Tag: business automation
The popularity of edge computing and artificial intelligence (AI) has risen in recent years due to the widespread adoption of mobile technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) by various industries. The Linux Foundation’s State of the Edge Report 2021 predicts that the global market capitalization of edge computing infrastructure would reach $800 billion by 2028. If edge computing garners a wider attention span, the number of enterprises investing in AI is also growing year over year. According to the State of AI 2021 Report, the global AI funding witnessed a whopping 108% increase in 2021. More than 54% of the organizations surveyed by McKinsey in 2021 said that they have adopted AI in at least one function.
Individually, both AI and edge computing help businesses in incredible ways and hold immense potential for future development. Many forward-looking organizations are investing in these two technologies as part of their digital transformation journey. “Two heads are better than one”, goes the saying. True to this, many enterprises and technology champions are discovering new opportunities by combining edge computing and AI, or Edge AI. In this blog, we’ll see how edge computing and AI are being put to work together and discuss some use cases that will take AI applications to the edge.
Read more: Future-proof your business with 5G, edge computing and cloud
What is Edge Computing?
Edge computing refers to a distributed computing framework that brings the deployment of computing and storage resources closer to the data sources, such as local edge servers or IoT devices. By bringing enterprise applications closer to the data sources, edge computing offers a multitude of business benefits; including faster data processing and insights generation, better response times, and enhanced bandwidth availability.
In edge computing, all your device-generated data is processed and analyzed close to the source where it’s created. By preventing your data from traveling over a network to a centralized or cloud data center, edge computing reduces latency and improves bandwidth availability.
Example: Electric vehicles (EVs) leverage edge computing for data aggregation and insights generation, which help optimize charging stations and monitor the health of EV batteries.
Read more: 9 examples of artificial intelligence transforming business today
What is AI?
Artificial Intelligence or AI refers to machine intelligence, where a computer-controlled (software-programmed) machine simulates human intelligence to perceive its environment and take corresponding actions that help the machine achieve its goals. AI uses machine learning and deep learning techniques to churn robust input datasets (labeled training data) and enable rapid problem-solving.
The content recommendation systems used by Amazon, Netflix, or YouTube and Google’s advanced web search engine are some of the leading examples of AI today. The growth of artificial neural networks and deep learning technologies enable AI systems to process massive amounts of data at an incredible pace and predict future states with exceptional accuracy.
AI-powered applications command a larger share in today’s enterprise landscape. AI helps banks, insurance companies, and financial institutions with fraud detection. AI is being used by conversational bots to enhance customer service. Smart assistants like Siri and Alexa leverage AI to improve customer experience. Hospitals and healthcare providers use AI-embedded applications for making clinical decisions and delivering remote patient care.
Case Study: MUSA, Fingent’s AI-powered virtual assistant minimizes day-to-day workplaces struggles related to PeopleOps and DevOps. Read Now!
Edge AI: The Next Wave of Enterprise Digital Transformation
AI applications give the intended results by relying on seamless data transmission and computation of complex ML algorithms. Edge computing helps move AI systems close to the source where the data is generated. When AI computation is done at the edge of the network, next to the data source, it gives more accurate and desired results. This process has given rise to a new computing paradigm: Edge AI.
In edge AI, both data generation and computation take place at the network’s edge, instead of sending and processing data in a faraway cloud computing center. Here, “edge” of the network could connote anything – mobile devices, retail stores, factories, hospitals, medical equipment, traffic lights, autonomous vehicles, and so on.
Read more: Quantum vs. Neuromorphic Computing: What Will the Future of AI Look Like?
Here’s how your business can benefit from the adoption of edge AI:
1. Low-power, offline capabilities
Traditional AI applications require enormous amount of processing and computational power to operate some of the complex ML algorithms. Distance from the cloud servers often affects the deployment of AI systems in remote locations. Edge computing helps overcome this challenge as the technology is designed to operate in low-power, offline environment. For instance, blockchain and smart contracts that rely on decentralized ledger technology (requiring no central broker or mediator) can independently run on computation-heavy AI algorithms within the edge devices.
2. Faster computing and real-time insights
Edge AI enables your applications to respond to users’ requirements in real-time. This is because edge computing analyzes data locally, close to the source where it’s generated, instead of a remote cloud data center, which usually delays responses due to long-distance communications.
3. Better data security
If AI ensures the privacy of data that needs to be analyzed by securing if from getting exposed to cyber miscreants, edge AI adds an additional layer of privacy by containing that data locally. Edge AI uploads only the insights and analysis to the cloud and even anonymizes the data uploaded for training purposes to protect user identities. Thus, edge AI enables businesses to ensure data regulatory compliance.
4. Constant improvement
AI models can improve their accuracy when they get access to more training data. When an edge AI application confronts data that it is unable of processing, the application will upload the data so that it can retrain and learn from it. Since the new data set is captured right at the production edge (without any transmission delays), the edge AI application will quickly learn from the new data, ensuring constant improvement through learning.
5. Cost reduction
Offline capabilities and decentralization enable Edge AI to process data without larger internet bandwidths. This reduces your networking costs significantly. Enhanced performance of AI-enabled applications keeps your operating costs down.
Potential Use Cases of Edge AI
The rapid growth of intelligent applications and the increasing enterprise workloads on cloud are driving the adoption of edge AI. The edge AI software market is estimated to be worth $1,835 million by 2026, states a recent study. The amalgamation of edge computing and AI has led to many breakthrough advancements in recent years. Here’re a few potential uses cases of edge AI:
Healthcare
AI-powered medical devices and instruments at the edge deliver on-demand insights for clinicians to make crucial and faster decisions about patients. During surgical procedures, surgeons can rely on the ultra-low latency surgical videos streamed into AI-powered medical data processing applications to quickly detect abnormalities and identify chances of excessive bleeding. Devices out of the operating room, such as CT and MRI imaging scanners, DNA sequencers, cryo-electron microscopy, and other life science instruments also benefit from edge AI.
Energy and utilities
Edge AI models can leverage past insights, weather patterns, grid conditions, and other crucial meteorological information to create advanced simulations that help define new ways to improve the generation, distribution, and management of energy resources. This facilitates intelligent forecasting in the energy sector, which helps prevent discontinuous power and energy supply affecting the day-to-day lives of people.
Manufacturing
Edge AI applications can collect data from sensor-enabled devices installed across the factory floor and process the same in real-time, with ultra-low latency. This advantage gives rise to new use cases in manufacturing and distribution, where real-time and rapid data processing is required. Examples include detecting workplace hazards, finding product defects in assembly lines, flagging machines that require attention or human intervention, and more.
The list of edge AI use cases keeps growing every day. Smart virtual assistants, voice commands that replace text-based searches, autonomous vehicles, self-driving cars, video surveillance, motion detectors, and industrial IoT security are a few typical use cases that could be enhanced through the integration of edge AI. Fingent helps build faster, reliable, and cost-effective enterprise applications powered by edge and AI.
Are you ready to explore the possibilities of Edge AI in your business operations? Contact us today!
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin
Profound words that underline the importance of business planning. Business planning is the right strategy to ensure business productivity. With business getting more complex and planning tools filling up shelves, enterprises need a more straightforward way to manage business plans and improve sales. Only a few of the many products available have a holistic end-to-end approach to information analytics services.
