3 New Realities to Guide 2023 Planning as Inflation Response Cools Economies
To prosper as the world continues to shift, keep these principles in mind: The response to high prices can’t be to raise prices. You can’t drive profitable growth without productivity growth. Playing offense on talent doesn’t have to break the bank. 

Understand How Shoppers Use Digital Tools to Combat Higher Prices
Many consumers now routinely use digital coupons, loyalty program trackers, price comparison sites and price prediction tools. And, confronted by a soaring cost of living in 2022, they are savvy enough to hunt down the aids that save them the most money and are easiest to employ. Retailers can’t ignore this desire for convenience.

Lay the Groundwork for a Huge New Market: Machines That Are Customers
Now is the time to create a path to entry to a business megatrend that will be more significant than the arrival of digital commerce and could be your organization’s key to growth. Welcome to a world where your company’s best customers may not be individual humans or enterprises. They might be machines. Jumping on the opportunity to sell to connected buying agents will not just be a tech thing or a marketing thing. It will be an everyone thing. All C-suite executives must play a role or progress will be partial, ineffectual and inconclusive.

Supply Chains Can Drive Customer Loyalty
The supply chain is often first in line for cost cuts when budgets tighten. But a decline in performance negatively affects customer loyalty by nearly three times as much as a price increase. Make sure customers get high-quality products and services delivered on time – and go beyond that to help them use what they buy faster and more easily

Make the Most of Your Brand-Building Budget
Businesses are fighting to retain customer and employee commitment while marketing budgets still haven’t fully returned to prepandemic levels and now inflation has hit. Every dollar, pound, rupee or euro counts.

A Case for Enterprisewide Technology Spend Management
In the last few years, executive leaders have been willing to increase their risk tolerance and loosen their purse strings in pursuit of the digital dividend – but they aren’t extending a blank check. CFOs and CEOs are asking CIOs and chief digital officers whether their aggressive investments have paid off. When business units are buying software and employees everywhere in the organization are coding, limited visibility gets in the way of an accurate accounting.

To Keep Data Scientists, Set Them Free
Believe it or not, it’s possible to prevent poaching and avoid expensive competition for new hires with this highly-sought skill set. Asurion has achieved a 93% retention rate among its data scientists and Eastman has overcome common obstacles to upgrading data skills in the existing workforce. The secret ingredient was freedom — time to learn, recognition for creativity and varied experiences that untethered talent from a particular business unit or a specific type of work.

How to Weigh Talent Tradeoffs in a Downturn
Because they can’t control the macroeconomy, executives should devote more time and resources toward the areas they can influence. Namely, they should bolster the resilience of their organization and — in particular — their employees. HR, enterprise risk management and strategic planning leaders will be vital partners in making tough choices.

The Whiteboard: Big Questions to Ask About the Future Economy
Keep thinking about tomorrow while you’re navigating the near-term twists of one of the most unusual downturns ever. Let’s head to the whiteboard and sketch out four trends to embed in strategic planning efforts. Can your enterprise gin up opportunity and minimize risks posed by population shifts, digital-based productivity, nationalism on Earth and large-scale business operations in space?