Driving Ahead With Digital Transformation

This article has been produced in collaboration with Telegraph Spark. The original article as well as a collection of helpful guidance, business stories and interactive quizzes produced by SAP Concur and Telegraph Spark can be found on this Building Business Resilience hub.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, digital transformation has moved to the top of the list of business priorities far more quickly than expected.

If the Covid-19 pandemic has taught businesses one thing, it’s that they can take decisive action when pushed to do so, especially when it comes to implementing new digital technology.  

Take the start of the UK’s lockdown enforced by the Government on 23 March. Faced with the prospect of staff not being allowed to go into their offices, many business leaders accelerated the digital transformation initiatives they were already working on. 

Digital Pivoting

Staff were given company laptops or used their own equipment. Cloud-based IT systems – already being slowly rolled out across most industry sectors – were hurriedly pressed into service with multi-factor authentication to address security concerns. Practically overnight, employees who previously only logged on to their company systems when working “flexibly” became an army of remote workers, working from home (WFH) five days a week. 

Practically overnight, employees who previously only logged on to their company systems when working “flexibly” became an army of remote workers

With many companies now starting to get back on their feet, the shift towards digital technology continues apace with companies now looking at how AI and automation can deliver savings. For example, research shows that businesses that implemented a supplier invoice management solution, such as Concur Invoice save an average annual savings of £26,610. In the past, these figures may have seemed insignificant. But in tomorrow’s world, it’s likely that savings such as these will be worth making, especially for businesses wanting to establish a culture of marginal gains.

The Lockdown Challenge

Inevitably, many businesses that previously relied on direct interaction with consumers (particularly those in the retail or hospitality sectors) developed new business models during lockdown. 

For example, premium bakery Lola’s Cupcakes, which has multiple outlets in south-east England, completely repurposed its business during the lockdown. The company has worked with its payments provider Elavon to develop a new online buying process and transformed itself into preparing fresh grocery boxes for delivery within a 48-hour window.

Agile responses: businesses are having to navigate new ways of working CREDIT: GETTY

Similarly, after a 72-hour hackathon at its London HQ, payment-processing company Paymentsense developed a service called BiteBack. It allows restaurants, pubs and cafés without any online presence to put their takeaway menus online free of charge. It has even partnered with an eco-packaging company to help companies prepare their food for delivery. “With BiteBack, we want to help businesses operate as a takeaway almost instantly and keep them trading as a result,” says Guy Moreve, chief marketing officer of Paymentsense. 

What is the New Normal?

Without doubt one of the most overused phrases of the pandemic is the “new normal”, regularly trotted out by politicians and economists worldwide to refer to the way the world is changing. But what exactly does it mean for business as lockdown measures are eased? 

The businesses that have thrived in recent months are the ones that have demonstrated agility and found new business models and ways of working

First used after the global financial crash of 2008, the phrase has come to refer to practices that were once out of the ordinary, becoming normal after a seismic event. However, unlike financial crises, pandemics such as Covid-19 are much rarer and their effects more difficult to predict. Nevertheless, with social-distancing measures likely to remain in place until a vaccine becomes available, it is likely that many of the current ways of working will continue for the foreseeable future. 

Instead of office workers travelling into work as they used to, many will continue to work from home for at least part of the week or travel in at off-peak times. Employees who once used paper-based processes within the office will now be able to access their employers’ cloud-based IT systems – whether that’s to make an expense claim or file a report – wherever they are in the world via their laptop or smart device.

Covid-19 may not have brought the business community many benefits, but accelerating the pace of technological change has been a positive outcome. Inevitably, digital transformation plans will continue to accelerate, with businesses rolling out data solutions to understand and meet the evolving needs of consumers as well as the requirements of their workforce. 

The businesses that have thrived in recent months are the ones that have demonstrated agility and found new business models and ways of working, enabled by technology. Many of these companies will even find that their new business models have proven so successful they will keep them going forward, marking the “new normal” as something to be welcomed.