SAP Analytics Cloud is a distinct analytics tool. It integrates analytics throughout the business process and across every level of an organization. It is an impeccable and compatible solution for enterprises that are involved in sectors like manufacturing, finance, and sales. This is an effective cloud-based tool that can analyze the data irrespective of the size of your firm. Plus, it allows you to transform this data into charts, tables, graphs, and more.
This article will help you determine how SAP Analytics Cloud enables enterprises to improve business planning. Read on to check out the features that will let you boost your business and help you stay competitive.
Top Two Features Of SAP Analytics Cloud For Effective Enterprise Planning
SAP Analytics Cloud is the first and the only tool in business intelligence that caters to all aspects of the business. It assists you in organizing and managing your data visualization, business planning, and predictive analysis.
Here are the SAP Analytics Cloud core planning features:
1. Augmented Analytics
Augmented analytics capabilities can help existing AI-powered analytics to offer business insights in real-time. You can add these capabilities to business planning and workflows. This contains an enhanced ‘Search to Insight’ capability allowing users to ask questions about data in natural language. Further, it can automate insights that include values and simulations.
The ‘Smart Predict’ feature can help train models to predict future outcomes without manual intervention. This enhances user experience allowing business analysts to predict future outcomes more accurately and automate decisions, preventing time lapse. Ultimately, SAP Analytics Cloud smoothens the process and improves business management.
Read more: SAP Analytics Cloud: Creating Dynamic Visual Stories
2. Enterprise planning
Collaborative enterprise planning ensures one version of the truth across the enterprise. Thus, it brings users together to align with the plan leading to better business outcomes.
The zero-based budgeting feature helps allocation of resources efficiently. The embedded collaboration tools ensure that every member of the finance team is aware of relevant information while they discuss finance issues. Plus, all the relevant budget templates are recorded and saved for the quick action and enhanced productivity.
SAP Analytics Cloud allows its users to analyze, plan and predict at one location. This can speed up planning cycles and help make informed decisions. Built-in features such as financial modeling, automated reporting enable enterprises to make better end-to-end planning decisions.
Planning and consolidation applications allow businesses to connect complex planning processes to the cloud. Thus, enterprises can create business plans and adjust them within the SAP Analytics Cloud. This allows enterprises to extend and align their plans across the organization leading to better outcomes.
Read more: Business Intelligence in SAP: How It Helps You Become a Data-driven Organization
Features That Improve Agility In The Enterprise Planning
1. Data and data visualization
Data visualization represents your entire business process. It is this important to find all the possible ways of viewing and understanding the data at a glance. This is where SAP Analytics Cloud can help. It can help make your data highly visible. These analytics offer quick answers to critical questions that can improve your business decisions.
Businesses need to gather enormous amounts of data each day from all their departments and other sources in sales. The next challenge is storing all this data in a secure place. SAP Analytics Cloud is the perfect place to store your data as it is most secure and easily accessible to all relevant people in your organization.
Read more: 7 Crucial Business Challenges Solved by SAP Analytics Cloud
2. Models
You do not need technical expertise to create a model from unrelated data sets of your company. It is quite similar to adding data to a story. Depending on the type of data, your models can either be simple or complex.
In any case, models help you organize present your data so that you can gain insights into your business. The models in SAP Analytics Cloud organize and present the data in rows and columns. This offers a unique, clear view of your data that is ready for analysis.
3. Stories
Stories occur in two phases: data view and pages. These two capabilities can enable you to gather data and connect it to create a model. This model is refined when you add data to make a story. These stories can empower you to make quality decisions for the success of your business.
What Are The Benefits Of SAP Analytics Cloud?
SAP Analytics Cloud offers many benefits for enterprises that are on the SAP. Here are a few:
1. Access data on the fly
SAP Analytics Cloud can be integrated to work both on Android and iOS devices alike. It allows your users to manage all their business activities even on a small screen from anywhere, at any time.
In today’s fast-moving world, your finance team needs the ability to create viable forecasts at a moment’s notice. Using SAP Analytics Cloud will enable your business process to remain proactive, not reactive.
2. Real-time insights
SAP Analytics Cloud functionalities allow all relevant users to generate instant insights to enhance decision-making and improve business outcomes.
3. No more silos
SAP Analytics Cloud allows for integrated planning across your organization. This means you can rest assured that all those involved in the decision-making process have the whole picture, not just a small part.
4. Customized dashboard
Enterprises are always on the lookout to improve data visualization, which helps in having a better interface for successful operations. Thankfully, SAP Analytics Cloud allows its users to customize their dashboards to help them navigate through the system and offer a personalized look. This way, business owners have relevant data on their interface just the way they like it.
5. Increased efficiency
SAP Analytics Cloud facilitates easy collaboration across your organization. This allows for quicker approvals, contributions, and comments. Plus, automation and ML helps in creating plans that are more productive, leading to faster results.
6. Minimize errors
Integrating SAP Analytics Cloud with SAP S/4HANA will allow the enterprises to minimize or eliminate errors that occur while making changes on multiple files on the cloud. You can make changes without manual intervention in the source system.
Read more: SAP S/4HANA Journey: 8 Ways C-level Leaders & Executives Can Derive Business Value
Power Charge Your Business
SAP Analytics Cloud is unique. It offers businesses real-time data to manage their resources effectively. Their tools keep getting newer updates to make it more reliable. As an SAP Silver Partner, Fingent has the expertise necessary to help you make the best use of this power-packed tool. Let us discuss your business and see how SAP Analytics Cloud can help you. Call us.
How Organizations Can Embrace Transformation and Expedite Their Growth
From remote working and e-learning to sales and customer service to more critical cloud infrastructure and security, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated technology adoption across several key domains. The pandemic has made digital transformation crucial for business growth across various industries. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, puts it that “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.”
That said, companies will have to change their mindsets and adopt new strategies to stay relevant and competitive in future. Here are six ways you can adapt to the new normal and taste business success.
Read more: How Business Owners and Leaders Can Set up a Successful COVID Exit Strategy
1. Adapt to change
Change is the only constant and more so today than ever before. Change is happening at a faster pace and is very crucial for small businesses. Today, old and traditional methods of winning clients and serving them do not seem to fit. The list of things you need to change may be long and only growing. Instead of reacting to these changes, the best approach is to embrace them and treat them.
So, when you treat the problem, you employ change to work with you and not against you. People are more likely to accept strategic changes now, especially if the initiatives are focused on improving their lives.
Bring agility and innovation to your business by implementing a quarterly strategic planning and review process. It will allow you to remain focused, actionable, and agile by adopting new learnings.
While you are in the process of adapting to changes, consider a few questions that you need to ask yourself.
- What can disrupt my business and change everything?
- How can I lead that change?
- How can I ensure that my business stays relevant and profitable in the next five years?
Read more: Top 5 Organizational Imperatives for Business Leaders to Become Winners in the New Normal
2. Customer always comes first
As consumer needs keep evolving, you have to think of ways to meet the new supply and demand to stay relevant and competitive.
Social distancing due to the pandemic has left many businesses struggling—for instance, physical retail stores, manufacturers, automotive, banks, etc. Many product-based companies face significant issues related to manufacturing and distribution. Service-based companies are also suffering due to poor customer demands. In short, business models should be revamped so that they are immune to new challenges.
The pandemic has even changed customers’ needs and preferences.
