The keys to success in unpredictable and challenging situations such as Covid-19 are organizational strength and flexibility. Helping better organization and management are digitization and new technologies such as artificial technology (AI) and high-tech security measures. That’s where business process outsourcing comes in, helping small, medium-sized and large companies to adopt new technology seamlessly.
Why Adapting and Adopting Is the Mantra for Success
Adopting these new technologies may require adapting your business model, but ultimately, they help you manage remote workplaces, make customer communication more efficient, and streamline the whole process.
- This helps when you have people working from home or are unable to physically meet customers.
- It also reduces operating costs, so you end up doing a lot more for a lot less.
Reaching out to customers through innovative means ensures you don’t lose precious business. You also need to partner with the right outsourcing providers who have the technical nous to offer you innovative solutions leveraging the most advanced technology, so you don’t have to do it alone.
Everyone Realizes Digitization Is Important
Let’s start with digitization. According to a 2015 research by Everis and The Economic Intelligence Unit, 82% of the surveyed executives agreed they needed to digitally transform, particularly in the area of sourcing and managing labor. This was long before anyone ever thought of a pandemic like Covid-19. However, despite what they felt, only 23% of the researched executives had actually come up with an active strategy for digitization.
But with this Covid-19 crisis, there are more people working remotely. This has forced many organizations to go completely digital. This remote working arrangement could continue for many businesses since the pandemic is still going on.
Digitization Speeds up During Pandemic
Research reveals the significant acceleration of digitization following the pandemic. In just 8 weeks, digitization soared massively at a rate which would take 5 years in usual circumstances. The following data by McKinsey & Company reveals how much full-time remote working of employees has risen remotely:
(Imgsource:https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/here-are-3-ways-for-businesses-to-survive-and-thrive-through-covid-19/)
So, digitization is here to stay. Businesses have no choice. Now they need to ensure sustained productivity and also be ready for the new opportunities that digitization opens up.
The Challenges of Digitization
Digitization brings about two challenges:
- The initial adoption stage where you need to change your work processes, and
- Maintaining productivity in the initial stages of digitization
This can be helped by partnering with the right outsourcing providers that offer digital solutions at various levels and for various tasks. Eventually, digitization improves productivity and brings about new business opportunities. The challenge then is how to embrace these opportunities. An experienced and advanced outsourcing partner can offer customized solutions to deal with the challenges that arise.
Agility and Flexibility
Digitization contributes to agility and flexibility in organization and management, which is essential to deal with crisis situations.
- A business must be able to quickly adapt to market changes, or else it would lose its productivity and the ability to satisfy changing customer demands. When crisis situations emerge, customer expectations vary and businesses would have to significantly modify established practices.
- This requires innovation and the use of technology to make up for changes in the working environment, market forces and customer requirements. This could sometimes involve even making changes to the products or services you offer.
- But despite all the changes, the company’s core needs to be strong and unwavering, which ensures the organization doesn’t lose its way with all these changes.
Partnering with an Outsourcing Provider
As we mentioned earlier, partnerships are essential. The right partnerships can help organizations tide through unpredictable market situations through better sharing of resources and technical knowhow, as well as cost cutting. This can happen across various levels of the supply chain. Multiple partnerships can help you here, at multiple stages of your business. What’s really important is your partnership with your outsourcing provider.
How Outsourcing Helps in a Global Crisis
There are many ways an outsourcing provider can help you in a global crisis situation:
- First, the outsourcing partner provides scalability and cost-cutting. There are many non-core tasks businesses have to deal with that are essential for their successful running. Even in the best of times, these tasks used to rob organizations of their time and resources. With the Covid-19 crisis, businesses feel the strain even more if the burden of non-core tasks falls on them. With remote functioning and reduced physical interaction with staff and customers, you would need assistance to handle those responsibilities to avoid the risk of errors creeping in. By reducing the strain on resources, you can increase your earnings potential.
- Secondly, with outsourcing, businesses don’t need to hire new full-time or contract-based staff. That helps them cut short on all the associated costs, such as recruitment and training. They can also save significantly on office space which, in Covid-19 times, is a challenge indeed. With non-core tasks handled by the outsourcing experts, you can make greater use of your existing workforce for your core tasks and improve performance.
Document conversion services and other digitization solutions can help businesses to better adapt to remote workplaces. Despite the pandemic or other global crisis situations, your organization can thrive if it is willing to adapt to the situation and adopt new technologies.
