Large language models (LLMs) stand to redefine enterprise AI with GPT, Bard, Gemini, and Llama 2 generating human-like text and catering to knowledge management applications.
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Flow cytometry is a formidable asset for a researcher. By compartmentalizing cells based on set molecular characteristics, flow cytometry provides information on specific cell types from highly complex and populated samples. This technique analyzes thousands of cells per second, allowing researchers to collect huge data volumes in a relatively short time span.
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Dale Carnegie rightly put it when he said, “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.” These words of the famous American motivational speaker and writer have become even more significant now as businesses try and adapt to changing customer behavior with care and empathy. Within a very brief span of time, COVID-19 has gravely affected the lives and livelihoods of millions across the globe. And, this has led organizations to rethink the definition of customer engagement and service, prompting them to closely monitor customer satisfaction metrics to be able to address their needs accurately.
According to a report by Oracle, 86% of buyers 1 are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. But one daunting question most businesses are faced with is how to approach customer experience (CX) differently in the new normal. Before they can create an engaging customer experience, the first step is to understand what matters most to customers – especially during this disruptive scenario. A Salesforce report suggests that 73% of customers 2 expect organizations to understand their needs and expectations. One of the best ways to gauge their requirements is to intimately understand them – know their persona well. Often, defining the target audience, delving into their demographic profiles and digital footprints can provide insights into their needs and wants.
Businesses are also fast embracing AI technologies such as machine learning to understand the customers accurately. The technologies are being used to gather and analyze historical, social, and behavioral data and gain a better understanding of the customers. AI which continuously improves from the data which it analyzes can accurately anticipate customer behavior. It delivers actionable and real-time customer insights which equip brands to create relevant and thoughtful content across touch points that not only resonate with customers but also improve the chances of sales opportunities and enhance the customer journey.
While understanding the customer is important, equally crucial is to differentiate from the competition. If you want to stand out as a brand, you must personalize the customer experience. Close to 80% of customers 3 are more likely to make a purchase when businesses provide personalized experiences. AI helps brands to connect with customers at a more personal level by analyzing customer sentiment and feedback with precision which is not achievable by humans alone. It has also been seen that feedback-driven models foster higher engagement levels, loyalty, and retention.
However, before looking into AI, what brands need is a CX vision and a robust strategy. While laying down a well-thought-out strategy, brands need to factor in the role of safety and trust. The pandemic has brought forth consumers who are more thoughtful in their decision making and selective when with purchases. They are engaging with brands which demonstrate safety, convenience and trust in experience delivery. Most consumers trust a brand which is good at protecting the privacy of their personal information, delivers quality products and services at fair prices and engages with them in a meaningful way. This is leading forward-thinking brands towards process and business–model innovation at every point of interaction with customers.
Along with this, well-performing brands are prioritizing efficiency. They have realized that to achieve a superior customer experience which is also sustainable; they need to focus on efficiency and convenience. After the onset of the pandemic, customers are no longer willing to understand and tolerate inconvenience despite their loyalty to a trusted company. Companies that opt for the efficiency path to win profitable customers have few factors in common. Most of these companies have access to the data they need and streamline workflows to align with customer journeys. This helps overcome organizational silos and eliminate the habitual repetitive tasks. Moreover, employees working with these brands are empowered to connect the dots between specific customer expectations and interactions. They are prompt in adopting technology to automate routine tasks and deliver consistent experiences across touch-points. Finally, these brands remain focused on supply chain innovation and optimization for seamless service delivery.
In the wake of the pandemic, there is an increased need for omni-channel strategies. And one among them is to boost customer loyalty through several touch-points. By providing customers with multiple opportunities to connect, brands are driving positive customer experiences and loyalty. As consumer buying habits have changed, with a majority opting for online purchases and ordering in bulk, organizations need to foresee spikes in demand for which they are relying on technology. By investing in technology, they can expect improved inventory management and order routing along with gaining an in-depth knowledge of consumer behavior and preferences.