One of the best ways is to engage in a conversation with your clients to identify opportunities. You could probably start by asking a probing question at the end of the conversation with your client. You may also conduct surveys or quarterly client advisory groups to follow a more formal process.
To stay relevant, you will have to prioritize customers’ needs and problems. It is imperative for future growth and innovation.
View Infographic: Business technologies to boost customer experience and satisfaction
3. Implement automation wherever possible
Working smarter means hiring and collaborating with the right talent. Encourage teamwork for removing the bottlenecks and hurdles. It will translate to more revenue with the available resources. Effective workplace collaboration will also boost your team’s morale and reduce lay-offs.
Leverage technology and systems to streamline your business and allow it to run smoothly. According to Gartner, by 2024, businesses will see a 30% reduction in their operational costs by combining hyper-automation technologies with redesigned operational processes.
Identify processes that can be automated and evaluate how automation will enhance your customer service and experience.
Read more: What Makes a Business Process Apt for Automation
Automation of repetitive, routine, and mundane tasks saves your workforce’s productive hours and spares them for more crucial tasks. Automation enhances your organizational efficiency and offsets growth investment.
4. Speed is the key to sustain in 2021
The pandemic has made companies rethink their conventional organizational models and pushed them to adopt new ways of working at speed. Flat structures empowering decision-making are replacing the traditional management-led hierarchies. It enables companies to perform with improved speed and precision. For instance, PepsiCo adopted newer working models to enable fast and easy access to their products during the pandemic. Within 30 days (from concept to execution), the company launched two direct-to-consumer (D2C) websites.
5. Adopt digital commerce
The pandemic has spurred digital commerce like never before. Deloitte’s 2020 holiday retail survey reports that contactless shopping experiences enjoyed a huge spike in demand during the holiday season last year. Over 73% of shoppers planned to have orders delivered to their doorsteps as against 62% in 2019.
Read More: Contactless Retail Delivery Software – How Retailers Can Revive Sales While Adhering To Social Distancing Norms
Companies should accelerate and optimize both B2B and B2C digital commerce channels by developing custom retail software solutions to enjoy the benefits of e-commerce sales and ROI.
As customers demand efficiency and speed, organizations must give precedence to customer experience to overcome competition.
In 2020, Adidas established itself as a top digital commerce player targeting $4.9 billion in online sales, almost 12% of their overall business. In the future, the company expects it to rise to 25%. Also, they were quick to recover from the pandemic impact with an increase in online sales during the lockdown.
Read more: 5 Transformative Trends Ushered by B2B E-commerce in Healthcare and Life Sciences
Fingent leverages innovative and emerging technologies to help digital retailers and e-commerce businesses
Fingent custom software development experts helps retailers build custom retail software solutions, e-commerce, and mobile commerce apps that help you deliver exceptional customer service and experience, just like your physical retail store. Fingent helps retailers and e-commerce brands develop Augmented Reality-based solutions that allow their customers to preview objects in 3D. Using AR technology, both online shoppers and in-store buyers can choose their preferred products without the hassle of buying the wrong ones. We enable companies with an e-commerce presence to build AR applications through web platforms (WEB AR), avoiding the need for separate mobile apps.
Read more: Technology Investments: How to gain maximum value?
6. Ensure customer data privacy and protection
Data transparency is imperative. With the rise in going digital, the total amount of data created, captured, and consumed will more than double by 2024 globally. A 2019 Factual survey reveals that more than 50% of the US smartphone users will be ready to share their geolocation details with a service provider only if they are aware of how the information will be used. When customers realize the benefits of sharing personal data, such as online behavior, shopping history, mobile app usage, or geolocation tracking and trust that their data will be protected, they will be more willing to share it.
Jersey Mike’s Subs, a US sandwich chain, has a transparent privacy policy that lets you know which customer data they collect and how it is stored and used. Approaches like these that give consumers clarity and control over their personal information will define personalization and enhance customer experience.
Consumer data privacy acts such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) aim at ensuring consumer privacy rights and data protection under the respective regional, state, and federal laws. These acts allow consumers in the respective regions to see all the information companies have saved on them and how the data will be protected and used.
We help ensure smooth business transformation
As we try to recover from the crisis, it is essential to consider what the future looks like for your business. Your organization must adopt new technologies, innovation, and new practices to ensure a smooth business transition. It also helps you meet the growing customer demands.
Reach out to us and let us help you accomplish a seamless business transition through modern technology adoption.
5 Ways Application Modernization Enables Your Business to Grow and Reap ROI During a Pandemic
Reduce your operational costs and unnecessary investments with legacy modernization
Since the pandemic started tightening its grip on the world, businesses have seen an unmistakable acceleration in digital transformation. Legacy application modernization enables enterprises to have the agility and ability to respond to dynamic changes. Software technologies are being enhanced and deployed at an unprecedented scale, and most businesses have noted a high appetite for digital transformation.
Read more: A Detailed Guide to Understanding Digital Business Transformation
Your business should also have an application modernization strategy to ensure business continuity and growth in a highly volatile market. Modernizing your existing applications or systems is the best way to monetize the current capital and avoid unwanted technology investments.
Legacy application modernization helps you get rid of accumulating technical debts and business paralysis. This blog discusses how application modernization enables businesses to transform digitally and scale up during the pandemic.
What is application modernization?
Application modernization involves updating older software for new computing approaches. These updates include new languages, frameworks, and infrastructure platforms. We can compare this update to renovating an older home, enabling it with better safety, structural integrity, ease of use, design, and so forth. This practice is also called legacy modernization. Legacy modernization extends the lifespan of your applications instead of replacing them wholly. Such an approach will allow your business to take advantage of technology innovations.
Most businesses have thoughtfully invested in their existing application portfolio. Some companies are ready to retire these applications and adopt the latest. However, this can be costly from both a financial and operational standpoint. Hence, “application modernization is the most sensible way to leverage newer platforms, tools, and frameworks.”
Read more: Why modernize your legacy systems? What’s the best approach to legacy systems modernization?
5 ways application modernization enables businesses to scale up during the pandemic
Owning and operating outdated software can present a variety of challenges during the pandemic. Outdated software can accumulate problems over time, resulting in employee and customer frustration. Here’s how application modernization helps businesses scale up during the pandemic.
Read more: Six Common Enterprise Software Development Myths Debunked
1. Application Modernization reduces costs
Because of diminishing resources during the pandemic, “cost“ has been the most important driving factor for application modernization. For example, the more data you accumulate, the more you have to pay for the on-premise data center forcing companies to buy new storage systems more frequently.
It is expensive to own and maintain the infrastructure as they incur extra costs for cooling, space, and electricity. Apart from these expenses, you would need a dedicated IT team to maintain a vast storage system. Therefore, it is reasonable and beneficial to invest in timely application modernization that helps avoid all the costs mentioned above.
Read more: Four Ways to Future-Proof Legacy Applications
2. Enhances customer experience
With stiff competition, the market has turned into a battleground for businesses that sell similar products and services. In this scenario, customer experience is what will set a company apart. Continued use of an outdated system can hurt your customer experience because they have limited functionality. Legacy software affects efficiency and waiting time. Additionally, the security problems of legacy software can easily compromise your business and customer data, impacting your brand severely.
