Transiting into a Digital Age

The Global Pandemic is, by all means, a transitional event that would go down as a watershed moment faced by humans in modern-day history. Our act now would define the legacy we will leave for the generation ahead. At this point, the key is SURVIVAL OF THE QUICKEST & not only SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.?

The major challenge faced by the businesses is to sustain themselves amidst and beyond this lockdown. Some companies' nature made the switch to new work culture easier, helping them draw desired output from their employees; however, many of them (especially the MSMEs) are waiting for this mess to get over to restart afresh.?

Digitalization is here to stay in our lives across personal & business spaces. Work we do now shall make us better prepared for the future besides being relevant in a new environment:??

Following things are the fundamental changes we expect to happen.?

Sales & Marketing

Sales & marketing channels were already in the transformational stage before COVID 19. In the last few months, most consumers' buying behaviour shifted online primarily because of lockdown. However, even post-crisis, the habit shall remain in force at least partially, if not entirely, thus making it mandatory for all businesses to come online to stay afloat. Naturally, many companies would go back to their older ways of doing business. Therefore, the winner would be companies who would blend online & offline effectively. This area will undoubtedly require a well-crafted digital strategy and investments by each company.

Communications

Employees & partners had to work & interact remotely, enforcing them to use available online platforms. Webinars replaced the seminars for all the training & conferences. Most of the organization's choices & selections of online tools depend upon limited knowledge, budget & experience. However, in the future, the organizations would need to identify, evaluate, and have the right kind of online collaboration tools for both employees and partners to be able to work & connect remotely. Besides allocating a budget for taking an online tool, there would be due consideration for these platforms' purpose, security, and scalability.?

Managing data & documentations

The Covid-19 crisis highlighted the shortcoming of a paper-based trade system. The requirement of various complex copy documents created challenges in every sphere of business across the globe. The significant issues faced by industries are as below but not limited to:

• Negotiable instruments
• Authorized signatures
• Shipping Documents
• Managing documents. Etc

The crisis has intensified the use of digital media across the world. Most of the companies & governing bodies took rapid quasi digital solutions across industries. Still, from now on, it'll be important for all bodies to re-examine & adapt a better system that'll be a paradigm shift in how we'll be managing data & documents. A couple of required changes are:

• Expanding existing digital channels
• Acceptance of electronic documents & signature
• New business processes & controls

The organizations would be required to keep their data on Cloud-enabling people to access it remotely. However, ensuring the security of data about organizations, customers & others would be one of the critical challenges that deal with

Digital payment

Even though the digitization of payment started a couple of years back; however, its use remained a discretion with user/service providers. It is the new normal of social distancing besides an enhanced sense of safety and increased use of digital media across the spectrum. A couple of the critical factors that are leading to faster adoption is

Avoiding risk: As per various studies, hard cash can act as a career of the virus, thus forcing people across the spectrum. Digital transactions are free from any contact or physical interaction. They also provide a more secure way to pay and receive money.?

Growth of E-Commerce: People locked in their houses have no option but to do all shopping, including regular groceries from online platforms. In few cities with partial or no lockdown, people still avoided visiting brick-and-mortar stores for security reasons. From groceries to household essentials, people prefer online shopping.

Business Continuity Plan (BCP)

Last but importantly, most of the organizations had business continuity plans and documents which prove inconsequential during a pandemic; Lesson learned during this crisis are as below:

1.?Unimplementable: These BCP documents, in most of the organizations, were too big & complex to be implemented during the crises.

2.?Clarity: Second biggest flaw was that most of the company's access to these documents was only with few people at the top. It was not implementable, thus leaving companies in a dire strait when lockdown came.

3.?Lack of mock drills: Very few organizations conducted any mock drills to test the BCP. Therefore, once this crisis came to our door, very few knew what to do. The most effective crisis management sector is the defence sector. The key takeaways from defence style crisis management are:

??1. Leaner, more straightforward & implementable SOPs

??2. Every person till the last person in the chain to have a clarity of task?

??3. Most importantly, the organizations should frequently work on WFH/remotely to check on the efficiency and efficacy of their Business Continuity Plan. Regular drills would help weed out any in-efficiencies besides bringing complete clarity to the last man in the chain. As the Chinese proverb says, "The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war."

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