SECTOR & STREAM ROUNDUP
HAS THE PANDEMIC MADE COMPANIES MORE DIGITALLYAGILE?
One of our clients is a large UK food distributor who has experienced significant strain in their back office in their shared service centre environment. They’ve reviewed the structure of their shared service centre and the technology they're using to see what could be done differently. We’re challenging them to think about how they can use things like AI and build that into how they work with their customers and suppliers.
Some companies have found that due to reduced availability of staff, they have not been able to process transactions in a traditional way. They’ve realised they need to become more resilient going forward and that means putting more emphasis on technology like AI, automation and robotics to make sure they can process transactions more readily without relying on people.
They’re recognising that when it works and works well, it introduces a level of agility that’s easier to apply through technology than it is through people. And again, that creates resilience, because if we're less reliant on people you’ve got greater flexibility. Another example is in the construction sector, where materials have been held up due to supply chain issues. Many of these types of organisations are shifting onto e-commerce platforms.
Where they may have dabbled with it in the past, they are now seriously having a rethink around how they use technology to engage with customers and suppliers. This is very significant because if you roll back the clock 18 months, these manual industries were still very physical; it was all about the relationship with the customer in store. They’re now having to recognise that their customers are changing, and they need to keep up with that. They’re needing to trial things like real- time delivery, e-commerce platforms and contactless transactions. It’s an exciting time, particularly in tech.
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