The Covid-19 lockdown began on the Ides of March, and today’s business leaders might be well advised to be smarter than 
Julius Caesar and heed the soothsayer’s warning to “beware the Ides of March”…and take necessary steps now to survive the future.
The Big Questions Business Leaders Must Answer
The original Ides of March—March 15, 44 B.C.—marked a turning point in the crisis and demise of the Roman Republic and the subsequent rise of the Roman Empire. Will history judge the Covid-19 lockdown to be a trigger event of similar magnitude?
Right now, lockdowns are lifting as evidence and fears of a second wave of the coronavirus are simultaneously rising. So many things may have already changed forever. Who’s to say whether ubiquitous mask wearing, social distancing, and contact tracing will ever go away? And what about the long-term changes that recent civil unrest may ignite?
And these are just the macro-level shifts.
Beneath the surface of the crisis of Rome, merchants and businessmen faced a flurry of individual crises that closely resemble the struggles of today’s business leaders:
- What are the primary risks and/or threats to my business processes?
- How must I adapt?
- What steps can I take to ensure my business remains operational and profitable?
- Should I adjust my business model or product strategy?
- How do I market myself in the context of chaos?
- How are my customers being affected by events, and how can I help them?
- What insurances can I build into my business model and processes that would allow me to operate with a higher degree of assurance and security?
- How can I insulate my business against political and societal conflict?
We’ll Help You Find Your Center in the Storm
Everything seems to be getting disrupted, and there’s no telling how long these disruptions will last or if things will ever return to a recognizable state of normalcy. That’s why betting your business on a rapid return to the “old way” may not be the smartest strategy. Caesar refused to heed the warnings of the soothsayer, and it cost him. Will the same happen to you?
Shortly after the onset of lockdowns, we here at Imaging Office Systems started considering many of these questions, and as luck would have it, we had the right kind of momentum heading into this moment...
For nearly 50 years, we’ve been in the business of information management, and we were already well into the latest and most significant iteration of that expertise to date—the rollout of our cloud services offering. And for the last three months, we’ve been talking about specific cloud-based solutions we can offer your organization that will help you determine how your company should pivot and react under the current business climate:
Business Process Outsourcing
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) allows an organization to instantly activate cloud-based business process infrastructures that allows you to operate effectively with your people working in remote locations.
BPO solutions enable customers to intelligently capture required information from both paper and digital documents and automatically classify document type, separate pages, parse the information, find smart zones, grab data, and migrate it to the systems or applications where you need it.
We handle all the technical details behind the digital curtain to make it happen, and you get the benefit of having the information and data you need to inform important business processes and decisions.
Human Resources and Accounting Systems
HR pros have information and data coming from a variety of places, including online forms, electronic applications, digital and snail mail resume submissions, and reference submission apps. We can implement a variety of software, hardware, AI and robotic process automation solutions that can capture this information and make it accessible to a content management system, HRIS, or any other type of business application. We’ll research your business processes and leverage our information management experience and expertise to design the information capture and document management systems you need to effectively manage all your HR information—whether it originates on paper or in online forms, email, or any other channel.
When you switch to automated AP, the act of paying vendors transforms from a strain on your people and resources into a competitive advantage. Automation changes the game significantly by bringing all your invoices together, along with supporting information, into a single view for each department manager. This capability enables approvals to be made very quickly. Organizations also benefit from a bi-directional sync, which greatly enhances efficiency and visibility into AP processes.
To learn more about how Imaging Office Systems can help your organization adjust to the “new normal,” get in touch today!