The key element that will contribute to business recovery

Monday, 28 June 2021 13:14

The key element that will contribute to business recovery

Guest Opinion: A recent study found that in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, about 49 per cent of CIOs said that their budgets had declined. The same study said that at this point, about 56 per cent of CIOs said that their budgets had returned to pre-COVID levels and the number one driver of that was the universal need for digital transformation (1), something that 77.3 per cent of CIOs said was a major priority moving forward. (2) 

This makes sense as enabling remote work for employees is now more than a recommendation, it is a requirement. Therefore, securing and empowering a remote workforce becomes of paramount importance, requiring significant IT development. 

This has exponentially increased the amount of demand placed on even the most modest IT departments out there. It was already difficult to support a workforce adequately on a regular basis, to say nothing of how challenging things become when that workforce is now spread out in countless different directions. 

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that one of the major focuses of this digital transformation-led business recovery in 2021 will involve leveraging both robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI) in any way possible. (3) 

Many companies already saw a great deal of success with workflow automation prior to the pandemic, and AI and RPA will simply take this one step further. 

In addition to helping IT departments that are struggling to keep up, investing in digital transformation in these core areas comes with a number of other distinct advantages including it addressing a nearly universal lack of workforce skills and helping combat the ever-increasing volume of support tickets and help desk requests that remote workers are generating. 

Another study revealed that about half of CIOs agreed that the average employee’s ability to solve work-related issues lags dramatically when working remotely as opposed to when they are working in the office. (4) This leads to increased demand on the IT department, which takes time and attention away from value-added tasks. 

However, if organisations can automate a lot of these tasks while also delivering more self-service IT solutions to remote workers, employees can return to focusing their time and attention on activities that drive revenue for the business. 

This is happening to businesses in nearly every industry across Australia and New Zealand. Organisations should see this as an opportunity to address these challenges in a way that will also meaningfully future proof the enterprise. Digital transformation is going to be a huge part of how successful organisations do it. 

(1) https://devops.com/covid-19-long-tail-budget-impact/
(2) https://www.information-age.com/security-guide-cios-123472494/
(3) https://www.information-age.com/two-thirds-business-leaders-used-automation-for-covid-19-response-123492795/
(4) https://www.information-age.com/digital-transformation-critical-to-business-recovery-in-2021-says-new-research-123492897/

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