For Lila Benhammou, CEO of Humans4help, the decrease of the company profit caused by the crisis could be balanced by more efficient processes. What should we do after this crisis? How to deliver new services?
What is your observation of the companies hit by the crisis?
In this crisis we distinguish two categories of companies: those related to tourism or transport, which their profit has been strongly impacted, sometimes even 100%. Then, there are those that have been less affected but still had to cope with the many unforeseen events induced by the crisis. I am thinking in particular of the SMEs that had not started their digital transformation. During the first few weeks of lock-down, they had to establish a business continuity plan for teleworking in a hurry. However the lack of preparation and equipment made remote-working impossible or not professional. Indeed, according to a BPI report, only 4 out of 10 SMEs were equipped. Even for large groups, the machine was slow to restart, forcing them to freeze their projects due to a lack of preparation and equipment. It’s clear that they did not take into account the digital transformation. This is the moment to ask ourselves: isn’t the time to reinvent ourselves and rethink the way we provide our service?
How is it possible to predict when we are facing such uncertainty?
The idea is not to proceed on the basis of hypotheses, but rather on the basis of the means available. In other words, it is based on what is known and on the means available, so existing clients, employees and work processes. Companies that are able to identify and work on the pain points of their current processes will be the big winners of this crisis. The challenge here is to measure the efficiency of their processes and quantify them in order to optimize their productivity. Indeed, the crisis is forcing them to do better with less. And in this context of uncertain profit, it is essential to focus on three aspects:
- Employees who will contribute to renewal through this new work processes
- Costs: Achieving operational efficiency with little or no turnover, while ensuring continuity of service and customer satisfaction?
- New services: reinventing themselves and venturing into previously envisaged areas. Many companies have been able to take advantage of this crisis to reinvent themselves and at the same time benefit from it. For example, Air Liquide, a specialist in industrial gases, has started to manufacture respirators. And the world leader in sugar refineries, Tereos, has transformed its factories to produce hydro alcoholic gel. They seized the opportunity to continue and potentially maximize their activity.
However you can only change what you can measure, hence the necessity to quantify your processes internally.
What will the change in work processes concretely bring ?
The transformation through the work process makes it possible to compensate part of the loss of its turnover by the gains in operational efficiency. It is estimated that 80% of the data that can be used in a company is unstructured. Automating, for example, certain accounting processes or customer relations (insurance purchase orders, site delivery orders, social benefit forms, social housing, etc….) would represent substantial time savings for employees. Time that can be put to good use for the more strategic issues of the company. In particular, digital transformation.
How to carry out these transformations?
Humans4help offers a support called the 10-25-30 Method. This appliance starts by an audit phase that maps the key processes and identify the obstacle and the possible evolution, which last 10 days. In order to collect the most objective data, we do not base it on collaborators’ reports. Our system is plugged to the company’s system which reveals failures in the incurred processes.
We then estimate that it takes 25 days to implement the changes to be operational. Finally, we guarantee a 30% ROI. We also offer a solution for mass processing of a company’s mails. This can represent an enormous time saving for telecom operators or insurers when dealing with claims. It is important to realize that digitalization is the lever of today’s business. Indeed, the company choose to transform itself or dies. The current crisis is proof of this with the acceleration of a new way of working that is no longer based on face-to-face meetings. A new situation driven by digitalization.
Source: www.widoobiz.com