Is your technology ready for the new digital shift
The current situation has caused a catastrophic downturn for most economies. With the effect being unprecedented, COVID-19 has swept everybody from their feet. Spreading great discomfort and upheaval wherever it has landed upon, the pandemic has left many leaders worried about their families and their employees wellbeing. That being said, business continuity and sustainability has been the top priority after employee wellbeing. The very fact that many big businesses are laying off employees is a concern to leaders who are left with very limited choices.
Let’s be honest here, this is not a normal downturn which most organisations are facing. With changes to consumer behaviour, their needs and wants from sudden shifts in the supply chain patterns, the demand has been quite unstable and has shaken many businesses off balance. A great number of domestic and foreign small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and MNCs felt the brunt. Forecasting anything right now is a difficult task for organisations and the only one thing they can stick to right now is internal development.
As Charles Darwin once said – “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most adaptable to change.” Adaptability is key as we move towards a different kind of world, we need to embrace change and get onboard to ‘the new normal’.
With the famous topic of ‘Technology, boon or a bane’ which almost everybody has come across at some point in time throughout their life, the weightage has now understandably shifted towards it being a boon, resulting in a changed perspective of looking at how things can work. In these stark times, technology has come up as the missing piece to complete the game of puzzles. Henceforth, the question arises, are you ready for transitioning towards being ‘digitally sound’?
Digital transformation and encompassing technology in almost all business verticals is what has been the forefront in tackling this pandemic. With the majority of consumers shifting towards a more digitally enabled environment, organisations now need to implement best practices in terms of transforming their business processes into an output which can be digitally sound, leading to a more integrated and calibrated workforce. As the need for remote work gets an uprise, organisations need to concentrate on ways to configure their work with technology.
The crisis has undoubtedly accelerated the adoption of digital technologies to keep the momentum going amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The enterprises that lead or have an edge in the digital maturity curve are noted to be better equipped to handle the crisis beforehand. These enterprises are leaning towards investing in further technology up-gradation to address the changing customer demand as they move towards a more digitally enabled environment.
The Industry-wise lens from a technological standpoint can be as follows :
Entertainment – The gaming industry is now leveraging new ways of disseminating content whilst also promoting small businesses in the form of online classes, and virtual visits to landmarks.
Education – As most institutions are advised to remain closed, the rise of online classes has been unprecedented. With ed-tech support and few technological enhancements, the way institutions are now planning out their regular classes online has been a remarkable show of adaptability.
Sports and Well-Being: It’s tough to have practice sessions or classes for people who are confined to being remote. Sports industry, being one of the areas where things work ‘face – to – face’ and demand physical presence. It has also seen an interesting switch towards the day to day routine. With coaches carrying out online fitness sessions with daily targets to hit, technology has helped them steer away from a certain full stop.
Services– Online food delivery services were already making strides in their way of working and their focus on being digitally sound. What they have now started is enhancing their current technology and focussing more towards the need of the hour. Contact-less systems, enhanced delivery services etc are some of the tweaks the service industry has seen.
Healthcare– Healthcare is an industry which needs the ‘physical presence’ for them to work normally. That being said, large organisations are moving towards online consultations, digital medical assistants and self-diagnosing medical devices to reach out to those who need it.
Technology has seen an uprise in almost every industry. The rise of remote work has forced organisations to either enhance their current technology suite which is already available or adhere to acquiring new and adaptable technology.
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The surge in online meetings because of this very fact has now led businesses to think of integrations which can make the transition from an offline space to an online scenario. Zoom is one of the providers for hosting seamless and lag-free e-meetings has seen an uprise in terms of its usage.
CRM Platform such as Hubspot has been the ‘enabler’ for many enterprises for its marketing and sales outreach programs. According to their quarter 1 press release, Hubspot has seen a 30% increase in their customer base which is close to 78,776. A quite evident fact that organizations are now trying to find the most effective and calibrated technological solutions to cater to their current requirements and help them foster a better growth trajectory whilst maintaining employee wellbeing.
Technologies such as HRMS, CRM’s, Video Communications and many more have served many organisations effectively to help them steer through this downturn during this pandemic.
To quote an example of how some organisations are optimizing themselves to be on top of their game whilst ensuring the safety of their employees, a few months prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, L&T Metro, a 1200+ employee organization spread across 70+ stations moved away from biometric and adopted touchless attendance using geofencing and facial recognition-based mobile check-ins with the help of Darwinbox (unified HRMS software) During the normal scenario, the platform helped in saving a lot of cost on physical infrastructure and made attendance data real-time but eventually, during COVID-19, this was a life-saver (read their story here).
This has now become a pretty known fact that technology has been at the forefront of evolution, thanks to it, organisations are finding ways to connect and continue their business activities. With more and more organisations levelling their ways to configure their present business processes to be ‘digital-centric’, it is now clear that digital transformation is a must and is the only way forward for an economy to run parallelly with the pandemic as the situation is yet to subside. Maintaining a balance between employee wellbeing and a strong balance sheet is not going to be easy, but it can surely be calibrated! Is your technology ready for the new digital shift?
Stay Safe, Stay Healthy!