On the other hand, a customer expects your business to keep up with the latest trends and technology. Application modernization can enhance your customers’ experience by transforming the end-user interface, automating manual processes, and creating new features. Essentially, your business operations will be more efficient with more stable systems, quicker fixes, and better security. All of it together sets your business apart, ensuring your business thrives during the pandemic.
3. Enables you to create new features and services
You may have invested in software that is perfect for your current needs. However, the pandemic has taught us that change is inevitable. An application that is working well today may not perform so tomorrow. Every new patch, release, or update that is not purpose-built will be a problem for you. It is challenging to meet the changing customer needs during an economic downturn.
Thankfully, application modernization allows your business to create new features and services that align with your current and future goals. These new features and services can be purpose-built for your business to ensure the legacy application continues to provide value today and into the future.
4. Improves employee productivity
You cannot expect your employee to work with applications and systems that seem to take forever to respond or perform simple operations. Just as businesses expect efficiency from their employees, employees expect their companies to provide high-performance technologies in their offices.
Working on outdated applications can frustrate your employees, lowering their performance and hindering their success. Legacy and low-performing software can increase work stress resulting in missed deadlines. It can also affect overall productivity as it irritates and demotivates your workforce.
Application modernization can automate several repetitive tasks and processes, freeing up your employees to concentrate on more intelligent tasks. It will save time and increase the efficiency of your employees. Since modernization minimizes application problems, it allows you to develop more features designed to streamline your operations.
Watch video: New Technologies for Workforce Management and Optimization
5. Erases technical debts
Technical debt creates friction between developers and their work. It may increase their job tomorrow, as the situation demands them to take the fastest and shortest approach to deliver the project today. Technical debt includes the implied cost of additional rework that developers have to bear for taking a shortcut today. It is translated into incremental cost and loss of agility because of prior decisions intended to save time or cost. Moreover, technical debt can build up to a point where developers will not be able to do anything to rectify it. Technical debt can result in increased maintenance costs and the inability to add new features. Since each part depends on the other, any attempt to fix one part might cause some damage to another.
Application modernization can erase technical debt because it eliminates the need to replace your existing systems completely. Thus, your company need not spend resources to maintain an outdated code. It will also reduce overall problems from technical debt. Legacy software modernization fixes your application’s glitches and makes it more robust and healthy.
Modernize your apps without burning a hole in your pocket
Your business can get up to speed with application modernization without investing heavily in all new systems. With application modernization, your business will see increased revenue in the long run. It boosts productivity and enhances the security of your applications.
Get started on your mission to legacy modernization. We at Fingent software development experts can help you make smart decisions and find the most effective way to modernize your systems without leaving a gaping hole in your company’s resources. Give us a call, and let’s get talking.
Top 5 Organizational Imperatives for Business Leaders to Become Winners in the New Normal
The post-COVID-19 business scenario will not look the same across industries or countries. It will pose challenges and opportunities to leaders.
Tips for Business Leaders to Attain Success in the New Normal
While traits like empathy, authenticity, clarity, and agility remain crucial during this uncertainty, leaders face challenges to maintain a sense of connection and togetherness within their teams. However, as businesses are beginning to get back on track, leaders will have to leverage new insights and advancements to rebuild the workplace rather than returning to it as usual.
This article discusses five best practices that business leaders can follow and prepare their organization for the future.
Read more: 11 Practices Followed by Leaders to Build Resilience and Ensure Rapid Business Recovery
1. Have a clear purpose
There is a big difference between a “factor” and a “must-have.” A company that has a unique affirmation of its identity embodies everything the company stands for. This purpose helps future-ready companies to attract people to join the organization, stay and thrive. Also, investors understand why it is valuable.
According to a survey, 82% of companies in the U.S said that organizational purpose is essential, but only half of these companies said their purpose drove impact. So, what can bridge the gap?
Leaders can set the purpose in motion and make it real for people. This can be achieved when employees identify and feel connected to their organization’s purpose. For example, Amazon leaves a chair vacant during meetings to represent the customer’s role in decisions. CVS Health stopped selling tobacco products to achieve the purpose of helping people to attain better health.
Research reveals that people who live their purpose at work are four times more likely to report better engagement levels than those who do not.
Simply put, purpose inspires commitment, reveals the untapped market potential, and even navigates uncertainty. So, companies must articulate what they stand for and use their purpose to connect employees and stakeholders in ways that justify their business choice.
Read more: 7 Ways for Your Business to Overcome the COVID-19 Aftermath
2. Create a value agenda
An organization must create a value plan that helps convert its ambitions and targets into tangible elements such as business units, product lines, regions, and capabilities. This allows companies to articulate where value is created and set it apart to drive future success.
Organizations must use the value agenda to focus their efforts and enable their employees to understand what matters. If this is achieved, the results can be significant and hard to replicate.
For instance, Apple ensures it provides the best user experience. The company gives importance to not just the product design but also the product packaging. Apple has a dedicated packaging team to ensure users elicit the right emotional response while unboxing.
Having a clear value agenda will help a company devise better strategic priorities and become agile to shift resources as priorities change.
3. Distinct culture
Future-ready companies need to have a distinct culture that can help them distinguish themselves from others. Culture includes rituals, symbols, behaviors, and experiences that describe how an organization works.
For example, Amazon enforces its “two-pizza rule,” according to which every internal team should be small enough to be fed with two pizzas. This rule supports the company’s approach to meetings: no PowerPoint, shorter meetings, and start with silence to allow participants to go through the pre-meeting memo. These approaches may sound silly, but in reality, it enables the company to reach better decisions faster.
For successful companies, culture forms the backbone and fuels sustained excellence in performance over time. Studies show that companies with strong cultures are three times more likely to achieve higher total returns to shareholders than those without a healthy culture.
Leaders have to consider specific behaviors that employees at all levels adhere to create a robust performance culture.
4. Flatten structure
In recent years, the business environment has become more complex and interconnected. Many companies have adapted to these changes and created a more sophisticated matrix expecting it to solve market complexity. However, this is not how it should be.
Future-ready organizations must prepare themselves to become fitter, faster, flatter, and better at unlocking considerable value. The goal should not be to eliminate hierarchy but to flatten the organization, adopt the most uncomplicated profit and loss management structure, and reinforce business objectives with robust performance management and other mechanisms.
For example, Haier, a China-based company of appliances and electronics, adopted emergent and agile teams instead of the traditional hierarchy. The multinational company has no layers, no conventional bosses, and no middle management.
Another example to consider is Google. It follows a “non-zero-sum” management approach that emphasizes developing a communication line running in all directions rather than reporting relationships. It brings together cross-functional and professional skills while avoiding hierarchical mindsets. Such teams can act fast because they are flexible, are ready to learn from mistakes, and try new approaches.
In simple words, the future-ready organization must include models that are designed around people and activities. As technology advances, bosses will become coaches and enablers rather than micromanagers. When organizations set their priorities and ways of working, responsibilities, and transparent decisions, they can empower their frontline staff to make decisions.
Read more: Five Business Technology Trends CEOs Need to Embrace in 2021
5. Prioritize data-rich tech platforms
Data is of utmost importance, and future-ready companies need to take it seriously. For example, Netflix transformed from a small DVD-provider to a multifaceted global OTT content platform and media production company by leveraging insights from its user data through powerful algorithms.
So, future-ready companies need to understand that data can empower decisions, and the value agenda provides unexpected yet promising opportunities.
