Even though businesses are used to disruption, the acute crisis that industry leaders are facing today due to COVID-19 has not been witnessed before. The global economy has never seen such counterproductive conditions. Businesses have been stalled and economic activity has been minimized now because of national lockdowns.
Organizations are struggling as conventional best practices become obsolete and the future continues to grow more uncertain. COVID-19 has thrown companies out of their comfort zone as they have started evaluating their limits and the ability to respond quickly in a situation that is changing at an exponential pace.
So what can businesses do now? How can they address the business challenges that loom large? A learning organization that adopts a technology-fueled transformation will be able to respond well in the new environment, unlock long-term growth potential, and thrive in the face of heightened societal expectations.
Let’s understand what are the questions business leaders are asking about their current challenges and how can technology in COVID 19 crisis can help?
Challenge 1: How can we ensure business continuity amid COVID-19?
Shift to a mindset of Digital transformation! As businesses shut down and employees start working remotely, a wave of digital transformation has set in. Customers are buying essentials online and app-based grocery shopping has increased dramatically. Overall, online penetration in China increased by 15–20%. In Italy, eCommerce sales shot up by 81% as many people resorted to digital shopping for the first time.
COVID 19 has also obligated banks and financial institutions to digitize their core banking processes such as eKYC, digital signature collection, and online document submission. To handle the growing volume of customer queries, banks are leaning on contactless customer engagement.
Before the COVID-19 crisis hit the economy, already 70% had executed digital transformation or had plans to do so. In fact, a lot o f leading enterprises had mature digital strategies, platforms, ecosystems, and operating models in place.
But the organizations that are far behind the need to understand that rather than realizing digital transformation at their own pace, they need to act fast and align their organizational goals urgently towards digital transformation. Cloud Computing, data analytics, Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, blockchain are just a few technology in COVID 19 crisis that are enablers of digital transformation.
Challenge 2: How can we minimize the impact of system disruption?
System resilience is being tested like never before as an organization’s critical business and operational processes have to stay resilient in the face of this crisis. At this point, CIOs and IT leaders can be central figures in ensuring that the organization can continue to operate even during disruptions. Strategies can revolve around some of the below areas –
Free up human resources with Hyper Automation
Hyper automation will free up time for your human resources so that they can focus on higher priority issues. Identify where human touchpoints can be reduced by using analytics-based insights. Leverage automation for high volume tasks like bulk cancellations in the aviation sector and order fulfilment bottlenecks in retail with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Keep your system up & running with architecture & performance engineering
To ensure your systems are up & running, use architecture & performance engineering to quickly scale applications, and diagnose performance issues. If critical systems’ performance is compromised, it is absolutely critical to get to the root cause of the problem so that remedies can be implemented fast.
Manage demand fluctuations with Cloud
Organizations have reported rapid surge and fall in demand during the COVID-19 crisis and cloud adoption can help companies. You can sail through this by optimizing cloud computing solutions. For instance, a major retailer could manage demand surge during the “Black Friday” sale by making use of a cloud-based coupon application developed by a leading IT company and delivering a better customer experience even as traffic to the website hit peak levels.
Challenge 3: How can we ensure an agile, distributed workforce?
Organizations across the globe are responding by protecting their people first. Most organizations have asked their employees to work from home and organizations have switched to the remote model of working overnight with the help of technology in COVID 19 crisis.
Executives are adopting novel ways of working with their distributed teams to optimize costs and expedite business processes to meet timelines. Digital tools are aiding organizations to go beyond teleconferencing and improve how the organizations prepare their roadmaps, collaborate with each other, and innovate to achieve more.
Technology has the power to create a digital workplace by scaling collaboration tools, enabling virtual meetings, and leveraging mobile solutions for those who were traditionally using a desktop.
Challenge 4: How can technology help us with business forecasting?
Consumption patterns have been disrupted forcing organizations to abandon traditional demand forecasts. To accurately forecast future demands, business leaders should consider data-driven scenario planning models and leverage technology in COVID 19 crisis for the same.
When it comes to supply chain management, intelligent analytics, Artificial Intelligence, data sharing & visualization platforms can help to simulate future scenarios, re-evaluate sourcing strategies, and allow complex permutations and combinations to be factored in.
To better manage demand forecasts, the right information should be at hand for businesses. Keeping this need for relevant data & insights in mind, Knoldus created a COVID-19 dashboard to represent the impacts of the pandemic on various countries in a single view. If you want to customize this dashboard specifically for your business needs or create similar dashboards to visualize your business metrics with quick turnaround time, we are here for you.
Winning new customers in the post-COVID world will not be easy either. How to differentiate between crisis-driven short term changes and long term permanent implications will be challenging. Companies will need to employ high-frequency data analysis and run durability tests to determine coherence with long-term trends, changes in consumer behaviour, competitive forces with other players etc.
Challenge 5: How can we address security concerns?
As the COVID-19 outbreak has enforced a remote working model, cybersecurity concerns have increased. Small and medium-sized companies are dealing with unavailability of virtual private network (VPN) licenses. Hackers are targeting workforces with emails containing infected documents and COVID-19 themed phishing attacks to hack into personal and business data.
Business leaders have to look at long term plans when it comes to crisis management with a remote task force to prevent such cyber incidents. Organizations should take help of technology to implement critical security actions.
- Establish secure VPN tunnels and implement security controls like full disk encryption, mobile device management solutions etc. to ensure safe remote working environments.
- Monitoring outbound network activity is equally important as protection against external threats. Network and security monitoring tools can help you increase your vigilance against security loopholes.
- Integrate analytics & automation solutions for the endpoint, VPN, threat intelligence, data protection and other technologies.
Knoldus can help you navigate the COVID-19 crisis with the right technologies…
At Knoldus, we believe that collaborative efforts will go a long way in managing and responding to this crisis. We highly recommend you to better serve your customers by enhancing the support of digital solutions & prepare for the next normal. Our digital transformation solutions include technologies like Reactive microservices, Fast Data, Artificial Intelligence, Real-time Data Analytics at scale and more.
Knoldus has brought together insights and solutions to help you overcome the COVID-19 business challenges you currently face and help you prepare for the future.
We are also helping our customers in these tough times with Pre-assessments of their current IT infrastructure. If you’re looking for similar solutions to determine gaps to automate your operations, reach out to us. Get in touch with us to schedule a call with our expert or drop us a line at hello@knoldus.com.
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