one of your suppliers is using forced labor. Building business resilience lets you avoid these situations, respond quickly and effectively when they do happen, and proactively demonstrate to customers that you’re a trusted supplier. Simply put, it increases business efficiency if your goal is maximizing shareholder value.

Resilience starts by creating a culture in which everyone recognizes their critical role in creating a strong and adaptable organization. However, culture is not enough. To operationalize business resilience, you need technology that breaks down functional silos; provides reliable, timely data to make informed decisions; and automates processes to efficiently align action.

If that sounds a lot like digital transformation, it is. In fact, with digital transformation, you can embed resilience directly into your business processes, providing the organization wide visibility and control needed to predict, prevent, and quickly respond to adversity. And by leveraging digitalization, you make resilience itself more efficient, increasing the benefits of your resilience investment while lowering costs.

Can organizations be both efficient and resilient? The answer is a resounding yes. In fact, they have to be. Efficiency and resilience are two sides of the same coin; they are synergistic, working together to create business value. And digital transformation provides the perfect opportunity to achieve both at the same time.