The COVID-19 pandemic has altered conventional methods of functioning as organizations are grappling with the new found normal of remote working & disrupting business continuity. COVID-19 alters the priorities of businesses with building a resilient structure being at the core of the vision. For many businesses, this was the first time initiating a work-from-home (WFH) policy, and it had to be done nearly overnight. Others were forced to shut down operations altogether.
This is where a Business Continuity Plan comes into play
To give your organization the best shot at success during a disaster, you need to put in place a plan that not only ensures business continuity but also secures the information as it begins to flow in and out of the organization.
The lack of a plan thereof will not only mean your organization will take longer than normal to recover, it might also derail your organization into extinction.
What is Business Continuity?
Business continuity is the continuous and comprehensive planned response to and recovery from disruptions caused by disasters. According to the Disaster Recovery Institute (DRI), a business continuity plan includes “a collection of procedures and information that is developed, compiled, and maintained in readiness for use in an incident to enable an organization to continue to deliver its critical products and services at an acceptable predefined level”.
Business continuity plans typically address an entity’s ability to restore critical functions. These include serving customers, supporting employees and core functions such as accounting, IT and technology support.
In 2012, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published the ISO 22301, which recommends a set of international standards for implementing and maintaining effective business continuity plans, systems and processes. The standard aims to provide a governance structure for effective business continuity planning, resource planning and risk management.
A Resilient Organization
Resilient organizations are prepared, agile and innovative, empowered to anticipate, respond and transform to meet evolving needs and changing circumstances. The pandemic is forcing companies to look out for new ways to work and collaborate. Companies must be ready for fundamental shifts in how we use content, how our supply chains are structured, how we protect ourselves against threats and how customers interact with us. Customer behavior and preferences will change “permanently” and businesses will need to understand how they have changed and recalibrate to meet them. Cyber security and cyber resilience have never been more important as hackers try to take advantage of employees working from home.
Digital transformation was the key to success and competitive advantage before this crisis. Now, it is a base requirement to maintain business continuity and productivity in a rapidly changing world. Companies that have invested in digital transformation will have a much stronger ability to survive the coming months and continue to thrive in the future.
Enterprise Content Management Services
Enabling employees to be productive from home is one of the biggest challenges organizations are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Key concerns include:
- Information Access: Large numbers of people are suddenly working remotely without access to the systems and information needed to perform tasks.
- Process Continuity: Business processes – from customer service to product development -must move forward despite fragmented workforces and information flows.
- Unstructured Collaboration and Teamwork – Dispersed and distracted teams need to stay connected and on target with access to the most current, accurate information and feedback.
- Information Governance – All of this must be accomplished while adhering to security, compliance and privacy best practices and regulations.
Newgen’s Enterprise Content Management Platform and applications are designed and developed to solve these problems and operate in a normal operational environment. In times of disruptions such as the ones we are experiencing now, their contribution to maintain organizational resilience is amplified.
Newgen’s Enterprise Content Management Systems allows organization to methodically integrate an organization’s core enterprise systems such as ERP and CRM’s with a central content management system. They introduce the ability to identify, analyze and classify information as it is created or consumed. Once classified, that information can be introduced into centralized search functionality. Access to the originating system is no longer necessary. Metadata/document tags are applied, creating consistent relationships and context with information produced by other processes and systems. Information relevant to a user’s task can be surfaced in the application they are using. For example, SAP data can be automatically surfaced to users with no need to access or navigate through SAP. Content can now be managed, governed and made available to those who need it irrespective of their location.
With many employees working remotely and face-to-face meetings no longer feasible, teams need a secure, efficient way to collaborate with and service third parties, vendors, customers and partners. Moving the implementation on to the cloud is an effective method to achieve this. Newgen’s applications support cloud deployments which means it is available anywhere, anytime.
Intelligent Capture
As companies look to maintain basic process functionality, they need solutions that can be quickly implemented to identify, organize and distribute documents and images from multiple sources. Newgen’s OmniScan Capture tool is quite adept at capturing documents and converting them into digital actionable data which is critical for your business. OmniScan is simple with standard business documents like invoices being recognized and processed out-of-the-box. Administrators do not require in-depth training or the ability to write script to empower at-home workers with automated business document capture.
Annotations and Digital Signature
With employees working from home they need capabilities to digitally affix stamps and signs on documents for moving the processes forward. Newgen’s ECM tool OmniDocs supports a web user interface that enables users to leave notes, draw shapes, insert digital signature and create hyperlinks on documents.
Workflow Enabled
Newgen’s Business Process Management Suite enables workflows to be designed and deployed providing advance capabilities such as process orchestration, case management and robotic process automation (RPA). Multiple systems can be integrated using Newgen’s integration adaptors wherein information can be passed on seamlessly between core line of business systems such as ERP’s, CRM’s and MS Office Suites. Newgen’s Business Rules Management System enables you to define critical business policies and procedures ensuring adherence to corporate standards.
Customer Communication Management (CCM)
In a crisis context, customer communication is a key component of the relationship with customers, citizens and partners. Frequent, short, relevant, compliant and omnichannel communications are essential to reduce uncertainty, increase service levels and avoid call center interaction. Automated proactive and reactive customer communications increase customer satisfaction, optimize operations and enable new business opportunities.
Newgen’s CCM Suite helps you reinvent your customer experience through personalized, content-rich batch, interactive and on-demand communications. It is a unified communication platform that enables you to grow your share of customers’ wallet by tapping various cross-sell/ up-sell opportunities across touch points such as e-mail, SMS, web, and print. Customers can move away from the limitations of homegrown or Word-based communications with scalable, compliant, personalized, omnichannel and relevant customer communications.
Low Code Automation Platform
Organizations need to operate with speed and agility to adapt to new digital ways of working. Newgen’s Enterprise Suite is a single platform for process automation, case management and low-code application development facilitated through proven products in intelligent digital automation (BPM), contextual content services (ECM) and omnichannel customer engagement (CCM).
The platform helps you transform experiences by bridging (process, content, and communication) silos in your organization. The platform offers agility for sustainable and continuous improvement, thereby future-proofing your enterprise. Further, the platform’s capabilities such as mobility, social, analytics, cloud, robotic process automation, blockchain and artificial intelligence accelerate your digital journey and keep you ahead of the curve.
Agility and Resilience is Key
The COVID-19 pandemic has moved quickly, with a growing and evolving impact on businesses and the economy. It will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, changing the ways we live and work, and the ways we consume and create goods and services.
Digital transformation is the key to responding to these changes with agility and resilience. We are living through a time of extreme disruption. Organizations of all sizes need business continuity, operational effectiveness and the ability to support their customers, partners, employees and communities, no matter where they are located. Newgen & Al Reyami has the expertise required to accomplish this. We are extremely committed to supporting our customers throughout this crisis and into the future.
This is not the first time humanity has endured a pandemic. Pandemics, along with similarly momentous struggles such as the world wars, are definitive moments in history. They have a huge impact on everything that follows, from changes in human behavior to advances in technology to a reorganization of the very structure of society. Today, as we go through this battle, we have something that previous generations did not. We face COVID-19 armed with a massive global network of science, technology and communication platforms unimaginable even 100 years ago.
It is with this vast infrastructure, combined with the amazing human spirit, that we will be able to build resilient organizations that will thrive despite disruption, shorten and minimize the economic fallout.
Let’s fight this together!!
Reference
- Shift To Enterprise Service Management To Improve The Employee Experience, Forrester Research
- Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise High-Productivity Application Platform as a Service, April 2017, Gartner Research
- The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Service Management, Q3 2018, Forrester Research
- Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms, August 2019, Gartner Research
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