My name is Harpreet Singh. I'm a partner in our London office. I work in industrial practice and I've been here for about a decade. I work with industrial businesses, B2B clients, and these are truly unprecedented times for them. I think there are several trends here which on one hand creates lots of opportunities, but equally there is a big risk to get disrupted. So what we are seeing is you end up in a situation where the competition can become highly polarized, so businesses that are doing well and responding well to the trends have a significant potential to create competitive advantage, but equally there's a huge risk to get disrupted as well. Industrial businesses are facing some big trends right now. COVID has created significant disruption. It started off by demand disruptions, but in the last few months we've seen supply chain disruptions have been very significant.
Secondly, sustainability as an agenda item has accelerated in boardrooms faster than anyone was predicting, and every boardroom that you look at is asking questions around how does a business deal with sustainability issues?
Thirdly, technology is moving at a very fast pace, irrespective of which direct you look at, from electrification of cars to how our homes are being heated; technology is moving rapidly and that just creates a multitude of different things coming together, which businesses need to deal with rapidly.
What industrial businesses really need to do on priority here is to establish which trends make the most amount of difference to their businesses, both in terms of opportunity or the risks that could create for the business and respond fast. If businesses are able to deploy that fast change management capabilities, we think the opportunities are wide ranging here. We've seen several businesses who have used the pandemic and accelerated their digital agendas, so anything from engaging with their customers in a much more digitally driven ways or actually discovering new revenue streams which are more software driven are things our businesses have started to do. We're also starting to see that automation is happening in operational circumstances in a much more progressed manner, often to reduce the risk of what human interaction and global supply chains will do.
Thirdly, a lot of businesses are using sustainability as a key growth opportunities. Sustainability is creating new green segments in most businesses markets and how to tap into those is another opportunity that's coming up. Successful businesses are moving fast and creating some long term value creation opportunities here and laggards who are not moving fast are seeing their balance sheets weaken and losing out and getting disrupted. We are supporting clients in really trying to help them understand what these opportunities are. Enabling them to do some honest capability audits, you need to fully understand and what you're capable of and what you're not capable of to progress some of these opportunities for.
