Is doing business about to change forever?
With the nation’s workforce in lockdown, businesses have had to rapidly change the way they operate. Countless offices around the country have swapped face to face meetings for videoconferencing over software like Zoom. Here at Orange City Life most of us are working from home and communicating solely through email and phone calls.
All these changes have been a steep learning curve for many working Australians and business owners, but when we are allowed to freely associate once more, will offices just operate as they were?
“I do not think things will go back to what they were in December,” said Inland Digital’s Managing Director Lawrence Breen.
Office digitisation and collaborative work solutions are Inland Digital’s bread and butter, but even they have been surprised by the speed of change brought about the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We're in the technology game ourselves and we’ve all had to learn to do things better remotely for our clients,” said Lawrence, who believe video conferencing will be more widely utilised by businesses following the end of social distance measures as they see the benefits.
“For organisations it is going to reduce the cost of sales,” he said, as an example. “Because instead of jumping in a car and driving all the way out to Condo to have a chat, now with this new skill set everyone has, we might just jump on Zoom and do a virtual demonstration for a client.”
Lawrence has worked with large organisations spanning the state that still regularly require staff to travel for monthly face to face meetings, but now he believes that may be a thing of the past.
“We were showing them what they can do on a smart board is exactly the same. There's no travel, there's no accommodation costs, there's no risk, so it is cheaper, less people on the roads, more productive because you are not losing travel time… but now we have all been forced into that. Look at what's happened with Zoom in the last couple of weeks!”
And anecdotally, in conversation with a television executive the other day, he said he finds their remote meetings to be more productive and is keen to see them continue.
The next few months will be a trying time for many local businesses, but Lawrence believes there is also an opportunity.
“While it is quieter and we know it is going to be quieter for the next couple of months, it is an opportunity for business owners or team leaders to stop and have a look at how they currently do things and then use technology to improve those processes,” he said.
“People who do repetitive admin tasks, like invoice processing, bank recs — all that sort of stuff can now be fully automated, I think all business owners are now looking for any process that can be automated for a cost reduction and it frees staff up to focus on generating revenue, not just admin. I really think that is a big opportunity.”
Business will return to some sort of normal after this crisis is over and now is the time to prepare for it, said Lawrence.
“I think businesses will be more agile and more efficient coming out the other side,” he said. “I think we are all going to be more productive. We are going to use technology to be better at what we do… When people come back into their businesses when this is all over, they'll be saying, ‘Hang on! Why don't we do it this way!” And that will definitely be a change — and a change for the better.”