To get maximum benefits from the data, future-ready companies must create practical approaches to data governance, redesign processes in a modular fashion, and leverage cloud-based technology by dynamically reallocating their budgets. By utilizing the data effectively, companies can develop new products, services, and even LOBs.
Read more: Navigate Business Impact Of COVID-19 With These Hot Technologies
There’s no denying that the COVID-19 pandemic has left many businesses in grief and economic dislocation. Business leaders must lead with empathy and compassion as they start to re-energize and revitalize their teams. The best leaders establish and reinforce behaviors that can support their organization during this crisis and after.
Read more: Business Process Re-engineering: Facing Crisis with Confidence
Get in touch with us to discover how Fingent, a top custom software development company, supports customers in ensuring business continuity and enables effective employee engagement during the current pandemic.
How CEOs can prepare their business for 2024?
The unexpected entry of COVID-19 and its consequences blew away the year 2020. Technology rose to the occasion and helped businesses cope with these changes to a certain degree. However, the “new normal” has proven that we can adapt and come through any mishap. A fresh surge in innovation and new technologies promise to help us deal with the new normal of 2024 and beyond. However, with future business technology trends shifting in real-time by consumer behavior, volatile markets have become a daily reality. As businesses emerge from a chaotic year, CEOs need to begin a rebuilding phase in 2024. It is not just a restoration because the rebuilding must form the foundation of a new era. Are you prepared for it?
Fingent supports customers to ensure business continuity during COVID and enables employees to engage effectively during the current pandemic. Our business technology consulting solutions are tailored to address the unique requirements of various industries.
Read more: 11 Practices Followed by Leaders to Build Resilience and Ensure Rapid Business Recovery
This blog explores five such business technology trends CEOs need to follow in the coming year.
1. Transformation of workplace and work culture
Work from home (WFH) has become a growing trend in today’s work environment. While some businesses already practice a regular remote working option, COVID-19 has made WFH mandatory.
As coronavirus’s terror continues, most businesses have already considered the work from home set up as a permanent feature. Some companies have announced work from home for their employees till the middle of 2021. Few others went a step ahead and allowed their employees to work from home forever! According to an estimate by Global Workplace Analytics, 25-30% of the workforce will be working from home multiple days a week by the end of 2021.
This trend may worry CEOs as it involves a massive element of trust. Laying down work-from-home policies and metrics to ensure productivity will help.
2. Bridge gaps and renew relationships
“That unplanned kind of interaction that contributes so much to how we build relationships with people and how we build culture, those things are what are missing,” says Andi Owen, CEO of Herman Miller Inc.
Both CEOs and employees can empathize with Andi Owen’s sentiments. Perhaps one day in the future, face-to-face meetings will return to normal. However, right now is the time to shift strategies toward the digital realm to improve relationships.
Whatever the circumstances may be, businesses must ensure they have a defined work from home policy. For this concept to be practical, CEOs must ensure that the need for inspiration, connection, and a sense of purpose are met in the workspace. Though remote working makes it practically impossible to have in-person meetings, CEOs must ensure that their employees have newer ways to work – where they feel connected and enjoy a sense of purpose, though isolated.
Additionally, businesses will need to adjust their marketing plans. This could include strengthening their online presence to gain and retain customers while keeping their employees engaged and happy. The most successful CEOs will find ways to improve their network even in the most challenging times.
Read more: 6 Ways to Ensure Business Success Through Strong Digital Presence
3. Embrace innovation and a creative approach
In the past, a CEO could be successful by specializing in certain areas while delegating other responsibilities. Some CEOs may shy away from embracing new ideas and technologies because they do not have the resources to commit to significant innovations. However, the pandemic has completely changed the business landscape. If a CEO is not prepared to accept new ideas and practices, it may turn into a business disaster.
A successful business will always have data and technology at its core, but a successful CEO will encourage creativity in his employees and welcome new ideas and practices. He must have a hands-on approach to every sector of the business and communicate with employees, partners, and customers.
Read more: Prepare for the Future of Digital Innovation with these 10 Services From Fingent
4. Better online presence
All the trends mentioned before this – accommodating a work from home culture, strengthening the network, and embracing innovation – require businesses to improve their online presence and digital profile. It means that CEOs should revamp their online presence by following these tips:
- Business websites must become more interactive yet easy to use.
- Improved customer service should be a top priority on your radar.
- In addition to product launches, continue to update your social content on social media.
- To build your audience, look at the suggestions in their feed.
- Include images and short video clips.
- Look for tools to increase time and bandwidth.
Read more: How Custom Website Development Services Can Increase Sales for Your Business
5. Flexibility is the key
As the new year approaches, every business makes some long-term and short-term plans. However, 2020 taught us that the world could change suddenly and dramatically. Upheaval will continue as the pandemic persists, and we must contend with social and economic collateral damage. Businesses thus need to assess their ability to be flexible.
“The supply and demand for office space may change significantly. Many people have learned that they can work at home or that there are other methods of conducting their business than they might have thought from what they were doing a couple of years ago. When change happens in the world, you adjust to it.” – Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. The best thing a business can opt for during these historically tumultuous times is to remain flexible.
Retooling for tomorrow
The coronavirus brought in an unprecedented whirlwind of changes. Technology has been so helpful to businesses in coping with a global economic crisis. The pandemic has been the catalyst for new tech trends, and it will continue to drive innovation to the new normal.
CEOs who leverage these technologies born out of today’s crises to their advantage have an opportunity to elevate their business. Though no CEO can predict what will transpire in future, you can get ready for the new year by focusing on these business technology trends. Talk to us and let us make your business equipped for a better tomorrow.
Challenges Your Business Should Overcome in the Post-COVID Phase
- Introduction
- Challenges in Reopening Strategy
- Challenges of Shifting Customer Habits
- Challenge of Operations and Employee Safety
- Impact on Operations for Manufacturing Units
- Challenges of Finance and Banking
- Tax, Trade & Regulatory Challenges
- Crisis Management
- Focus on tomorrow
Introduction
The past few months have been an extremely challenging time for communities across the globe as the pandemic continues to take its toll. Amidst all the chaos and anxiety however, the world is trying to return to the new normal. During this unprecedented reality, businesses are witnessing the beginning of a dramatic restructuring of economic and social order. Everyone is looking forward to the next normal that will materialize after the battle against COVID-19 has been won, with hopes that it will be better and more profitable. Challenges lie ahead though. What are these COVID-19 Aftermath challenges and how do we combat them? This article will discuss that.
Where Do We Start?
With lives and livelihoods in danger, businesses are running a spreadsheet for basics that never mattered so much before. Plans are being drawn how many people can fit into a workplace spaced six feet apart, where the one-way path should begin and end, and what adjustments can and need to be made to the entrance, lunchrooms, and restrooms.
All of these are critical tasks but chalking them down is not going to be enough to mobilize and stabilize businesses. We need an enterprise-wide ability to absorb uncertainty while incorporating lessons into operating models quickly. This might seem like a daunting path beset with challenges, but an action plan can get you through this successfully. This article discusses 7 major challenges and resolutions to jumpstart the recovery.
Read more: 6 Hot Technologies that Handhold Businesses Amid COVID-19 Impact
1. Challenges in Reopening Strategy
The pandemic has impacted nearly every industry including retail. Manufacturing is on a downward slope as production moves at a snail’s pace. Supply chains are being disrupted due to higher air freight costs. This supply shock is having a knock-on effect on retail. Navigating their way out of this spiral is going to need a solid reopening strategy.