Omni-channel transformation is the need of the hour where touch-points are not treated in isolation but as part of seamless transitions when customers move from one channel to another. Customer experience journeys cannot be treated as linear but one where there are frequent shifts between traditional and digital channels, which can vary according to customer types and preferences. Understanding the customers’ digital behavior goes a long way in reducing the churn rate. Often the best approach is to promote automated tools and self-service touch-less technology for basic interaction with tech-savvy consumers and appoint highly skilled live agents to handle critical requests.
From the above discussion we can conclude that the power to differentiate, understand customer needs at a granular level, maintain a focus on efficiency and adopt omni channel strategies are the key factors which can drive an enhanced CX. And this investment in building relationships and delivering a superior experience can help brands to retain valuable customers in the long run. Over and above these, it is critical to understand and prepare for major changes as evolving consumer habits often necessitate a change in the CX strategy not just for sustainability but also for a competitive advantage— the importance of which cannot be overlooked in these uncertain times.
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Change has become imperative with the breakout of the pandemic, which has forced organizations to optimize operation and cost, leading them to rethink their digital transformation strategies. In fact, the pandemic has increased their budgets for digital transformation while breaking down previous inhibitors such as executive approval, legacy software, and the absence of clear strategies. Guided by the broader business strategy, organizations are fast turning to digital technologies to scale up or solve pressing business issues. And the role of technology is not just limited to merely driving marginal efficiency but rather is that of a catalyst which drives innovation and disruption.
It would not be wrong to state that with the onset of the pandemic, digital transformation itself has been disrupted, owing to immediate actions required for crisis and change management. The present nature of the crisis has required teams to act promptly amidst uncertainty and take quick decisions with limited oversight. It has required them to react to fast-changing situations. Here digital transformation can help in a shift to agile decision-making enabling a transformation agenda and helping organizations to move forward despite the challenges posed by the pandemic.
While most organizations have come to terms with the new normal, they want to move forward despite the aftermath. This has led them to brainstorm on new ways to operate in these unusual times. But, at the same time neither do they have a playbook for this nor can they refer to proven case studies. Hence, they have to closely monitor their environment for change and test existing business practices and workflows to identify how digitalization would first help fuel stability, and then growth. They have realized that digitalization is the only way forward which will help address the changing business needs and empower them to make a shift from the “Respond” to the “Recovery” phase during the pandemic. This “Recovery” phase would further determine how well they would thrive in the near future.
In this environment, technology has clearly emerged as a winner. Post COVID-19, consumer behavior will not return to the pre-COVID norms that easily. Online purchases will increase and remote work models are here to stay. As the economies slowly start to reopen, artificial intelligence (AI) will play a needle-moving role in helping companies adapt to the current crisis. As they focus on business continuity plans a majority of companies are likely to deploy AI-enabled solutions to drive topline growth. With its unparalleled potential to discover emerging trends, AI can help hyper-personalize products and solutions, thereby improving customer engagement and sales. It can also contribute to the ideation process of creating new products and accelerate R&D initiatives. As the value creation mechanisms change fast, AI can prove crucial in enabling companies to seize the new opportunities which come their way.
Furthermore, recent findings from Gartner revealed that 74% of companies 1 plan a shift to remote work models post COVID-19. AI-based solutions free up the workforce from repetitive and mundane tasks, allowing them the time to invest in more creative work. During virtual meetings, AI tools increase collaboration and can automatically capture and present additional information such as web links, documents, and videos which not only save time and increase productivity but help employees become more productive. Often, we spend a lot of time scheduling meetings and in finding a suitable time for all attendees. Instead, one can easily use a bot which schedules meetings automatically based on the calendars of invitees, checking for their availability, role and expertise, deciding whether they need to be invited at all.
