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Businesses are slowly emerging form the COVID-19 pandemic and are on the road to recovery with the goal of becoming even stronger than they were prior to the pandemic. However, the road to recovery may not necessarily be a straight and direct route, with the pandemic forcing the world to change their business practices. We’ve seen businesses shut down due to the inability to continue operating, some that are struggling to keep up with the workload and maintain business continuity, as well as some that are thriving stronger than ever as a result.
One key trend seen across the globe is that businesses are redirecting their focus towards implementing a digital future to accelerate their business recovery, through digital transformations such as automation and AI. Despite your business’ current position, it is essential for your business to consider how to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic with minimal obstacles through a digital future.
The unexpected nature of the pandemic saw a sudden influx in business backlogs. Even with the gradual movement of employees back in the office and with employees working from home, the backlog of manual and tedious tasks can take weeks to complete, creating a delay in business operations and business goals. Digital strategies or Business Process Automation strategies such as the implementation of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can accelerate the road to business recovery as well as prevent future backlogs in the incident of unexpected business roadblocks.
McKinsey reported that even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, 92% of companies thought their business models would need to change given digitisation. The pandemic has forced CEOs and CIOs to consider and accelerate digital transformation, as well as reassess their business models and roadmaps (the coordinated and detailed plans for what needs to be done, by whom and when) to ensure the recovery is as smooth as possible. It is also essential to consider the value and feasibility underlying any assumptions and business models planned due to the changing nature of the environment where we can already see changes in customer behaviours, supplier dynamics and regulations.
Although there are multiple platforms businesses can adopt for a digital way forward such as artificial intelligence, robotics automation is the fastest growing digital transformation due to its quick implementation nature, especially when adopting with an as-a-service model, which can have your automation program up and running in weeks.
According to Gartner in their Lessons form China: Business Model Resilience in the Coronavirus Outbreak, “CIOs must take both short and long term actions to ensure the success of leveraging digital giants and automation. This will be crucial for their companies to enhance business model resilience during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.” With the end of the pandemic still uncertain and the possible occurrence of becoming cyclical, robotics process automation can enable companies to navigate any future instances of this pandemic.
The buzzwords ‘robotics process automation’ has been around for years, and as a result of the pandemic, the use of these 3 words is higher than ever. But do you really know what RPA is?
RPA is defined as the automation of rules-based processes with software that utilises the user interface and which can run on any software, including web-based applications, ERP systems and mainframe systems (Deloitte).
Automation has had the power to help businesses overcome the obstacles created by the pandemic, for example, within the supply chain industry which has been one of the hardest hit industries. Baker McKenzie’s 2020 Report “Beyond Covid-19: Supply Chain Resilience Holds Key to Recovery” highlights that digitalisation of supply chains is a way that companies can begin to strategise and achieve business resilience against supply chain disruption. With the restrictions in place in many countries. COVID-19 has also created an urgency to implement robotics process automation (RPA) to combat the obstacles the supply chain industry is currently facing.
The implementation of RPA into the workplace would not only have a positive impact on your business processes through the increase in efficiency, accuracy and audit trail, but also a positive impact on your employees. Findings from Deloitte reported that “over 80% of organisations implementing or scaling RPA indicated a happier workforce.” This is largely a result from employees being tasked with more meaningful work that is less manual and repetitive, ultimately making staff roles less tedious. Additionally, the reduction in manual and tedious tasks can boost productivity and improve responsiveness from employees with more enjoyable tasks.
The road to a full business recovery requires a well thought out plan from leaders within the business. A strong understanding of the endless possibilities of technology that can be adopted and choosing the right partners to implement with will also accelerate business recovery.
At Canon Business Services (formerly Converga), our RPA-as-a-service model can help your business bounce back from the impacts COVID-19 may have caused within a matter of weeks, not years. Our RPAaaS model brings about superior customer experience and dramatic error reduction, providing significant cost and efficiency benefits in short timeframes.
The step towards a digital future should be a priority among businesses. The adoption of digital transformation strategies such as automation can accelerate your business recovery, allowing you to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic with a competitive advantage over your business competitors. While the road the recovery will not be easy, digital transformation can and will help your business reduce the backlog created, increase your business efficiency and accuracy as well as minimising any obstacles that may appear.
Thinking of taking the step into a digital future? Canon Business Services partners with technology UiPath to bring forth our RPA-as-a-Service (RPAaaS) solution. To find out more about our RPAaaS and to reach out to our team of experts, visit our RPA page.
