The COVID-19 has dramatically affected the world and continues to
have an impact on each and every sector. It unexpectedly rushed into
our life, causing the necessity to quickly adjust to new
circumstances. The offline business has suffered the most. The
catering and hospitality, retail, sports are examples of those
fields that need restructuring.
In the context of the pandemic, even companies that got used to
employing outdated applications or not to employ them at all will
digitize their processes. Many firms that didn't allow employees to
perform tasks from home before, have already established a remote
workspace and noticed advantages such as rent savings and improved
productivity. Audio and video conferencing tools, cloud solutions,
document sharing and reporting apps are increasingly used across
every industry.
The main questions are: what SMEs should do to mitigate the crisis
and fight off competition? How to optimize workflow and survive? In
this article, we’ve collected 4 important recommendations to help
you successfully adapt to the fast-changing environment.
How is COVID-19 changing the business world?
While some market players like cafes, restaurants, and cinemas are
suffering losses, e-commerce platforms are witnessing record growth.
Being incapable to visit retail stores every day, millions of people
worldwide are using delivery services during the coronavirus
outbreak.
In accordance with the Wall Street Journal,
Amazon is going to hire 100,000 employees in the USA
to meet increasing demand. The company also said that it will raise
wages by $2 per hour for warehouse and delivery staff through April.
Mobile app downloads of retail giants have significantly increased.
For example, Walmart Grocery Shopping, a famous application in the
United States, has seen unprecedented growth since the beginning of
March 2020.
Source:
App Annie
“Walmart Grocery Takes #1 Spot in Shopping App Downloads”
by Lexi Sydow
Other grocery delivery services are also witnessing an exponential
increase. According to Apptopia, the number of
app installs rose by 124% and 216%
for Shipt and Instacart respectively.
In order to transport physical goods, businesses will apply robots,
drones, and mobile products. For large machinery delivery,
contactless mechanisms employing big carriers will be used. Sky
News, a British television news channel, reports that in Washington
DC
self-driving delivery robots are helping shops and restaurants
stay open during COVID-19.
Organizations are actively integrating blockchain solutions to
ensure the highest security of sensitive data and carry out
transactions from any place in the world. Find out
whether your company will benefit from using blockchain
technology.
Incorporating artificial intelligence chatbots in customer service
operations, businesses instantly answer frequently asked questions,
process requests much faster, optimize labor costs, and extremely
improve client service. Augmented reality apps are helping students
to study more quickly and efficiently in fields like healthcare,
architecture, and manufacturing.
Popular streaming platforms, audio and video conferencing software,
e-learning and entertainment applications are flourishing. For
Netflix, the traffic volumes raised from 54% to 75% during the peak
viewing hours.
WhatsApp
, one of the most famous mobile messengers globally, jumped
117-217%.
Although it may be difficult to generate profit at this time, there
are different modern technologies and effective strategies that will
help you. Take a look at how to optimize business processes in new
conditions.
How to digitize workflow in 2020
At the moment, companies from all over the world are leveraging
remote collaboration tools, deploying online shops and creating
smartphone apps to let customers work, study, order food, and
receive consultations from home. It’s also important to establish an
efficient reporting system, transparent communication, and boost
social presence.
1. Set up a remote workflow
Establishing an efficient remote workflow is one of the most
important things to do during the quarantine. Though it may seem to
be quite challenging, a distant team can work as efficiently as in
the office thanks to advanced tools and approaches.
Remote work: advantages and predictions
-
According to the
study by Stanford University
, there are plenty of advantages that remote work provides
companies with. They involve raised productivity, less time for
commuting, and reduced costs due to rent savings.
-
“We found a 13% improvement in performance from people working
at home.”
— Nicholas Bloom, professor at Stanford Graduate School of
Business. He said that there are several reasons. First of all,
there are no traffic delays, long lunches with colleagues, and
other disturbing factors. Second, people can better concentrate on
tasks as there is no noisy office environment.
-
UpWork forecasts
that 73% of organizations will connect distant employees by 2028.
Experts at
Global Workplace Analytics and FlexJobs
revealed that remote work has increased 159% over the past 12
years.
Therefore, distant collaboration is becoming very popular even
without the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
How you can set up a convenient remote workspace:
1). Use remote collaboration platforms
Online collaboration platforms enable teams to effectively cooperate
remotely, including communications in chats, video meetings, file
editing and sharing via a mobile or web application. What’s more,
these solutions generally allow users to simultaneously work on
documents from any device. This way, you can establish a single
shared workspace. Examples of such tools are SharePoint and
Microsoft Teams.
In our custom mobile app development company, we employ Jira and our
internal information system, called AraIS, which is fully customized
to our needs. In AraIS, engineers create tasks, update their
statuses, attach files, and inform about various issues. It also
contains a personal account for our customers where they can view
daily and weekly reports, project roadmap, as well as track
progress.