Besides the trends discussed above, disruptions caused by COVID-19 have reminded us how critical a working supply chain is. According to a recent survey, 75% of organizations in a selected sample experienced supply chain disruptions among which 39% reported severe impacts. This indicates that organizations must adopt a new strategy and here Internet of Things (IoT) could inspire relevant solutions. IoT-based solutions allow for supply chain diversification and real-time monitoring. Through virtualization, they help in creating digital twin models enabling virtual exploration of suppliers and accurate risk assessment.
It has been predicted that with the impact of the pandemic, the IoT market size will grow from USD 150 billion in 2019 to USD 243 billion by 2021 2 , at a CAGR of 13.7%. The critical factors behind this trend also include remote monitoring needs during work from home initiatives, smart payment technologies with minimized human contact, and the increasing demand for wearables.
Along with rapid transformation to the digital world, leaders also need to focus on successful customer experiences (CX). The way they communicate is becoming increasingly important as most consumers have cut down on spending and are trying products and services mostly out of necessity. Hence, customer experiences need to be frictionless, simple, and personalized. The real focus is on building trust on the foundations of empathy, which makes organizations a trusted advisor in the customer journey. In a recent study, 71% of the respondents 3 agreed that if a brand puts profit over people, they will not be able to trust the brand. Hence, establishing an emotional connection with customers becomes important. Amid this black swan event, both digitalization and CX need to move in tandem for a competitive and cost advantage.
With the pandemic’s severe impact, companies’ resilience is being tested like never before. As the business landscape shifts towards uncertainty and volatility, organizations have to develop new capabilities and prioritize strategic initiatives where digital transformation will have a critical role to play. As they reimagine business for an ever-changing future—digital technologies, innovation, and CX will remain integral constituents of business continuity plans.
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Within a few months of COVID-19, the world has changed and we have been forced to look for solutions everywhere. As we grapple with the pandemic, harnessing the potential of technological advances brings us closer to the belief that we will overcome it. In this endeavor, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have emerged as two key technologies which empower us to better understand and address the COVID-specific issues. Right from prediction to detection, screening, and diagnosing to inching closer towards a vaccine, these two technologies have a critical role to play.
With every new pandemic, diagnosing individuals is a significant challenge. As tests are expensive at the beginning conducting them on a large scale is a near-impossible task. Any individual who develops symptoms of COVID-19 would be concerned that they have contracted the disease. Instead of taking medical samples from each patient and waiting for slow reports, a more affordable and faster ML-based test would always prove more useful.
Interestingly, a hospital in Florida was one of the first to use machine learning for a strong response to the virus. As patients enter the hospital an automatic face scan (which is based on ML) is conducted to detect whether they are running a fever. This piece of data plays a critical role in triaging patients. Additionally, ML-enabled bots help patients self-identify the next course of action once they are being detected with mild COVID-like symptoms. This saves doctors from spending excessive time on answering questions of worried patients instead of focusing on the treatment.
Once a group of people is tested positive it becomes critical to detect patients at a higher risk of developing serious complications or in need of advanced medical care. While many develop symptoms which are mild others may develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) or severe lung disease which needs immediate attention. In this context, significant inroads have been made in research and a forecast model has been proposed which depends on the XGBoost calculation (a machine learning algorithm). It helps detect the seriously sick and predict mortality risk. It takes into account three clinical pointers; lymphocytes, lactic dehydrogenase, and high affectability C-reactive protein, an imbalance in which leads to cell injury, compromised cell immunity, and inflammation, also indicative of pathophysiological progress of COVID-19.
AI-based predictive modeling does not just help in identifying the infected individuals but also in gauging the severity and spread of the pandemic. Early warning systems which are AI-based mine mainstream news, information in other channels, and online content in multiple languages to detect epidemiological patterns which also complement other healthcare networks and syndromic surveillance. A majority of the countries worldwide have opted for contract tracing systems to ascertain the infection routes by using geo-location data to identify individuals who are coming in close contact with the virus carriers. Immediately, text messages are sent as alerts directing them to self-isolate.
