Sundaresan Rajeswar, a leading Doha-based financial analyst and consultant
Doha: As most organisations and companies are restructuring and remodeling their business plans and strategies in the COVID-19 environment, cultivating business acumen skills as a standalone competency has become a critical focus, noted an industry expert with decades of experience.
Business acumen is the keenness and speed in understanding and deciding on a business situation. It is also known as business-savvy and business sense. Business acumen is not a single skill, but competencies, knowledge, and awareness of multiple aspects of the business.
“Cultivating business acumen has become more important than any time in the past under the current environment, which needs to be taken into account more seriously and act accordingly, especially in terms of taking crucial decisions such as rightsizing the workforce and operations to reduce cost,” Sundaresan Rajeswar, a leading Doha-based financial analyst and consultant told The Peninsula, yesterday.
Rajeswar, Group Head of Audit at Teyseer Group of Companies, added: “As the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted most organisations, business leaders need to understand the different aspects of operations like how employers train their employees, develop business acumen so that they get a broader view of different aspects of the operations. The main idea is how to retain minimum number of people without impacting the operations and the quality of services. It’s about how to mix new employees with experienced ones based on their capabilities and what they have learned over the years.”
He highlighted that organizations need to focus on the intellectual properties (IP) and skills that an employee develop and acquire by working in a particular organisation or business vertical over the years.
“Many companies do not give much value to the intellectual property that one acquires by working in a business entity for years. When such people leave an organisaiton without transferring that knowledge and core competencies, it may cost big loss to an organization,” he explained.
Rajeswar, a Certified Financial Services Auditor, said that the word agility that gained immense contemplation in business literature recent times more directly relates to the application of business acumen.
“Broadly speaking, the typical features of business acumen include sound business strategy development, implementation, monitoring and reporting. It also deals with meeting aligned objectives such as asset management, cash flow and bottom line influences and understanding the marketplace perspectives of value proposition, knowing customers and competitors, market trends, and innovation,” he added.
“Business acumen can be built with purposeful intervention in organizations. Companies can instil business acumen as a core competency by listing behaviours and characteristics that employees should demonstrate. There are ways to build business acumen in employees.”
He also noted that companies should educate employees on key business goals. If employees know what’s expected of them, it’s easier to make decisions and complete day-to-day work. Routinely share with employees strategic business goals and how each employee’s role contributes toward these goals. Once this discussion has taken place, all projects given to employees need to align with a strategic goal. Making employees understand how their contributions help to drive business success can be a strong motivator.
“Implementing functional cross-training is critical for employees to understand the purpose and activities of other departments in the company. Cross-training, with other departments, can broaden perspectives, increase awareness and even alleviate a sense of isolation,” he said.
Another area of focus, according to Rajeswar, is to educate employees about relevant dashboard reports, particularly financials to understand and decipher meaning from numbers. All businesses have numbers and the like, but few employees ever look at it – or even have the opportunity to see it.
“Cultivating business acumen as a well-founded practice which requires encouraging and celebrating employee ideas. Set aside a few days each year during which employees feel empowered to present ideas for how to improve business. Employees may want to make a difference, but they might feel they don’t have the opportunity. Ideas should be considered and, if possible, implemented to demonstrate that feedback is valued,” he said.
