COVID-19 as innovation driver: Making central functions sustainable (Part 1 of 3)
The current economic changes stemming from the Corona crisis are affecting the core business of companies in very different ways. While some industries are struggling with massively declining business volumes and are struggling to survive (airlines, tour operators), other sectors of the economy have hardly been directly affected or have even benefitted (telecommunications, online trading).
However, if we broaden our view beyond the core business to the internal organization of companies, we find that Corona is triggering comparable effects across industries. In the so-called central functions, which some companies call enabling functions, management support functions or simply support functions, Corona is massively increasing the existing need for change and posing new challenges.
Central functions are increasingly expected to develop solutions for strategic issues and to support business units during implementation as consultants, pioneers and partners. Such growing demands can only be met if the organizational structure of the central functions allows for sufficient dynamics and performance.
In a series of article over the coming weeks, we will describe the requirements that central functions are required to meet today and how companies can design modern, goal-oriented organizational architectures that meet these requirements.