AI has played a critical role in the race to discover a vaccine. By understanding viral protein structures, the technology has suggested probable components of the vaccine. It has also helped medical researchers to scour thousands of literature at an unprecedented pace and arrive at conclusions. As the scientific literature related to COVID continues to grow scientists find it challenging to shortlist papers that are relevant to their specific research. A reputed institute which conducts high-impact research created freely available data sets that are machine readable. This enabled researchers to create and apply NLP algorithms, which would accelerate the process of discovering a vaccine. By connecting the dots between studies, AI makes it possible to identify a hypothesis and subsequently suggests experiments.
While modern technologies have helped us so far in this intense battle against the pandemic, we hope that it would continue to assist us in achieving new victories and see to the end of this unfortunate situation. It would not be wrong to assume that the possibility of combining ML, AI, and other convergence points of sectors such as healthcare and life sciences presents a brilliant opportunity for new drug discovery. And, as we leverage this opportunity, we will only stand to gain.
In the last few months, the COVID-19 crisis has caused unprecedented disruptions in the workplace. This has led organizations to make difficult decisions as they balance between the needs of the business and that of the employees. Along with it, the lockdown restrictions are gradually phasing out and most are preparing to reopen the workplaces. However, to limit the exposure and transmission of the disease, adherence to regulations is critical. It has become imperative for companies to review their existing policies and think of new policies which limit exposure and transmission of the disease.
As organizations reflect over new workforce strategies, this will not be a typical recovery. Given the lack of available therapy and the uncertainty over the vaccine, organizations will have to plan for multiple time horizons and scenarios. They may even have to plan for multiple waves of the pandemic considering the resurgence of the virus in countries which had declared themselves virus-free. When we think of alternative ways of working, the critical question which comes up is do we need a command center? Do critical leaders need to be a part of this core group which will help in restarting operations? Will they be able to help in managing external stakeholders? Will the command center be connected to necessary sources for updated news and information which directly affect the business?
The next important decision is whether to use analytics and dashboards for informed decision making. What data do organizations need to make accurate quantitative decisions and how do they ensure that they continue to get updated information even from sources beyond the command center? These are questions which companies need to delve into. Data and technology can be used to visualize scenarios and predict what may come next. This scenario planning through analytics will provide business leaders an accurate view of how their decisions will affect customers, staff, and the operational capacity. It may make a significant difference in a strong continuity plan.
A return to work plan has two important components—workplace management and leadership intervention, which we discuss further.
For a successful transition to work, the first step is to decide on the number of employees returning to the office. Higher the number of employees returning to the workplace, the greater is the risk. This requires a staggered reintroduction and smart workforce scheduling. Determining functions, work, and roles that need to return to workplace and those that can continue to work remotely can help in creating effective rosters and prevent the spread of the disease. For teams working remotely, organizations need to provide adequate support and training.
While reopening workplaces, businesses will need to observe the regulations around social distancing and hygiene practices. Reconfiguring office spaces may prove critical as the requirement for six feet impacts seating arrangements. Organizations may have to set up barriers between workstations and also provide personal protective equipment such as gloves, masks, and eye wear. Additionally, they cannot overlook the basic prevention measures such as routine environmental cleaning and disinfection.
As organizations embark on their process of recovery, they have to commit to the physical, psychological, and financial well-being of their employees. Physical well-being will include a stronger emphasis on safety, easy access to testing, and social distancing. Psychological well-being can be ensured through practices such as flexible schedules and adequate support from managers. It is critical to recognize the diversity of the workforce and help them transition to recovery. The commitment to well-being may have to be extended to the employees’ well-being at home, where they continue to take care of their children or the elderly.
While people priorities remain on top of mind for leaders they need to factor in employee morale. While a percentage of the workforce continues with remote work it brings its own set of challenges. Often they have to juggle priorities and the boundaries increasingly become unclear between work and personal time. The responsibility lies with the team leader to strengthen the team now and help them build mental resilience. During these times of uncertainty, it is up to them to provide support and demonstrate compassion.