2). Employ audio and video conferencing applications
Since now businesses have to migrate to a work-from-anywhere model,
audio and video conferencing solutions are gaining high popularity.
These apps allow specialists to organize meetings from any place on
the earth, providing high video quality and reliable Internet
connection.
Commonly used software tools for this purpose are Zoom, GoToMeeting,
and Google Hangouts that we also use to communicate with partners
and clients. Being available for free, these applications enable
teams to collaborate in chats, add plans to the calendar, and
receive reminders to prevent any delays.
3). Use online file sharing and editing tools
Company security policies often restrict sharing sensitive
information via chats or emails due to privacy risks. Fortunately,
there are many platforms that enable organizations to safely
transfer documents and produce content from any device.
Citrix ShareFile is one of the most famous and convenient solutions
of this type. Useful features involve file synchronization, cloud
data storage, email encryption, electronic signatures, and Office
365 integration.
2. Develop a software product
If you have a cafe, restaurant, retail store, or any other offline
business, transfer all possible services online to continue earning
an income. As millions of people stay at home, they need to have the
ability to order food and services via their devices including
smartphones, PCs, laptops, and tablets. One should note, that as a
result of the pandemic, mobile app usage has extremely increased.
Source:
App Annie
“Weekly Time Spent in Apps Grows 20% Year Over Year as People
Hunker Down at Home”
by Adithya Venkatraman
What’s more, despite the impact of the COVID-19 crisis,
mobile app spending is expected to double to $171 billion in 2024
(according to the report by Sensor Tower).
So, build an e-commerce site or a mobile application to let
customers browse goods and make purchases with a few clicks without
having to go somewhere. The same with banks, insurance firms, real
estate companies, and other organizations.
For example, a mobile product can allow clients to receive
personalized advice, carry out money transfers, view a history of
transactions, manage personal finance, edit and scan files, etc.
Embed electronic signatures, so that it will be possible to sign
documents via a smartphone. Besides ensuring an amazing user
experience, you will substantially reduce paperwork.
If your software system is built on top of the outdated tech stack,
which causes performance issues, you should migrate it to advanced
technologies. This will enable you to quickly respond to multiple
requests, ensure the seamless user experience, and improve
scalability.
In case you doubt whether your business really should develop a
software solution or not, read our article
“10 Symptoms That Your Business Needs Custom-Made Software”.
3. Migrate services to the cloud
Businesses make huge investments in building and deploying software
systems to optimize workflow. When your services live on local
network devices, they rely on IT and application managers, while
requiring the installation of the company’s own hardware.
As a consequence, access to them is more difficult, maintenance
costs are higher. Employing cloud computing (also referred to as
on-demand computing), you can not only significantly reduce expenses
but increase security.
Cloud computing allows organizations to access software on the
internet as a service while enabling safe data exchange and storage.
Employees will be able to complete tasks at any time, from any
place. As cloud service providers are responsible for IT
infrastructure management, in-house specialists can focus on more
important activities.
Security is also improved. First, trusted vendors ensure compliance
with data protection standards. Second, if data is stored in the
cloud, you can remove any sensitive information remotely or just
transfer it to another account.
In our software house, we use cloud computing to build applications
that can easier handle high loads. Recently, a famous online casino
gaming company has turned to us to develop a platform for seamless
video streaming 24/7. As the solution has to efficiently process
large amounts of data and reduce costs, our engineers employed
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the global provider of on-demand cloud
computing platforms.
4. Boost online presence
If you have had to close the store or cafe dining area due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, do not despair. To make customers remember about
you and motivate them to buy, focus on digital activities such as
publishing posts and launching digital marketing campaigns.
Produce engaging content and distribute it across all online
channels, for instance, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and
TikTok, popular apps that you can use to promote goods and services.
Another great strategy is to provide users with online consultations
that you can hold with any software tool that supports live video
streaming, say Zoom or Instagram.
Closing thoughts
Although the coronavirus pandemic is having a negative impact on
many businesses, some of them are becoming true winners. Using
software solutions and making their own applications, they are
optimizing workflow, automating various operations, and implementing
new ways to engage customers
Essentially, disruption is disruption. It doesn't matter whether it
is economic, political, or a pandemic. Sometimes it is out of our
power to predict such things as we are facing now. In these terms,
we have to adapt. Fortunately, there are many software technologies
that can help you survive or you can create your own app to meet
business-specific needs.
In our boutique software development company, we are ready to help
you adjust to new realities faster and better than your competitors.
If you want to resolve some industrial challenges or build a
software product,
contact our experts.
The project consultation is for free!