Guest post by Paul Turley, Director of Enterprise Sales at ServiceNow Ireland
Irish businesses across all industries are facing myriad challenges. So, it’s unsurprising that business confidence has plunged to a two-year low.
The looming threat of recession, supply chain disruptions, and rising costs are testing day-to-day operations to the absolute limit. And business leaders are under mounting pressure to make faster, smarter decisions to stay competitive during these turbulent times.
That said, it’s not all negative, and making these critical changes is achievable. But organisations must understand what technology platforms are available and how to use them to build resilience.
Minimising disruption through hyperautomation
Technology solutions can help Irish firms to prepare for and adapt to crises. Hyperautomation is one of these solutions – it provides a way for organisations to minimise supply chain disruptions and lagging production.
Hyperautomation takes automation a step further by combining multiple tools into a comprehensive package that spans entire organisations. It integrates siloed automation from different vendors into a single, convenient solution and is implementable as part of a company’s digital platform.
This way, IT teams can oversee the entire hyperautomation landscape to manage its lifecycles efficiently. From intake through to workflow and publishing, users have the visibility to align business performance with goals for maximum impact.
Optimising schedules for greater efficiency
In the face of rising costs, firms can’t afford inefficiencies in their day-to-day operations; this is where schedule optimisation plays a vital role by modernising field services through connected digital workflows.
Schedule optimisation makes analysing work schedules, skill sets, job priorities, and parts simpler, which also helps to assign the best person to any job. Field service resources can then ensure a first-time fix and fit more jobs into working hours to boost overall productivity.
When you think about the scale of operations across enterprises, these gains yield massive business value at a time when it’s so important.
Enhancing customer service with AI
As the digital environment continues to evolve rapidly, so do customer expectations. But how do businesses meet such expectations while grappling with economic pains? Artificial intelligence (AI) provides an answer.
Automated task creation, triage, and investigation help users solve issues faster and smarter. The key – Sentiment Analysis. It provides a quick understanding of communicative tone to prioritise urgent or sensitive cases.
Contrary to popular belief, AI is remarkably accessible, so teams can easily harness the technology for task management. In effect, customer service agents can meet customer expectations while managing caseloads and staying on top of critical issues.
Strengthening company-wide operations
Operational resilience becomes even more vital during times of economic vulnerability. That’s why organisations need to use technologies to minimise risk. Operational Resilience Management provides a real-time, holistic view of potential service threats. Organisations can, as a result, anticipate, mitigate, prevent, and respond to such threats more effectively.
At the same time, teams looking to go one step further and plan ahead can use Scenario Analysis tools to design and simulate uncertain scenarios. It’s this kind of proactive approach that supports businesses to minimise risk.
Without preventative measures in place, configuration changes can cause costly outages for DevOps. Not only does this put further strain on DevOps teams, but it also exacerbates business disruptions.
Digital platforms centralise configuration management, security, and validation within development pipelines, so issues are directly addressed. Users are fully equipped with access controls and continuous, automatic validation to reduce all likelihood of incorrect configurations.
Building business resilience for the future
Despite the uncertain economic climate in Ireland, there’s certainly cause for optimism if businesses turn to technology. Digital innovations provide the necessary tools to optimise processes across enterprises and still deliver value.
It’s through investments in technology that operational resilience is built in the face of current and future challenges – helping organisations to stay alive and thrive.
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