Hence it’s a holistic approach which can help organizations tide over these difficult times. It would not be wrong to assume that COVID-19 has reinforced our conviction that human concerns cannot be overlooked, especially for organizations looking to resume operations and adapt to new ways of working. In fact, this crisis provides organizations with a valuable opportunity to build a strong connection with employees and pave the way for a resilient response to the pandemic. Do you agree?
Travel and tourism is a palpable element in living a worthy life. Evidently, with the pandemic, it has been jeopardized to its breadth and depth.
With an industry worth more than $ 9.25 trillion, the splinters create a plethora of whammies – stagflation, trade wars, geo-political embargoes, ecological and environmental disturbances, fear psychosis, technology failures and beyond everything else, the hierarchy of need, want, purchasing ability.
Our social genes reassure us that living a diabolical life is not a solution, but coexistence, circumvention are. Our lives are gradually adopting the new normal. Businesses are endeavoring to re-open, medical science is striving to create a vaccine, and people are trying to be back to ‘office’. And so is their intent to travel germinating. A recent find from Pinterest suggests that people are again searching for travel inspiration, even more than the same time last year.
In this article, we will look at how the travel and tourism ecosystem, as we understand, will evolve.
While there is no clear definition of what comes under the umbrella of travel and tourism, the prime agents are:
Interestingly enough, their business models or operations do not run in silos today. It is a complex mesh of underlying synergies, disparities and to a good extent, that of cannibalization. Having said that, the way future unfurls for each of these industries, is a function of travel intents. Let us see how for each of the most prominent travel intents, the industry will respond in the imminent future.
This segment of travellers will evolve as local or near location experience buyers. With airlines newly operating to lesser travelled destinations and tier 3 cities/towns, premium hotels and resorts providing hefty discounts, we will see the intrepid traveller club being energized. With respect to local travel at the destination, it will be skewed towards either car rental services or organized taxi operators with increased reinstatement of safety and personal hygiene.
When it comes to the F&B subdomain, in-house restaurants at hotels will see some positive vibes, along with QSRs making a big come back. Otherwise, the F&B sector will continue with this slump for some time as food adventure takes a back seat now.
Local experiences and outdoor visits will gather steam, whereas activities (like theme parks, games, theatres etc.) will continue in this lull. In gist, sustainability will be the mantra, and customer confidence building the steam to drive.
In the midst of all these, retail players will still have their proliferation – whether it’s digital retail or brick and mortar stores. With local experiences being the first choice, travellers will be somewhat skeptical with products and services available there. Hence digital retail, as we visualize, will thrive.
We don’t really see the big-ticket cruise industry picking up anytime soon. When we are barely on the brink of a recession, these are extravagantly indulgent. Very clearly, this industry has been for select few – only about 8% of the US population ever go on a cruise in a lifetime. Now, when the going is tough, we are apprehensive that travellers will splurge on luxury, laid back vacations.
What is important to understand is that the cruise industry acts as a feeder to multiple other travel and tourism agents. Airlines and airports for getting back home, hotels & resorts in case of a multi-location cruise, car rental agencies, trams, trains and buses for local travel, F&B for local dining experiences, activities at destinations or hops, local retails and everyone else under the sun. Concomitantly, they will all be hurt from this channel revenue fading away.
Zoom, Hangout, WebEx, GoTo Meetings are ubiquitous now. And we opine this will be the future of remote working. Well, but, we only partially agree to it. Plant engineers cannot work on digital twins for operations, lawyers can’t fight every case from a couch, telemedicine has only a narrow scope, and the list continues. There is proof beyond doubt that business travel will have to resume, with ambidextrous values of work and leisure.
However, as we visualize, airlines will have fewer business class seats to sell (thanks to restrictions on corporate spend) and might re-configure the way plane seats are laid out today. Air ticket prices will drop to lure more customers, may be with a re-designed loyalty program that earns you lesser points that what you gain today. You see, effectively the entire top line and bottom line strategies will change.
