It is not just about the way that you manage your operations and production; digital innovation has become critical in how you interact with your customers. And as the COVID-19 virus has shown, it is also critical in how you interact with your own staff.

This event, more than any, will rapidly show businesses how meetings and processes should have been digitalised by now. We live in a global world where business can be done anywhere. Interaction needs to be fast, seamless, as well as user friendly — to the point where it's easy for anyone to interact and communicate. The complicated must become simple.

Meetings no longer need to be face-to-face, nor does customer interaction. The value of digital channels, products and operations is now obvious to organisations everywhere. This is a wakeup call to those who've placed too much focus on daily operational needs at the expense of investing in digital for long term resilience.

The investment you make for digital today will secure your business for tomorrow, says the Immersion Group. Businesses have begun shutting down and sending employees to work from home in the hopes to stop the spread of the virus and flatten the curve of impact.

In the ideal digital world, this should have minimal impact on a business. According to two Immersion Group experience consultants, the technology and solutions are already available.

Switching to a digitally-enabled organisation doesn't have to involve a complete re-engineering of business processes. Rather, it's a re-imagining of the business processes.

Businesses that can shift technology capacity and investments to digital now will be able to mitigate the impact of the outbreak and keep their companies running. Not only will businesses need to re-engineer the way they interact with their customers but they will also need to redesign internal communication and collaboration frameworks. 

This will help them to leverage technology and digitally-enabled processes to allow for business to continue as usual, as well as to have the resilience to continue despite economic threats and challenges.

Now with the increased demand of remote working, the Immersion Group says that it's crucially important to simulate or create an imitation of operations similar to the environment that your employees are used to.

Businesses need to prepare IT systems now in order to safely and reliably handle the vast increase in remote working and the digital fulfilment of market demand. As the virus continues to spread, economic symptoms are emerging. Dozens of large-scale organisations have already begun announcing they won't be achieving their financial goals.

These announcements, coupled with the impact of supply-chain disruptions and dampened consumer demand, will see a drastic drop in economic performance, says the team at the Immersion Group.

The team concludes that organisations need to take themselves out of their comfort zone and fully embrace appropriate technology and digital solutions in order to make the impossible possible.

For more information, visit www.immersiongroup.co.za. You can also follow the Immersion Group on Facebook or on Twitter.