Read more: Contact-less Services: The New Normal in Retail
What can businesses do?
- Restart and reset, not just reopen: Employee and customer behaviors have drastically changed. Be ready to start a new era of business. Build courage and foresight to change for more than just immediate needs.
- Be ready to adopt omnichannel integration: Omnichannel initiatives offer contactless curbside pickup and other features, so be willing to continuously improve services.
- Shape your future workforce: Redeploy store associates to fill other roles. Upskill then to achieve the required digital fluency. Cross-train employees so that they can fill in when others are away.
- Act swiftly to radically accelerate in-store integration: Customers may not be inclined to visit stores unless you give them a good reason to do so. Offer your consumers compelling value propositions for store traffic.
- Develop a future-state vision: Adopt an omnichannel view that includes store closure plans or rent negotiations.
- Digitize and automate non-core tasks: Automate labor scheduling. Expand the use of self-checkout and mobile checkout processes. Provide remote-management tools for in-house and field managers.
- Shift tasks: Sourcing and distribution teams must find ways to move certain tasks, such as price tagging and labeling, away from stores.
2. Challenges of Shifting Customer Habits
As the coronavirus spread progressed across geographies, customer behavior has also changed drastically. Customer habits are changing, and we can expect them to continue to change in the weeks and months ahead. We can break down their behavior into three phases where each phase shows a distinct behavior:
- Escalation: Customers tend to load up on essential goods such as groceries and medicines which include immunity-boosters.
- Accumulation: Customers brace for a sustained quarantine by stocking up on everyday personal care products.
- Recovery: Customers will continue to spend on consumer goods.
Also, customers now prefer making purchases online, their focus has shifted more to eCommerce.
Read more: Re-Imagining Customer Experience in Retail Industry
How can businesses respond?
- Enable flexible product flow: Ensure your product inventories align with consumer demand. Make distribution centers more flexible. As more customers purchase products online, make sure you minimize distribution disruptions.
- Bolster online presence: Accelerate direct-to-customer sales.
- Maintain close contact with customers: Ensure they know that products are available.
3. Challenge of Operations and Employee Safety
One of the main concerns of a company leader during and after the COVID-19 pandemic is its impact on operations. Evidently, the epidemic has adversely affected sales volume and the ability to serve clients and customers as well as manage the business. Companies are faced with the challenge of employees being quarantined for weeks after business or vacation trips. They lack the tools required to organize remote work during the quarantine.
How to reorganize the workplace?
- Establish dedicated cross-functional teams: They can coordinate the activities between various business units, provide necessary information to the management team, and communicate with employees, partners, and employees.
- Analyze critical roles and key positions: Develop an effective process for managing decision-making under various scenarios.
- Ensure the safety of employees: Review policies for maintaining good hygiene at the workplace.
- Ensure that there is no crowding in the office: Decide on which roles can be done remotely and which roles require employees to be present in the office. This will help you optimize the work with only 20-30% of employees at the office.
- Easy Transportation: Ensure that transportation is arranged for and accessible by the employees.
- Plans for support staff: Have a written plan on how to stagger the arrival of support staff such as receptionists and security guards.
- Workout checkpoints: Have a series of checkpoints where testing can be done.
4. Impact on Operations for Manufacturing Units
Manufacturers face formidable challenges when it comes to restarting their operations. Globally, they are facing workforce disruptions at an unprecedented scale. Most manufacturers are yet to determine how they will function and perform while struggling to cope with the present scenario. They need fit-for-purpose plans.
How can manufacturers respond?
- Start with possible scenarios: Start with the current need for workforce and design a workforce approach.
- Tap into technology: Consider the possibility of automating certain aspects of the industry which would avoid too many people at the site.
- Create a roster: Ensure that teams come in at different times during the day depending on the number of workers and the skill required at any given point.
- Focus on a safe work environment: Organize regular cleaning and disinfection of workplaces and tools. Invest in medical equipment such as thermometers and sanitizers.
- Review sick leave policies: Consider the possibility of providing temporary sick leave without the need to provide a doctor’s notice.
- Develop agile workforce strategies: It keeps the global economy viable.
- Create your own news channel: Misinformation can create particular challenges for manufacturers. Combat this by ensuring that you put out timely, accurate, and appropriate information for your workers.
5. Challenges of Finance and Banking
Economic uncertainty and risk have either directly or indirectly impacted most finance companies. As businesses slow down, companies are seeing lower revenue due to reduced cash flow.
Managing cash and liquidity positions may become crucial in the coming months. This situation is worsened by inadequate digital maturity, staff shortages and immense pressure on the existing infrastructure as companies deal with the impact of the pandemic. You need strategies to safeguard your customers’ financial security while you safeguard their wellbeing and yours as well.
What can finance services do?
- Craft a strategic response: Adopting the right digital technologies enables innovations. These must include solutions for analytics and insights to detect and prepare for new risks.
- Enable Automation: Ensure availability of digital banking services through business process reengineering and automation.
- Leverage AI capabilities: There has been and will be a surge in call volumes during and after COVID-19. Leverage AI-backed tools and conversation platforms to deal with the surge.
- Initiate video banking: Live web video banking solutions can assist your team in serving customers and maintaining business continuity.
6. Tax, Trade & Regulatory Challenges
There are significant tax provisions and other measures to assist businesses that stakeholders should carefully review. Post pandemic, they should think about the broader implications of their business decisions and strategies.
What can you do?
- Business disruption: Develop restructuring plans. Review intra-group service expenses and expense allocations.
- Cash tax savings: Manage cash taxes by potentially reducing taxable income. Obtain available refunds. Work with the treasury function to align repatriation strategies. Model taxable income against the company’s overall tax posture.
- Agile tax models: Supply chains and business strategies need reevaluation, which is best achieved by agile tax models.
- Review all aspects: Stabilize supply chains. Brace for an unpredictable revenue. Reduce costs and increase productivity.
- Meet regulatory obligations: Despite budget constraints, tax compliance requirements must be met. Consider co-sourcing or outsourcing tax compliance.
- Stay informed: Understand the expense of various supply chain configurations and opportunities. Make informed decisions quickly.
7. Crisis Management
Your response to the crisis today can position your business to thrive tomorrow. You need to prioritize incident management along with the safety of workers. It is important for organizations to understand what data is relevant to their business. Some companies are developing new contingency plans while others are using existing ones.
What can organizations do?
- Dedicate a team for crisis management: Ensure that every team member knows what their role is. Train each team member in executing the plan to be sure that they are ready at any moment.
- Establish facts: Strong data reinforces a central element of crisis planning. Establish facts accurately during the crisis. Use the facts to inform your response strategy.
- Collaborate: Collaborate with the public relations team, legal and regulatory teams, and operational and response teams. Create a small core committee from among them.
Focus on tomorrow
The response window for any crisis is measured in months but recovery is measured in years. Create scenarios today to plan for a stronger tomorrow and beyond. Wider and longer-term perspectives can help your business emerge stronger and more sustainable. Data, Readiness, and Empathy are the three vital qualities required to keep people healthy and businesses running. Fingent top custom software development company is closely monitoring the situation and helping businesses return to work with our technology consulting and innovation capabilities. Contact us to know more.