What happens to the allied industries of hotels, F&B, car rentals, MICE are natural corollaries.
Our best guess is, it might take 3-4 quarters for it to return to stability and predictability and in a reduced capacity, the whole ecosystem will spring back to life.
ITB Berlin, Japan Expo, NAB Show, Indian IPL, Facebook F8, Wimbledon are only handful that have been scrapped or postponed. There are shiploads more. The tune of the economic impact of this is not limited to the travel and tourism industry, but to the balance sheets of nations and states. And as we envisage, 2-3 years is an optimist’s approach of guessing when normalcy would return for the MICE sector. But read it twice; this will also impact airlines, airports, hotels, F&B, retail, car rental, trains and buses, tours and activities, nature parks and every other player you could think of.
What we see could happen are:
a Smaller and medium-sized local players who have been arranging local events, meetings etc. will emerge as a stronger sub-segment. Across cities, towns and suburbs, they would form own chains and snowball.
b. Webinars will increase in numbers – paid or free
c. Local and franchised hotels will offer conferencing capabilities on a wider scale
This branch could be split into many – people travelling for personal and social reunions and commitments, students who study in universities abroad and their parents, participants in themed marriages, religious congregations, and many more. Most of these will be brushed off, leaving tiny specs alone. These again will take time to recover. There will be a need to monitor demand patterns for these segments. Disposable incomes need to increase, countries need to free up their borders, the number of students flocking universities need to increase and other social prominences have to re-emerge.
Till then, it is a game of watching the bait.
There are a couple of very crucial pieces in the maze that only technology will be able to solve.
1. Designing one trip – We have said this before. This industry is holistic in nature, no salt added. With a design thinking approach, we need to create the real vision of one trip for customers that include all providers and their services. This not alone offers an advantage for customers, but is also the vehicle to understand what data does not tell. Data, at the moment, is not the fuel as it does not exist for such unprecedented times. It can only corroborate.
2. Track and trace – Track customer personas, their non-classical journeys, spending patterns, location preferences, intents and trip activities, active and passive feedback. This is the only way to understand demand and design supply at the moment. And create and train new algorithms. Period.
3. Jack up bandwidth – Tons of things are being done virtually. Obviously, the need for scaled -up systems and infrastructure is needed. It is something that states, policymakers, service providers and travel players all have to work in tandem on. Cloud infrastructure, with its scalability, will become the obvious choice for many.
4. Fire behind the wall – Cyber security will have to become rock solid. With increased online syndication happening, new payment methods being introduced, sensitivity of information being shared (that were never shared before), unscrupulous activities will also increase. And it is natural that we need to protect the ecosystem.
A huge section of society will not travel again. In recent years, the industry was experiencing a new segment – mature travellers. Some of them had saved for a lifetime for a cruise may be or for a safari in Africa. This new-found liberation will die.
Consultants who prided in living in airplanes will find a new liberation in Workation, being able to spend some time with family and friends.
Intrepid travellers will find a noble way of channelizing their energy in may be creating rich media content, sharing more experiences that would enthuse people to travel.
Sustainability is the only way to get rid of this pandemic’s fear. Till a vaccine is invented, we will have to keep on close syndication amongst ourselves to create value for travel and to ensure we are safe, to return from the lull.
Sudipto Ghosh is an Associate Director at TCG Digital Solutions Pvt. Ltd. and oversees digital projects for airline/airport clients. He comes with 14+ years of business consulting experience with key airlines and travel solution providers across the globe. As part of his role across multiple organizations and clients, he has led large digital transformation projects, pre-sales and converted multi-million dollar deals with key stress on transformation, business-IT alignment, systems rationalization, PSS, ecommerce, multi modal transportation.
Sudipto holds a Post Graduate Diploma in International Business (Gold Medalist) from Indian Institute of Foreign Trade and an engineering graduate degree in Information Technology (Gold Medalist).
