Updating and modernizing an IT system (also known as “digital transformation”) is more than just a buzzword and process. It can open the door to unlimited potential by expanding and improving opportunities and advancing across all industries. It is often forward-thinking. However, in this turbulent time, digital transformation is survival.
Companies have been forced to scale rapidly to meet the demands of a decentralized workforce. Physical stores have moved offline activities online. Technological adaptation curves that usually took months or years have been accelerated to days or weeks.
Most business leaders have chosen to take digital transformation initiatives so that companies can run as smoothly as possible during the COVID-19 epidemic and better prepare for the recovery phase.
However, making a change in these chaotic and unprecedented times is a challenge for business leaders and employees alike.
What are the most significant disruptions large corporations see due to COVID-19?
Business health: The first and most important obstacle comes from the unhealthy aspects of your organization that will increase in this environment. In other words, these drawbacks are revealed much faster than usual. If you’ve already had strained relationships, tense money, and low success in go-to-market strategy, they will multiply and have to be dealt with before thinking about your daily affairs.
Work Experience: Now that employees have to work from home, companies have to work asynchronously and digitally. This underlines the need to accelerate plans to modernize outdated, overburdened technology stacks to keep the business going as businesses need to scale to meet remote workforce demands. Some necessary steps include moving all paper-based processes to digital, automating workflows, and making modern cloud applications available to employees. For companies that haven’t yet developed a digital workflow, this can be a massive overhaul of operations and can significantly hinder or even stop the workflow.
Customer Experience and Expectations: Traditional companies in all sectors – from healthcare to retail – have been forced to reduce personal interactions with customers significantly. Innovative organizations are developing user-friendly, non-contact experiences, and processes for customers to reduce the risk of customer loss who will look elsewhere for alternative and more convenient services. For example, banks that require personal transactions will lose out to competitors that make it easier for customers to make digital transactions. Moreover, customer expectations of these digital services extend far beyond the pandemic, and organizations that fail to move to digital technology or stop supporting digital processes after COVID-19 will eventually lose.
What are the biggest disruptions small and midsize businesses see due to COVID-19?
No capital. In addition to most of the similar challenges large corporations face, small and medium-sized businesses also experience a lack of capital in the current pandemic environment. A large company can apply cost-cutting measures and typically has stronger relationships with banks and investors, ensuring their sustainability is built into the company’s infrastructure. If you need to cut costs in your small business, it could mean you need to close the door. To prevent this, it is critical for small and medium-sized businesses to move to digital tools and processes early on so that they are adapted to and prepared for digital systems to ensure business continuity and growth, regardless of crises.
What are the key productivity and collaboration tools that are reliable for large companies and SMBs?
Create a digital toolkit. In today’s digital world, we all use somewhat similar technologies. We need to create a digital toolkit to facilitate communication, planning, project management, file sharing, and storage to be successful. SMBs and enterprises can adopt Teams, Slack, or Chanty to chat; Hangouts, Zoom, or Skype for video; or Formstack Sign, HelloSign, or DocuSign to digitally close contracts. The great thing is that the SaaS subscription model also helps to level the playing field, making your business software more affordable and accessible on lower budgets.
How exactly are all these factors accelerating the digital transformation?
In today’s scenario, digital transformation is survival. In the normal business process, digital transformation means planning for the future. The current COVID-19 environment calls for digital transformation to survive. For example, normally, the government operates on its schedule, but it is forced to digitize or shut down at times like this.
To adopt the current environment, which essentially requires partial, if not full, remote work and business, companies need to develop digital processes and use new technologies to move on to digital transformation. However, it is not just for now when we are going through a pandemic. Expectations on all sides – from customers to stakeholders – will change forever as they see and experience companies that deliver and succeed in digital services in this environment.
They will continue to expect these digital offers even after the crisis, highlighting the importance of investing in digital transformation now to improve operations, improve productivity, and ensure the business thrives in this turbulent time and into the future.
To understand how your organization can perform better with digital transformation, reach out to us at info@saventech.com
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