The publication by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) studies challenges posed to businesses by the COVID-19 pandemic and ways of using digital technologies to help meet these challenges.
The Roscongress Foundation presents the salient points of the BCG publication accompanied by broadcasts of relevant panel discussions from the business programme of key international events held by the Roscongress Foundation.
1) Digital technologies have the potential to help overcome COVID-19 challenges in the long term
Analytics, AI simulations, and new remote ways of working can protect people and mitigate short-term losses. Online distribution channels, digital personalization, and dynamic supply chain planning will help quickly bring business back on track after the crisis has passed. Analytics-based reconfiguration and digital-driven approach will help enhance business resilience in future.
2) Transition to a new, digital-based, approach to sales is essential for rebound
Sales digitalization includes the following elements:
- new digital solutions offering and selling (such as AR);
- new marketing approaches;
- big data driven sales planning;
- using the Sales Force Effectiveness (SFE) model;
- offering a new level of customer experience personalization.
3) Digital technologies can radically change project management
BCG’s PID framework (a tool to assess business projects and processes) can help identify digital levers, benchmark and prioritize, while also reducing costs and increasing revenues through business processes digitalization.
4) Digital technologies can transform the process of delivering customer service and interacting with the customer
Transition to Customer Service 4.0 based on big data analytics, virtualization, cloud computing, bionic computing, IoT, etc. will help create a proactive, personalized, dynamic, and interactive system of service delivery across all customer channels.
5) Supply chain transformation has a great potential to improve the company’s financial performance
Optimizing logistics, improving productivity at warehouses, and general supply chain optimization using advanced digital tools, such as BCG Gamma, leads to significant EBIT increase.
6) The COVID-19 crisis has not only demonstrated the potential of digital but also raised the urgency of cybersecurity actions
Digital technologies can be of great help to businesses in dealing with the new challenges on various planes, from front-end and back-end office operations to maintaining and increasing the level of customer satisfaction. But in the current situation, minimizing cyber risks becomes an imperative. As companies are forced to shift from office operations to remote working, it is essential to reconsider cybersecurity policies.
For more information on using digital technologies to mitigate risks posed by the COVID-19 crisis, please see the Digitalization and COVID-19 thematic sections of the Roscongress information and analytical system.
