COVID19 outbreak continues to expand and has impacted thousands of lives. As it spreads, there has been disruption on supply chain and people demand which triggers another panic of companies losing their financial goals. Now is the time to take quick steps towards business continuity and accelerate business transformations. Since this doesn’t look like a short term thing with no vaccine in place, it is a turning point to go digital.
Key focus areas for any enterprise at this stage looks like –
- Manage Supply Chain — given there are no on-field sales to understand the demand
- Customer sentiments — owing to the inability to visit customers
- E-Commerce
- Online marketing and brand building
- Tech-enabled business models
Digital transformation, should not be considered as a project, it will be an ongoing journey; which shall impact everyone from small manufacturing houses to biggies like Microsoft. This is a wake-up call for organizations to start building a bridge between companies’ financial goals, business vision, and technology while balancing the investments that go in. According to research done by KPMG, 80% of revenue shall be created using online digital offerings. Hence, it makes it more important for companies to continue their digital journeys and process improvements.
Companies that were web-enabled to conduct day to day activities have seen the lesser impact of pandemics or might even have had a surge in transactions. To ensure a positive digital transformation, we do need mindset shift within organizations to make them more agile and help mitigate risks with future planning. There are still a lot of companies who are not thinking of technology in the way where it is part of their core and operation.
These are testing times and while they pushed us back a little, I believe that these are the times we should be better prepared for the future. This pandemic was not something anyone was prepared for but it sure its wake up call to get your businesses in order and be on digital to ensure something like this doesn’t affect us anymore.
This shift is something that you cannot achieve alone, but it’s a journey you will have to carry with someone to emerge as winners.
PS — I am the founder and CEO of BaffleSol Technologies where we are helping companies leverage digital technologies to change the way do businesses more smartly and efficiently. This could be in the form of
- bespoke development;
- manage the supply chain;
- integrate finance and accounting using ERP implementation;
- CRM to manage customer relationship using CRM;
- Dealer and distribution management systems;
- Or build a brand by marking internet presence.