As the coronavirus pandemic is unfolding, its effects on businesses, markets and overall economy are becoming more and more obvious. Beyond the immediate medical concerns and health supplies management, the travelling and circulation interdiction have affected the way countries, organizations and individuals are dealing with supplies, expenses and work patterns.
When complex and disruptive situations emerge, the first and foremost factor of immediate impact is human intervention. It is then when going beyond the usual mechanisms and the predictable steps is potentially life-saving. Acting before the foreseen evolution makes a huge difference in how the aftermath looks like. But leaving it all to a factor that can heavily modulate in unusual ways (like human behavior) is no solution. In return, we can use technology and its tools to organize and streamline decision-making process and its preliminary stages.
For individuals, the news and messaging apps and online shopping solutions are the primary real-time tools. As for the business environment, the companies have a myriad of platforms, apps and systems. They can thus manage at-home deployment of workforce, decreasing sales and stocks, payment delays, HR engagement issues. But it`s not easy to synchronize and follow-up multiple sources of input and feedback, especially on a panicked, fast-changing social context.
Many organizations already have in place tools like CRM, AI, RPA that can be integrated and transformed into a highly independent ecosystem. The more technologized the environment, the bigger the chances to overcome the crisis. Having access to thorough analysis of big amounts of data can easily turn into timely decision and immediate intervention. In this way, companies can have employees efficiently work remote, communicate and modify project patterns and fully manage fluctuations of stocks, liquidities and raw materials. Based on the data the systems are acquiring and analyzing in real time, the entrepreneurs can decide what strategy is best and develop alternative scenarios to it.
In time of crisis, the right approach seems to be an augmented human intervention, based on the help and leverage that the technology can provide. It is a path worth investigating and investing in, so that we learn and evolve.