Everyone was caught off guard when COVID-19 hit the world. Some shrugged their shoulders, some were scared, some believed the pandemic would quickly disappear, and some felt the pandemic and the changes it would bring would be with us for a long time. Each of us can experience in our own lives and in the way we work and run our businesses who was right. Covid is not just about wearing the necessary mask, it is about transforming the way companies operate.

COVID-19 and digital transformation

The digital transformation did not start today, but is a decades-long process. However, the advent of COVID-19 has propelled companies years ahead on the digitalisation journey - those that recognise and are able to follow new trends. As the epidemic spread, more and more companies suddenly switched to home offices, and after the initial scare, quickly realised that the new employment model was not necessarily bad for their business. In fact, for some companies, working from home can boost employee productivity and workload, while saving on the cost of maintaining a smaller office and taking the business digital.

However, remote working has its own requirements, because if workers are working remotely, they need to have the digital infrastructure in place to enable them to do so. In addition to communication software, this also has implications for changes in document management, increasing the need for digitisation the need for.

Digitisation and a new approach to data

But digitisation doesn't just mean no more shuffling paper documents around, no more scrolling through reams of contracts to find what you need, or maintaining huge archives to manage documents. Of course, all this is true, but digitisation opens up much wider perspectives for businesses.

The digital management of invoices, contracts, payments, revenues, inventories and business communications provides business leaders with an unprecedented amount of data that, with the right ingenuity, can be used effectively to gain a competitive advantage. Of course, comprehensive data analysis is still a new area for most SMEs, but if a company wants to succeed in an increasingly unpredictable world, it needs to be open to change.