Companies get put off by terms like digital transformation and digitisation, mainly because they are misunderstood. In short, these are digital process strategies designed to solve problems, release value, enhance customer experiences and change the landscape of market sectors. The key is to accelerate implementation whilst reducing the impact on core business functions. The question is how can this be achieved in an uncertain economy and which drivers will influence the digital way forward?
Global Pandemic
The world has been changed by the Coronavirus pandemic and the long-term effects will take time to unfold. What is understood is a greater need to innovate the way business sectors operate in the new normal utilising digital capabilities.
Before COVID-19 there was a lot of noise in the TIC Market with regards to utilising digital transformation to increase the necessity to cut costs, improve quality and consistency whilst maintaining standards and regulations. The biggest hindrance was the cost, speed and disruption to core business.
Going forward the requirement for digitisation in an uncertain market will be driven by consumer behaviour, competitive edge, shorter supply chains and the industries desire to plan for the future.
Competition
For those sectors already fully immersed in forward thinking technologies the pathway will be easier to navigate, widening the gap between those businesses who have yet to start. With companies fighting to balance spending, cutting costs and realigning priorities whilst investing in modernised approaches will become a continuous requirement.
Those strategic innovators with capacity, investment and the knowledge to fully integrate in the new way to conduct business will find a quicker level of stability. Management have decisions to make that will require a holistic approach, one that calls a halt to the current reactive situation and instead focuses on planning beyond the crisis.
Businesses who can respond and build resilience by adopting such technologies without disruption will be the hands down winners.
Supply Chains
For many sectors the outbreak crippled supply chains and those markets reliant on global supplier networks were simply unprepared. No one could have forecasted what that the world would face in March 2020.
Mapping supply chains is one strategic method used to understand all the supply tiers that are necessary for the procurement of products and services. Most companies simply ignore this crucial analysis assuming that the entire loss of the supply chain would be an unrealistic event to mitigate. Instead their focus is applied to examine parts of the chain, putting in place necessary risk assessments of top tiers only.
Going forward businesses will need to apply end to end thinking, looking for ways to shorten the chain and speed up the delivery of logistics and procurement. Transparent visibility of the entire network including supplier contingency plans will boost operational efficiencies and separate businesses into two categories. Those that continue working as they were or those that actively start utilising mapping and other digital strategies to gain a higher level of knowledge across all the components.
Consumer Behaviour
Consumer behaviour has changed, household spending has lowered and the need to purchase safely has increased. Businesses who desire opportunistic growth will need to invest in technology to create stable ecosystems that can be turned up or down to counteract the lack of consumer spending whilst maintaining consumer confidence and assurance.
The need to ensure products and services comply with a higher level of safety will drive governments to insist businesses meet more stringent regulations. This is good news for Testing Inspection and Certification companies.
Resources with the right skills and expertise will be sought after, required to qualify, and meet standards whilst working safely. Partnerships between third parties to carry out inspections to produce certifications showing evidentiary conformity will enhance the demand for experts who can work at speed to provide remote and digital testing.
Digitisation
Many TIC organisations are currently exploring their options around digitisation, weighing up the cost of developing suitable solutions against the flexibility and visibility benefits. The time needed to design and build against the value created, the disruption to the organisation against the first mover advantage.
Businesses that can leverage advancement in technologies without a huge cost whilst reducing the impact on an already pressurised business model will lead the charge. To overcome uncertainty the necessity to implement such strategies at a fast pace without disrupting business will ultimately provide the necessary leverage to unlock value.
COVID serves as a time to rethink, understanding the benefits of long-term growth and stability over the short-term hassle of upscaling centralised functions.
Cloud based technology can provide companies with a competitive advantage whilst aligning geographical complexities on both physical and tangible assets. Ultimately addressing multiple goals at the same time. Resulting in a digital driven process solution that provides managers with capabilities to integrate planning, strategy and operations whilst maintaining core business unit objectives.
VERITAS
VERITAS has created a solution capable of integrating with a TIC organisation’s existing systems offering an opportunity to leap frog the competition. Delivering feature rich mobile applications and web solutions, enhancing existing industry capability with cutting edge cloud technologies.
By retaining an organisation’s core processes and systems and then adding digital capabilities it is possible to dramatically reduce the time to market. Thus, enhancing the clients and inspectors experience in a matter of weeks without retraining or reorganising the whole organisation.
Flexibility in VERITAS’s workflows is key to enabling quick deployment of integration points with existing applications, which in turn enables frictionless transfer of data between the two environments, providing an organisation with the benefits of a digital to the core solution without risking existing industry relationships and valuable market experience.
Conclusion
The world has got smaller and more complicated. The demand for consumer spending to reboot economies whilst companies minimise disruption to realign priorities calls for advanced thinking. Business strategies are now required to enhance building realistic and cost saving opportunities to help sectors reshape quickly, instilling stability and confidence through investing in disruptive innovation.
A reduced delivery cycle offers the benefits of first mover advantage without compromising existing strategic initiatives or organisational focus. In short, an opportunity to fast track a digital capability while maintaining an organisations identity and intellectual property.