.png)
The current situation, which is a result of measures that governments all around the world have put in place to slow down the Covid-19 pandemic, has a significant impact on almost all industry sectors. Some industries were hit seriously and some companies were even "stretched out" beyond the point where they can sustain their existence on the market. This turmoil has been affecting boths mall and big companies, which are hasting to redefine their business models to adapt to this "new normal"(whatever that means) environment.But can this situation be described as a new one? Has the pandemic really created new consumer behaviors, or has it simply catalyzed patterns that we rechanging anyway?
At the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, we were observing significant changes to the structures and norms that we took for granted. Consumers filled their homes with toilet rolls, canned food and pasta, parents grappled with home-schooling and we rediscovered the beauty of long hair or DYI haircuts. All the while, people were wondering what the so-called new normal might be.
It would be a mistake to look at the Covid-19 pandemic as something of groundbreaking moment that has changed how consumers engage with brands. The initial behavior was put into a state of shock but those that followed were not all that surprising. These behavior patterns that had been visible long before lockdown and the current situation accelerated them.
Covid-19 appears to have boosted shifts that were already well underway, especially the role of technology and digital media in how we buy goods and services. Necessity quickly bred familiarity and, it increasingly appears that preference as well.
Data from Visa UK1 reported a 41% increase in online purchases, with 74 % of consumers likely to maintain those habits in the future.
The pandemic and related measures have also significantly affected office and work life of all people.Regulations restricting the number of people in one place and efforts to limit social contacts between people led to a massive implementation of large-scale“work from home” arrangements wherever possible and forced the adoption of new ways of working. Companies had to quickly adapt to a situation that even the most extreme business-continuity plans had not envisioned.
For most companies, having their offices was critical to productivity and culture. Lot of their processes depended on physical interaction of their employees and some even on the exchange of physical documents. Most of the day-to-day work and tasks have been moved to an“online world” during the pandemic. Videoconferencing and other forms of digital collaboration were adopted and companies which were already ahead with digitalization of their processes were able to shift more quickly to this new setup.
During lockdowns, organizations adopted online collaboration and made effort to transform the most important processes could be performed remotely (though not optimally in some cases). Most have simply “moved” existing processes to remote work environment, imitating what had been done before the pandemic. This may work well for some organizations and processes but not for all and not forever. Organizations should identify the most important processes for each major business, geography and function,and change them to reflect the requirements of a newly established situation.To maintain productivity, collaboration, and learning and to preserve the corporate culture, boundaries between being physically present in the office and out of the office must vanish.
Salesforce has become a business-critical application for many companies in the past few years and helps them to transform their business models to be ready for a new digitized economy. Helping them to better interact with their customers, partners and employees while at the same time increasing productivity and collaboration that leads to higher revenues.
Companies from various segments and industries that are already enjoying benefits of having their processes supported by the Salesforce platform were able to adjust to the challenges brought by the pandemic faster.
You can check their stories and testimonies on the following link.
As you can see from the experience of existing Salesforce customers, they were able to cope with the situation and the Salesforce solution was a key point in their successful adoption of the new reality. Even before the pandemic, they were already able to execute most of their critical processes using Salesforce cloud architecture that is supporting work from everywhere so the large-scale implementation of “work from home” set up did not interrupt their ability to continue work. Salesforce solutions for ecommerce and online marketing helped these companies to leverage the situation and to boost their online sales channels performance. Customers were able to find information and assistance as well as to get intouch with support representatives thanks to the implementation of customer care portals on the Salesforce Communities.
Having Salesforce is of course not the silver bullet for a plethora of issues and challenges that companies and individuals must face in the current ever-changing situation, but it helps to transform critical business processes and make them actionable in a work environment which is also ever-changing. Utilizing advanced ecommerce and marketing solutions with predefined best practices will help companies to make a leapfrog into the digital environment without too many hassles around figuring out how to do it.
The Salesforce platform offers a solution to business of practically any type and size. It does not matter whether you are a small startup or an established multinational enterprise, there are solutions that will help to improve existing or even create a new business.Salesforce has evolved into a platform that is able to cover virtually every process of your business and improve it by doing so.
It may look difficult at first sight but with the right partner you will be able to transform your business using Salesforce platform in a relatively short time.
Enehano's mission is to streamline the business of companies in the field of marketing, sales or customer care, mainly through the implementation and development of the Salesforce platform. We supply complex projects for large companies. We use a combination of our business and IT skills. Hence the name of the companyEnehano.
Enehano's clients include the largest companies in the Czech Republic, including banks, insurance companies and mobile operators. But we also help smaller and start-up companies that have great ambitions to grow or expand abroad.
We have the largest experienced team of Salesforce specialists in Prague, but we also work for clients in the USA, Germany and Slovakia. Our team holds over 140 certificates.
Article author: Martin Hronek, Business Architect, Enehano Solutions
👉 If you have anyquestions, please contact us. We will be happy to discuss them with you.
