Most organisations are committed to ensuring they provide a great experience.
However, what nobody could have predicted is how Covid and its unforeseen and ongoing impacts have disrupted our customer experience and driven a new focus of ‘immediacy’ into our daily world. This has accelerated the need for digital and business transformation to create a wonderful experience for customers.
Sure, one could argue that businesses have always focused on immediacy and are often exploring efficiencies to achieve it. However, Covid has caused major disruptions in our ability to provide the right experience, in a timely manner that allows us to continue to do business efficiently.
Organisations require a major shift in their response to the new challenges’ unseen before.
Emerging challenges facing businesses:
Let’s explore some examples faced by Australian businesses that are detracting from being able to achieve immediacy.
Take for example the area of document workflow and electronic signature.
- Work from home – with
individuals no longer always working in the office, face to face interaction involved
with exchanging forms, approvals or documents has become more difficult.
This is causing massive delays across the value chain for vendors and
,customers.
- Agreements / Contracts – while some organisations had simple digital signatures in place, many still have staff physically managing execution of contracts. The impact of staff shortages results in situations where signatures get delayed, agreements get lost or are stuck in emails, and turn-around times blow out.
- New hires – previously new employees would physically attend the office, sign their forms, provide them to the HR department, and be setup with system access along with payroll ready to go. Covid has changed this with many people having to be onboarded remotely, making the process more difficult.
- Customer onboarding – Retail and B2C solutions already existed and enabled customers to continue to shop and do business. But for many B2B customers, these solutions did not exist, frustrating customers and causing businesses to need to quickly find fresh solutions.
- Selling virtually vs. face to face – previously you visited the customer, had a cup of coffee, and you and your customer signed and exchanged agreements. Without a digital process in place, this face-to-face interaction has been hampered by Covid restrictions.
Addressing the challenges
Regrettably, we hear these types of stories and resulting impacts more and more often in this new environment in which we all work and live. However, we also hear the stories of identifying the issues or mitigating risks before they become actual problems.
These challenges shouldn’t be written off as excuses, rather they are disruptive factors that absolutely need to be understood to be addressed.
While the challenges in effectively managing these processes are great and many, knowing what you’re up against is key to implementing the right solutions. Nobody wants to be left reacting to easily preventable issues.
One example is through new ways of looking at documents. Whether it be electronic signature, updates in contract lifecycle management or most importantly improving process efficiency, you can enable your organisation to drive immediacy to meet customer experience expectations.
Don’t know where to start? We do.
Our experience across multiple lines of business enables us to have the conversations that matter.
We focus on bringing you our experience and insight to understand those risks and mitigation activities, and help you to assess your situation to determine next best steps. If those next steps require a technology solution, then you know you are working with a partner that can support your needs and protect you from the risks that have risen in this new Covid-impacted environment.
Ensure your organisation can deliver immediacy and meet the desired experience demanded by your customers.
Reach out to learn more about how we can help you.