Technology As A Covid-19 Answer (Part 1)
Technology Executive | Leader |Chief Technology Officer at Harel Insurance & Finance
2 artículos
The epidemic caught the worldunprepared!
Companies have been investing indigital transformation for many years to allow themselves to offer onlineservices that will accelerate business activities, shorten processes, and reachadditional target markets. And customers can consume these services faster andwithout the need for human intervention (manual).
But still, We are in 2020, and alarge portion of services needed intervention,which means anti-social distance services, and without any surprise, most ofthem are post-sale services.
The epidemic is here to stay atleast until a vaccine is available to the public. Businesses that will notadjust their digital strategy will find themselves out of the game, andconsumers are choosing companies by their digital offering, and how the firmoffers those services in the anti-social distance era.
Since the first outbreak of theepidemic, companies came to understand that they must change the way theycommunicate with their customers and employees. The biggest challenge is how tocontinue to serve customer needs without the ability to interact face-to-facephysically.
From customer services, salescenters, back-office operations that require employee collaboration, business athat requires physical documents, customer signatures, financial advisorymeetings, and many processes that required pre-epidemic human intervention andinteraction physical.
However, the most significant changecame from demanding customers who choose businesses based on their ability toprovide services at a time of social distancing or even quarantine, and this isalso true of elders who, before the COVID-19 epidemic, opposed humaninteraction and interaction technologies.
Due to the COVID-19 epidemic,customers of all ages require more independence and the ability to do on theirown (self-service). If a customer needs assistant, this should carry-out usinga video conference where the client can see the company's employee. Theassistant can assist the customers in performing complex operations or clarifyinformation they received, And no less important the engagement needs to takeplace on any social platform that the customer feels secure (Facebook,Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Tinder?).
What does technology need to solve?
The first step, Well, this will sound straight forward but first of all,be sure to implement a video collaboration platform and be sure to prefer acloud-based platform to handle the scale. The platform must be fully compatiblewith mobile and desktop devices and also prefer a browser-based platform(without application installation requirement), remember the goal, the abilityto create a B2C interaction without the physical touch will play a significantadvantage in any industry.
The second step, Consider accelerating the RoboticProcess Automation project. RPA is the fastest method to automate a manualprocess. RPA market share was growing "In 2018, the global Robotic ProcessAutomation (RPA) market size was 477 Million USD, and it is expected toreach 1930 Million USD by the end of 2025, with a CAGR of 21.3% between2019 and 2025". I define RPA as a short term solution a"quick win" approach, BUT be careful from RPA pitfall, "A recent survey showed that >40% of RPA projects fail todeliver expectations", therefore be sure of choosing theright processes from a business volume perspective and
The third step, Building an API First Access Strategy is the right technologychoice but may take longer to implement than RPA, but in the long term, RPAwill be more expensive because RPA will require more maintenance as screens ordocuments are frequently changing, and the sensitivity of RPA to those changesis high, Remember API is a market and development standard and powerfultechnology, no wonder that API management market is growing faster than RPA:"the Application Programming Interface(API) Management Market size is expected to grow from USD 1.2 billion in 2018to USD 5.1 billion by 2023, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 32.9%during the forecast period"
The fourth step, Ask your self which social networks or instant messagingplatforms your company support? And for which operations? My suggestion is tointegrate common platforms (mentioned above). Integrating those platforms willallow your customers to share documents, pictures, agreements, and initiateeveryday operations, query for information, and more. Most of the customersprefer these methods over the traditional web page or mail, as from a singlechat window, they gain a complete view of their engagement.
