Written by Kapil Khadgi
ServiceNow Practice Head at Royal Cyber
As the phases of the Covid-19 progress, organizations must invest their time and energy in emergency response management to achieve better business outcomes.
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a pandemic. Today, even after six months, most of the businesses are busy building strategies for emergency preparedness and response in the workplace. Business leaders are facing uncertainty more than ever and thinking to dramatically change the way we live and work. They are dealing with a set of questions:
It is difficult to answer these questions in one go and businesses need to follow a structured approach to come out stronger from the Covid-19 crisis.
This era will be defined as the period where business as usual cannot be expected to reign. Organizations are struggling to respond to crisis. To navigate smoothly, they must follow a structured approach—Recover and Stabilize, Return, and Grow—to deliver superior customer experience and achieve success.
Stage 1: Recover and Stabilize
The pandemic has proved to be a burgeoning crisis both for the country’s economic and financial system. According to a McKinsey report, this health crisis will lead to a decline in economic activity even far greater than the loss Europe and the United States experienced during the Great Depression.
In the face of all the challenges, more organized/coordinated efforts are needed to recover and stabilize the organization from the outbreak. Several businesses have already started setting-up a stabilization team that defines and executes an emergency response plan that will restore the company to a scalable state. Once the plan is in place, organizations can prioritize and realign their time and resources to cut non-essential costs. It is also essential to communicate the plan to all the employees of the organization. Clear communication reflects the visibility and transparency of the system and redirects the resources to the most critical areas.
While stabilizing your organization, it is also essential to connect and support your customers. Set-up remote call centers; identify capabilities that you need to strengthen, refocus, and re-budget; rapidly innovate products and services to meet the customer’s needs; and set-up a clear communication plan to deliver superior customer experience.
Stage 2: Return
It is rightly said by an HR leader, “Get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” In other words, businesses and individuals need to be prepared to return to their workplaces. To do so, they need to:
Stage 3: Grow
Once your business is stabilized and your workplace is safe to reopen, it's time to focus on your business’s growth. To drive the growth plan, you need to:
All these steps will help improve employee productivity and create opportunities for the business to differentiate in the market.
Royal Cyber has partnered with ServiceNow to empower organizations with apps that can manage workflows required to keep the employees healthy and workplaces safe.
ServiceNow released Emergency Response Management Apps in March 2020 and Safe Workplace Apps and Contact Tracing apps in May and June 2020. Royal Cyber can configure these apps in 1-2 days. We can:
Besides configuring ServiceNow’s apps, we have automated the health screens of these apps that can help organizations become more productive, predictive, and prepared. The apps and the dashboard provide the organization parameters that can be used to navigate through the disruption in the post-Covid-19 era.