6 Hot Technologies that Handhold Businesses Amid COVID-19 Impact
The COVID-19 pandemic has had wide-ranging ramifications for several businesses. Forrester predicts that the retail sector will endure a 2.1 trillion-dollar loss in 2020 due to COVID-19. It also said that it will take four years for retailers to experience the growth seen before the pandemic. As COVID-19 continues breathing threats down the neck of businessmen, hot technologies are emerging as a relief to counteract them and lead businesses towards their goals. We will discuss a few of these specific technologies such as cloud, eCommerce, eLearning, automation, virtual collaboration, and contactless services that can help you minimize the effects of COVID-19 on your business.
Read More: Fingent’s Response to COVID-19 Business Implications
1. Cloud Adoption During COVID-19
With physical interaction no longer being an acceptable form of communication, organizations and institutions have had to swiftly shift to digital solutions to retain productivity. The domino effect of COVID-19 was seen in various sectors, accelerating the adoption of facilities for seamless remote work. Cloud computing has emerged as an essential technology for critical application and scalability of infrastructure in this regard.
Companies from various sectors are now starting to realize the benefits and value of cloud computing as far-reaching beyond the scenario created by the pandemic. As a result, businesses will have to scale up their digital transformation efforts and invest in cloud resources without delay. If anyone had reservations about investing in cloud computing before this, COVID-19 has proved that its necessity is indisputable.
Read More: 5 Trends That Will Transform Cloud Computing in 2020
2. E-Commerce
CCInsights reported that as of 21 April 2020, US and Canadian e-commerce orders have seen a 129% increase.
With restrictions on the number of people that can be gathered in one place, gone are the glory days of shopping malls and brick and mortar stores. COVID-19 has changed shopping behaviors overnight, necessitating brands to adapt and be flexible to meet changing needs.
For example, the Buy Online Pick up In Store (BOPIS) capability has become vital to maintaining sales volume with the restrictions in mind. A good example of this is the mobile phone industry. When foot traffic is curbed, then Mobile Point of Sale programs can be set up to take orders and payment at the same time for business continuity. Membership or Loyalty cards can be now digitalized through mobile applications.
Read More: How a Smart Product Ordering System Helps Retailers and Wholesalers
3. Virtual Collaboration
Many developed nations are now stipulating that employees of non-essential businesses work remotely for an indefinite time, making video conferencing vital. Schools, colleges, and universities are also leveraging video conferencing platforms through live or recorded lectures.
This has brought many virtual collaboration solutions to the forefront that facilitate video conferencing, instant messaging, task and calendar management, work collaboration, file sharing, attendance tracking, and so on. A few examples include Zoom, DingTalk, WeChat Work, Zoho Remotely, and so on.
At Fingent top software development company, we use InfinCE, a powerful cloud-based enterprise collaboration software that offers support for remote work.
Read Our Case Study: How Fingent enabled a smarter digital workplace solution for Sony Mobile
4. E-Learning
During this time of crisis, the entire education ecosystem is coming together to ensure that students do not suffer. Educational applications, platforms, and resources offer functionalities across multiple categories such as:
- Resources to provide psycho-social support
- Digital learning management systems
- Digital systems designed for use on basic mobile phones
- Massive open online course platforms
- Self-directed learning content
- Mobile reading applications
- Tools for teachers to create digital learning content
Read More: E-Learning Taking A New Front: How Can LMS Technology Help
5. Automation
Automation has been helping businesses mitigate disruption by enabling them to stay connected across teams and systems while maintaining customer support in times of uncertainties such as this pandemic.
Robotic Process Automation improves the efficiency and reliability of work outcomes and automates the time-consuming, repetitive tasks that weigh down intelligent workers. The benefits are:
- Digital workers do not need to have the weekend off. They can work 24 hours a day, 24/7 to respond to spikes in business activity.
- They do not have travel restrictions nor are they at the risk of COVID-19 infection or affected by physical office closure.
During the pandemic, companies that have already invested in automation technologies are doing exponentially better than those who did not. It is obvious, that automation can pave the way for a better future.
Read More: How Automation Ensures Businesses Stay Afloat During COVID-19 Crisis
6. Contactless Services
The coronavirus pandemic has driven a preference for self-service purchasing, boosting contactless services. Consider a few examples available now and upcoming in the future:
- Dining experience: Technology can take care of everything: reserving a table at the restaurant, pre-ordering your food, digital valet services, contactless seating, contactless payment, and online feedback.
- Contactless payment: It lets shoppers integrate their payment information to their loyalty account through an app and then use a QR code for payment through self-checkouts.
- Contactless delivery: This ensures end-to-end hygiene because a customer places an order, makes the payment online, and gets the food delivered without ever coming in contact with the delivery agent.
Read More: Contactless Services: The New Normal in Retail
Grab a Slice of Hot Technology
While the end of the pandemic remains elusive, capturing even a slice of these hot technologies could make a huge difference to businesses. They can even help smaller businesses gain a stronger foothold during this pandemic and into the future. Get in touch with us and help us guide you through this pandemic by implementing the right technology solutions for your business.
Can Robotic Process Automation Rescue Businesses From An Economic Recession
COVID-19 is panning out to be a historic tragedy both for the human race as well as our economy. While most businesses are stalled due to the economic recession induced by COVID-19, there is a ray of hope. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is rising up as the savior for many businesses by offering recession-proof operations. RPA might be that one alleviating factor that can keep your business and the economy afloat.
When implemented successfully, RPA can help many sectors experience an undeniable upsurge. How RPA can help businesses get through these unprecedented times? This post takes a look. We will also examine a few automation cases.
Related Reading: Jaw-dropping Facts about Robotic Process Automation
Businesses Can Stay Afloat in These Unprecedented Times
RPA goes beyond allowing businesses to stay afloat. It also helps them respond instantly to drastic changes in demand during such critical situations as COVID-19. It has proven to be an invaluable technology for businesses by ensuring that employees remain productive even if they have to work remotely and from home.
Here are some benefits of RPA.
Increased flexibility
RPA allows your business to run smoothly despite ever-changing demands while automating manual processes and increasing efficiency. Furthermore, it is helping organizations combat the spread of COVID-19 and is providing customers with timely support as businesses move on to new operating models. For instance, deploying chatbots or automated answering machines in contact centers or help desks can help handle bulk volumes of customer service calls and emails, especially when organizations are forced to function remotely or operate with a limited number of employees.
Less dependency on the individual employee
Though we can’t deny the need for human intervention in most processes, certain tasks need to be accomplished with precision and speed. Here is where RPA becomes useful as a fast and flexible way to replicate employee-driven processes. RPA enables businesses to automate certain critical processes with greater precision and efficiency. And soon, RPA will free businesses from being dependent on the limitations caused by employees’ absence.
Related Reading: How to accelerate your business growth with Robotic Process Automation
Keep up with production
RPA enables organizations to keep up productivity by providing assistance to an overwhelmed customer using attended automation or front office bots. This frees up employees to attend to other critical aspects of the business. RPA can cater to an increase or decrease in the supply chain demand while allowing you to rely on automated back-office activities.
Industries leveraging RPA
Here are a few examples of industries who have successfully leveraged automation: (examples cited by UiPath)
Healthcare
Health of the workforce: Updating all relevant data of sick employees in real-time while keeping track of healthy employees could be painstaking. With RPA, bots can be set up to keep track of hospital employees. This minimizes manual errors and ensures employee safety.
