How smarter organisations increase performance during an economic downturn
Contents
Every business wants more efficiency from their people, that's a given. What has been exciting to see - even during the pandemic years - is how smart organisations are using the tough times as an opportunity to prioritise initiatives that will increase their resilience and productivity while reducing cost and risk.
The major factors driving uncertainty post-pandemic are:
- Uncertain economic conditions
- Adapting to increased flexible and/or remote working (both employees and your customers)
- War for talent
Despite these challenges, some companies adapt, grow, and even thrive throughout the pandemic. Below are some of the insights we've gathered, to help your business do the same, during the economic uncertainty of this post-pandemic period.
Investing in efficiency through technology
It’s tempting to think that during an economic downturn that the only course of action is to put our heads down and play it as safe as possible. However, when an organisation invests strategically in the right technology, they’re more likely to come out on top once the market bounces back.
Companies successfully deploying 4IR technologies now may actually emerge as stronger competitors during a recovery, and will likely be better prepared for a potential economic downturn in the future.
The 'right' technology helps your business become more adaptable to changing situations by making you more efficient, flexible and transparent.
Enablement via transformation and automation
Prioritising digital transformation and automation projects helps organisations increase productivity and mitigate risk which, in turn, helps reduce costs.
Additionally, projects such as these often compel the business to address deep-rooted inefficiencies within internal processes, and identify where automation can deliver a material improvement. These inefficiencies tend to be universally acknowledged as problems within any business, so when at last they are addressed it's a sure sign to employees that making their jobs easier is being taken seriously.
In the short term, investing in automation can help your organisation operate more efficiently with less overhead costs while making better use of your current resources. Our customers have invested in better performance from their people by taking away the need to manually wrangle endless PowerPoint or data files, just to prepare to see a customer.
Increased productivity
Investing in automation can keep your employees productive and creative by allowing them to spend more time on tasks that deliver revenue and results. Automating core processes within an account management team, for example, frees up AMs to spend more time engaged in activities that drive revenue, such as face time with customers, cross sell and upsell activities, instead of manual preparation or admin tasks.
Not only that, investing in making your team's life easier during challenging economic times can be an effective tool to retain your best people and limit churn. This will become extremely important once things pick up again.
Reduce risk and streamline process
If there was ever a time when core processes must operate flawlessly, it's in times of uncertainty. Investing in compliance and automation technology reduces human error and removes manual tasks while ensuring the business is operating as expected. Reducing the financial risk of taking non-compliant information, or even pricing, to market is just good sense.
In the short term, automation offers a quick, provable ROI that quickly renders the initial set-up cost neutral, greatly reducing the risk and change management challenge of introducing a new (albeit better) way of working to your team. By comparison, traditional, manual methods are typically unmeasurable and result in wastage.
Manage costs
Automation not only makes things easier for your teams, but it also helps reduce OPEX in the process. It allows organisations to free up their people in order to manage the more challenging tasks, and relationships, that are always critical during challenging times.
The transparency that also comes with digital transformation helps focus investment in the right places. We've seen LivePreso customers redirect and streamline their investment in sales enablement materials and training, as a result of the data-backed insights the platform has surfaced about specific content usage, customer engagement and user activity. They know, rather than guess, where available budget is best spent to increase performance.
Conclusion
Many organisations are hesitant to adapt to new technologies, especially when they see an economic downturn ahead. However, automation streamlines processes and delivers genuine ROI, and this, in turn, allows businesses to manage uncertainty and the evolving impact of the pandemic and economic downturn.
Speak with our team about how our transformation and automation product suite can help your business thrive.