The COVID-19 crisis has brought with it extreme levels of uncertainty and has created a situation that is well beyond the experience of most of the enterprises. Companies are likely to experience a disruption in their operations as employees are forced to work remotely. They may have to deal with short-staffing and low visibility of workflows. Additionally, they require rethinking how to interact with the potential customers, address their changing demands, and prepare for recovery.
As most businesses choose not to reinvest, B2B organizations need an agile shift in engagement and communication channels. The need of the hour is business continuity and disaster recovery plans which will help wade through the challenges. In this primer, we outline a few thoughts on how businesses can improve their early response to the pandemic. From the trends, it is clear that they need to build on resilience and prepare well-in-advance to pull through the tumultuous times.
Ways to cope
Right at the onset, organizations need to accept that it is not business as usual. It is of utmost importance to prioritize what needs to be done immediately for survival in the long run. It is critical to focus on the well-being of employees, ensure their mental health during self-isolation, and give them a sense of belonging while keeping the team momentum going. It works best for businesses in these times to put the health and safety of the employees first.
They also need to determine how the crisis will affect their budgets, and if former assumptions no longer remain relevant, they should focus on being agile to bring in necessary changes in financial plans. They will have to find out whether the existing business model is resilient enough to reduce both short-term and long-term costs and help in recovery. They may require new models, which assess the potential risks of the crisis and define effective responses.
Importantly business continuity planning (BCP) requires serious attention from senior leaders. While pandemics are inevitable, investing rightly with immediate effect may have a positive impact on the ability to recover. Any strategic business plan crafted previously for this year may not prove effective. 2020 will be a year of regrouping and survival. Not only will it come with new ways of working and fresh responsibilities, but it will also bring in a new management paradigm.
While existing business continuity plans are reviewed, this crisis is a wake-up call for those organizations which have mainly focused on daily operational needs without investing in long-term strategies. At this hour, a shift of technology capacity to digital platforms will help mitigate the adverse impact of the outbreak to an extent. By “digital platforms” we refer to more pervasive, technology-enabled business models that facilitate necessary exchanges between interdependent groups, either two or more. They bring together the end-users and producers, enabling and empowering them to transact with each other.
For seamless operations
Besides, the above organizations need to focus on operational continuity. Two key areas where CTOs/CIOs can increase access and capabilities are –
The capabilities of the digital workforce can be increased by identifying their workflows, clearly identifying who can work remotely, the tasks they can accomplish, and the systems they will need access to. If required, the technology capabilities will have to be scaled which may involve empowering the workforce with messaging, collaboration and video conferencing tools, and ascertaining the security need to safeguard business data.
For the second aspect, organizations need to look at increasing the capacity for digital sales and self -service while ensuring personalized remote experiences to ensure a positive experience for customers in unfamiliar contexts. Immediately introducing smartphone apps and chatbots will help solve queries and allow the customer service reps to handle more complex issues. New opportunities that emerge in these times can be embraced to create relevant products, not forgetting that agile practices will enable seamless shifting of the necessary digital and physical resources.
Looking at strong leadership
In these unprecedented times, good leadership can act as a silver lining to a business.
Leaders can consider reducing the full-time work to eighty percent, allowing the employees to come to terms with the crisis. They can consider getting creative together and adopting a clear, empathetic, honest approach to communication until the situation evolves. They can also consider capturing success stories of team members overcoming the adversity and continuing to perform unhindered. These stories can be shared for circulation with the human resource team, which in turn will motivate rest of the workforce.
For a sustainable future
Your response today will determine your future tomorrow. A crisis-agnostic plan is what you need. It may involve exploring the different scenarios and how they may affect the business, adopting a well-thought-out agile working program, creating a dedicated team for crisis-management and training them to act on a war footing when required, crafting a strong stakeholder communication strategy, and lastly ensuring collaboration both internally and externally.
While the response window for most businesses affected will last for a few months, we can measure recovery can only in years. Hence, it’s time to take quick action and adopt a long-term perspective which will enable a company to emerge from this crisis stronger and move towards sustainability.
