The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has left an extraordinary impact in our day to day lives and completely changed the way in which we perform our professional work. The global economy has been hit in a major way by this pandemic and we are all set to experience a recession from which it will take us years to recover. The maximum fall out that has been observed due to the coronavirus situation has been in the business sector. The changes that we are currently observing in the business sector are going to stay long after the initial turmoil fades away.
Business firms now find it extremely difficult to continue their work as usual due to the never ending lockdown and social distancing practices. Forced to ask their employees to work from home, enterprises are now trying to come up with new and innovative ways to boost their productivity as far as possible. This has led companies to try and reshape their workforce with the implementation of advanced technological solutions. While it is true that many workplaces have already been experimenting with remote working for the last few years, most offices as of yet have never tried out working from home before the pandemic. This has led to new logistical and practical challenges for workplaces as they try to cope up with this situation. Even though a few offices were better prepared to handling these challenges, there were others that were not and yet tried to adjust to the new working conditions. A large number of companies had no other way but to surrender completely and wait for the pandemic to end.
As businesses try to best allocate their resources and deal with the challenges of running their enterprises in this current situation, slowly and steadily they are coming to a realization that they need to prepare a steady workforce for remote operation even after the COVID-19 outbreak has come to an end. The world is going to be a very different place after COVID-19 and it is safe to assume that nothing is ever going to be the same again. Businesses are now being tested in terms of their ability to deploy remote workforce that can generate the best productivity. The teams operating under an enterprise are starting to collaborate in innovative ways and the management is also discovering that they can function properly even without having an office space. All of this has increased the importance of digital transformation.
Digital transformation is a process through which business firms upgrade their computing technology so that they can effectively handle their workload and focus on managing a remote workforce. Here are some of the trends of digital transformation that we can expect to find in the coming months and years.
Every business organization must have software applications that can help employees, teams and dedicated professionals to collaborate with each other and manage all of their tasks remotely. Business firms like Microsoft and Google are doing their bit to design and produce state of the art collaboration software applications that can be used to communicate and exchange ideas as well as media like video files, audio files, text, links and other kinds of media. The widespread demand for such applications has also led to the birth of new software development companies that make these products. It is important to get office collaboration applications that are both secure and scalable. This can help to make sure that all data is protected from breaches and businesses can scale their performance as per their changing needs. The proprietary software systems should be customized with the help of the manufacturers so that the applications can be further enhanced to meet specific requirements.
Another area in which business firms really need to focus on while working on their digital transformation strategy is cloud computing. Many companies like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox provide with cloud storage for businesses that can help companies to store large volumes of data in the cloud. This can help the working teams and the management to have access to them from any laptop, desktop, tablet or smartphone connected to the internet. The demand for cloud computing has accelerated in the recent times as they offer enhanced security when compared to traditional hard disks and also increase the flexibility and convenience of corporate operations. Cloud services are also easily scalable which means that businesses can effectively choose any plan that caters to their needs.
Every large and small business firm normally has a business continuity plan in place that can help them to prevent and bounce back from potential issues and threats to the company. However, since the COVID-19 situation has been thoroughly unprecedented, such a plan was proven to be largely ineffective. Therefore it is now important for businesses to come up with a revised BCP which can help the enterprises to recover from this mess as quickly as possible. One of the strategies corporate firms should consider including in their business continuity planning is develop an infrastructure that is suited to work from home. Many business firms are already experimenting with new working strategies that can help them to develop a stable workforce that can operate remotely, i.e. from home.
Businesses that once operated through brick and mortar stores now must invest in developing an online shopping portal through which buyers can interact with companies and get everything that they need. So far this practice was fairly limited to certain types of products and some companies. However, in the future there should be a wider penetration of ecommerce and the digital transformation strategy should incorporate that to ensure improved output.
These above mentioned digital transformation strategies are going to become vital in the coming months and years as the world tries to recover from the effects of COVID-19 pandemic and develop new ways of running their businesses.
