This is #3 in a series of articles about the ways digital innovation can help businesses remain resilient in the face of economic disruption.
Despite nail-biting economic data, businesses are, by and large, refusing to cut back on investments in digitization transformation. In fact, nearly half are doubling down. No doubt, lessons from the COVID recession, which confirmed the power of digital innovation to combat economic disruption, is informing their strategy.
The challenges of the current economy—inflation, talent shortages, disrupted supply chains— may be different, but the principal remains the same. Strategic investment in digitization can provide a powerful antidote to all kinds of business disruption.
“If there’s anything we’ve learned in the last two years, it’s the importance of adaptability,” argues the US Chamber of Commerce. “Change is inevitable, so the ability to pivot and be flexible is key to surviving any recession.”
Previously, we looked at the ways digital self-service can help recession-proof your business achieve these goals. Now let’s consider ways to optimize and automate internal business processes.
Increasing pressure—and greater opportunity—to optimize
We admit it. The value of business process automation and optimization isn’t exactly breaking news. Humans have been doing it since at least the invention of fire. And it remains a challenge that business leaders tackle on a daily basis.
However, in the digital age, they do face an unprecedented set of interlocking challenges and opportunities:
- Digital challenge #1—High expectations: Customers, employees, and suppliers all expect the kinds of frictionless transactions that Amazon has brought to retail. And the risk of failing to meet these expectations keeps rising.
- Digital opportunity #1—Technological potential: From self-service apps to robotic process automation, modern technologies are now capable of automating and optimizing processes at a speed and scale that were unimaginable a few years ago.
- Digital challenge #2—Technological complexity: Ironically, it is often these various technologies that stand in the way of the next generation of cross-functional business process optimization. Integrating disparate data and systems has been so slow and expensive, leaving the heavy lifting to humans engaged in manual processes.
- Digital opportunity #2—Codeless development: The advent of a new codeless approach to web development is making it dramatically easier to support sophisticated by integrating applications, databases, and workflows in a single pane of glass—without having to write a single line of code.
Modern use cases to consider
Regardless of the state of the economy, you’re probably still focused on a common set of business goals. Improving service. Increasing productivity. Eliminating waste. And enhancing your ability to pivot at the speed of the market.
However, with a recession looming, you face more pressure to achieve these things—and have less room for delays and errors.
Given the new set of opportunities for business process innovation that codeless development makes possible, it may be time to consider a new set of use cases. While in no way an exhaustive list, it may be exactly the right time to consider one (or more) of the following:
- Sales. To make the most of existing opportunities, connect data sources to sales execution and insight tools to make sales more productive at a time when it is harder to secure new business.
- Finance. Accelerate time-to-insight by standardizing data governance processes and controls and automating reporting.
- HR. Attract and retain scarce talent by creating unified, on-brand employee journeys that speed onboarding, eContracting, provisioning, and more.
- Supply chain. To avoid bottlenecks and minimize the effect of shortages, create self-service hubs and web-based applications that support eContracts and more seamless contracts with suppliers and partners.
- Support. Streamline support for employees and customers through self-service portals to initiate requests and digitized case management for internal tracking.
+ Read our guide to recession-proofing your business.
You Might Also Be Interested in
