COVID has changed how companies do business, and not just during the pandemic. There are long-term repercussions still playing out across many aspects of the market. For example, after work-from-home was implemented by many companies, the workforce largely wants remote work to stay. And with remote and hybrid policies becoming widely used, employees are spending much less time in an office, which has businesses leveraging IT solutions to accommodate them.
Additionally, companies have several open positions they’re trying to fill, but it’s become difficult. That’s left a limited workforce to do the same, or sometimes more, work.
In response to these new realities, businesses are looking for solutions. One option that’s helping to fill the gap is technology solutions that enable businesses to do more with less.
“There’s been a realization that the impact of these recent trends is going to affect businesses for a long time and in myriad ways,” says Curtis Verhoff, Advanced Solutions Manager at Blue Technologies, Inc. “It’s affecting customer service, supply chain and their internal workforce. It’s compelled a higher percentage of small and midsize companies to deploy technology solutions than we have ever seen before.”
Smart Business spoke with Verhoff about how post-COVID trends continue to challenge businesses and the solutions many are using to improve productivity.
What IT solutions are businesses utilizing to address these issues?
The business process improvement model is helping companies uncover inefficiencies inside their organization, particularly when it comes to dealing with tasks such as invoicing or managing client or patient information. The technology can close time-consuming efficiency gaps, enabling a company to map out processes associated with documentation, such as when processing a new legal case, a new patient or a new employee. It can eliminate bottlenecks to save time by cutting repetitive and time-consuming manual tasks, giving employees more time to spend with new patients or clients. It’s also saving companies money by reducing the cost of operation and avoiding costs by reducing errors.
Dynamic capture is a technology that enables employees to replicate the functions of scanners and copiers outside the office. A remote workforce can use mobile devices to capture documents and information, processing less paper and instead utilizing a digital format, eliminating the need to work from printed materials, which can reduce keystroke time and the need to double enter information into multiple systems. Dynamic capture facilitates getting information into one or more systems simultaneously, removing the need for copying and pasting information from one solution to another.
Intelligent automation analyzes the information and content that a company regularly receives, identifies areas in which there is a lot of repetition and automates the task, creating an electronic workflow. It can eliminate the need to hand enter information, reducing costly errors. Once those tasks are complete, that information is automatically upload so that it can be transferred securely and made accessible across the enterprise. This solution means organizations can automate repetitive tasks that require less human decision-making, leaving employees to focus on more detailed problems and tasks that can’t be automated.
What is a common barrier to implementation?
Companies can struggle implementing this technology because they’re not sure where to begin — they’re looking at everything all at once. A good place to start is by identifying the most time-consuming tasks that can be made less so through a technology solution. Working with a partner can help by allowing them to step in, explore organizational processes and identify solutions that will give the company the biggest benefits while also offering a road map to solve issues across the enterprise.
Organizations also balk at making changes because they believe implementation will be costly. But when the focus is on finding solutions for the most vital areas, there’s a greater likelihood that implementation will lead to a significant return on investment by reducing errors and inefficiencies, improving utilization of human resources and an bettering the client and customer experience. ●
INSIGHTS Technology is brought to you by Blue Technologies, Inc.