Increasing demand in virus testing: With the increasing demand for virus testing, the wait time for registration also increases. Cleveland Clinic in the United States reduced their patient verification and registration time considerably by deploying an attended robot that collects and prints patient data, thereby reducing hospital backlogs.
Accelerating clinical testing: Filling test reports itself would take about 3 hours per day in the life of a staff nurse. But since Mater Hospital in Dublin automated its process through robots, medical personnel are able to use their precious time taking care of their patients rather than chasing admin tasks.
Banking and financial services
Surge in trading volume: Global markets have seen a trading surge by about 300% daily. This is tremendously increasing the operational burden. Leveraging automation has ensured business continuity while maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction despite the huge spike of activity in areas such as trade allocations and reconciliations.
Acknowledging customer complaints: Acknowledging customer complaints in line with UK regulations has been especially challenging for financial services because of their reduced staff. Automation has allowed the banking and financial services to acknowledge complaints in time in compliance with UK regulatory government requirements.
Retail
Helps HR specialists to remain focused on analysis: COVID-19 has overwhelmed the HR department with a large volume of sick leave requests. Automation of two phases of this process has reduced backlogs in processing leave requests while allowing HR specialists to stay focused on their people.
Supply chains
Optimization of the supply chain: COVID-19 has forced factories to shut down leaving their production line idle. RPA allows companies to optimize their supply chains. This has resulted in accurate delivery estimates, optimized vehicle routes, efficient shipment consolidation as well as accountable sourcing.
Manufacturing
Reduced manufacturing expenses: Prolonged closures of manufacturing plants have forced manufacturers to cut down their operational costs. RPA automates repetitive and manual tasks thus reducing operational costs.
Related Reading: How Robotic Process Automation Is Revolutionizing Industries?
Weather These Turbulent Times with Robotic Process Automation
Robotic Process Automation will enable businesses to efficiently allocate funds to areas that need greater focus. It can automate qualification ad validation processes, update public health data in real-time, and much more. Educational institutes can also leverage automation to schedule and activate their classes using LMS and eLearning platforms.
Obviously, COVID-19 has brought about changes in the working style of both the consumers and clients. RPA will cater to their needs and help ensure that businesses can stay afloat during these difficult economic times.
Download our White Paper: Learn how RPA can bring a difference to your business and how to embrace the disruptive technology to maintain a competitive edge.
How Can You Get Started?
Start small! Start by automating small tasks that will give you the needed confidence and experience in automation solutions. Research and evaluate how far automation is applicable to your IT environment. Talk to custom software development experts at Fingent and find out how you can build on the benefits of RPA.
How is RPA turning into a highly sought-after technology
Robotic Process Automation or RPA is one of the fastest-growing segments in the global enterprise software category. Research analyst Gartner says that the market growth rate of RPA was a whopping 63% in 2019. With more enterprises using this innovative technology, RPA’s market value is set to reach 3 billion USD by 2022, shows a prediction by Statista. Early adopters of the RPA software are already raking in benefits as RPA streamlines workflows, automates tasks and allows human workers to focus on high-value work. RPA software appeals to organizations across the world due to its quick deployment cycle time.
How RPA helps businesses: A quick recap
Robotic Process Automation or RPA refers to software programs or ‘bots’ that are programmed to mimic human actions. An average back-office employee has to carry out lots of repetitive, time-consuming and dreary tasks such as producing reports, filling out forms, updating records and other high-volume transactions that do not require judgment or reasoning. RPA simply offers an easy way to perform these tasks more accurately and quickly.
Since RPA does not require any specialized coding knowledge, businesses have welcomed RPA into their processes with open arms. Let’s now have a look at some jaw-dropping statistics and facts about RPA.
Related Reading: How Robotic Process Automation Is Revolutionizing Industries?
Jaw-dropping statistics and facts about RPA
Statistics
The statistics behind the widespread use of this technology can provide us valuable insights into how RPA is impacting the world.
- According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), organizations that implement RPA can reduce costs from 35-65% for onshore process operations and 10-30% in offshore delivery.
- McKinsey and Co. suggest that around 45% of the tasks in a business can be automated.
- In their Annual Global RPA survey, Deloitte found that 53% of the survey respondents had already started their RPA journey. Deloitte predicts that we would witness the worldwide adoption of RPA within the next two years.
- Among those surveyed, the ROI was reported at less than 12 months with an average of 20% full-time equivalent capacity provided by robots.
- The Deloitte RPA survey respondents also reported an improvement in compliance (92%), quality/accuracy(90%), productivity(86%) and a reduction in costs(59%).
- The Institute for Robotic Process Automation claims that RPA software robots cost about one-third of the price of an off-shore employee and one-fifth of the price of an onshore worker.
These compelling figures help us to see how RPA is adding value to organizations looking to operate with maximum efficiency.
RPA Facts
- RPA cannot replace humans: One of the biggest misconceptions about RPA is that it will eat up human jobs. RPA works alongside humans to make their lives easier. RPA software carries out jobs that are repetitive and mundane. This can enable us to focus on fruitful endeavors thus improving efficiency.
- RPA will change the nature of outsourcing: RPA has disrupted the outsourcing industry. The increased efficiency and usability that comes with RPA implementation, has threatened traditional BPO relationships. Since RPA can handle more transactions without making mistakes or taking breaks, traditional outsourcing relationships have declined over the last few years. However, if BPOs embrace the benefits of RPA or any other transformative technology they’ll continue to work.
- RPA software implementation is complex: It’s true that RPA has delivered huge benefits to its users. However, many users have also found that the implementation of RPA was quite challenging. Selecting the wrong RPA is one reason that can cause the RPA project to become more complicated than it actually should. If your company doesn’t have an interconnected system that updates cloud or on-premise infrastructure, then RPA implementation can be a big challenge.
- RPA cannot improve a flawed business process: RPA automates processes but does not improve any defects in the existing processes. Due to the hype surrounding RPA, organizations view it as a solution to all their woes. While RPA does help to streamline and modernize processes that are well established, it does nothing to improve a flawed process. So before automating, it’s better to have a clearly defined business process.
- RPA cannot be used to automate all kinds of processes: RPA can be used where high volumes of repetitive transactions based on business rules are carried out. For eg: banking and financial services, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, travel, logistics, etc. However, if the processes involve reasoning, making decisions, taking different actions according to scenarios, then those processes will not be able to enjoy the full benefits of business automation.
- Future of RPA: RPA has advanced considerably and is the future of IT automation. RPA will be increasingly adopted in various industries such as manufacturing, oil, and gas, retail, etc. Humans will no longer perform data entry and data rekeying jobs. All such jobs would be automated. RPA would evolve to SPA (Smart Process Automation) making business processes smarter. By integrating emerging technologies such as machine learning, AI, big data, with RPA enterprises can promote new levels of productivity and efficiency.
Organizations need not scrap their legacy systems while implementing RPA. The ability of RPA software to integrate legacy systems has helped organizations to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives. They have also unlocked the value associated with past technological investments. As businesses look for new solutions to increase gains, RPA will continue to develop and gain relevance.
Related Reading: How Can Businesses Overcome The Barriers To RPA Adoption?
Have you implemented RPA in your organization? Do you have any insights to share? Do let us know!