COVID-19 pandemic has caught businesses all over the world unprepared. For that reason, digital transformation has become a requirement for every business that wants to remain competitive and productive. The global outbreak has forced businesses to enable a maximum number of their employees to work from home in a bid to slow down the spread of the virus amid stay-at-home orders. 

As a result, a larger number of the workforce working from home has led to an astronomical surge in the demand for secure video conferencing and other tools for seamless collaboration. Cloud, security, networking, and more, are some of the ways businesses are embracing digital transformation to stay afloat amid challenging times. IT vendors have come up with a greater number of automation options to ease out the pressure on IT teams. And it is just the tip of the iceberg. 

 The pandemic has revealed a large digital divide. Organizations with digital transformation already in place have done far better than businesses that are struggling to embed technology into their business process right now. 

Use Cases for Businesses Going Digital during COVID-19 period

Healthcare 

During this period, Digital Transformation is a top priority for the healthcare sector.   

Healthcare organizations are already leveraging multiple technologies including wearable devices for telehealth, IoT devices, and integrated solutions to monitor the health of patients.  

Pharmaceutical companies use digital automation platforms to reduce human intervention. Moreover, they automate paper-based procedures and speed up processes like medicine prescriptions. Finally, they ensure compliance for processes like drug quality sampling. 

Customer Demands 

Businesses with physical stores are overwhelmed with changing customer demands. The majority of customers have gone digital to meet their day-to-day requirements. Therefore, if your business is not online, it might not get profitable ever. 

Organizations are taking cues from evolving customer demands to achieve more customer-centric digital transformation. Hence, it is far more than just having an eCommerce platform. For example, now you need to revamp your customer support and arm it with an efficient chat software and bots to respond to online consumers efficiently. Mobile app testing has become crucial to deliver a mobile-first experience. Contactless deliveries and payments have become the new norm to minimize human touch. 

 Apart from that, you need to reach customers on every platform including mobile, social media, web, and OTT. Hence, it has also become crucial to offer a consistent omnichannel customer experience. For this reason, a BPM solution can be an ally for businesses that need to adapt at a faster pace to stay in tune with customer needs. 

Automation is the new normal

In current times, emerging technologies, digital innovation, and technological ecosystems are bringing the majority of value for businesses. Businesses were already using or planning to leverage Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence, and Data analytics to make their processes and their decision-making more efficient and transparent.  

Businesses are now more keen to use digital automation platforms, which include the above technologies. In this way, they can create a more flexible and collaborative working environment to adapt to the new era. 

Mixed Work Environment 

Organizations have learned that work from home is possible if employees are given the right set of tools and technology.  

In fact, several corporations across the globe are planning to cut down their office capacities by up to 50 percent. 

However, modern digital transformation initiatives will innovate beyond stand-alone tools to meet complex business requirements. This could lead to leveraging hybrid cloud, custom software development, and new-age mobile solutions to complement the new work culture. 

In Summary

To sum up, COVID-19 has made one thing very clear – you can’t run a profitable business at scale without leveraging technology. At some point or another, every business will have to undergo digital transformation to stay relevant amid rising consumer demands and shrinking bottom lines. Pandemic has accelerated the process of digital transformation and in the coming future, you will see far lesser businesses operating in the absence of technology.