COVID-19 and Manufacturing’s Rapid Move to Digital
Richard Blatcher,
Digital First – agile, responsive & informed, the new normal for manufacturers as we emerge from the COVID-19 crisis.
It’s impossible to know exactly what the long-term effects of the pandemic will be but the human cost of COVID-19 is already being measured in lives changed, economies disrupted and futures made uncertain.
Every manufacturer is facing the startling fact that their business plans for 2020 and beyond are now worse than outdated; they are irrelevant. Now, choosing to follow the post-pandemic plan could be detrimental to the success, or even the survival of a business. The truth is, the way companies sell to and engage with customers has suddenly changed. Planning for this impact is consuming manufacturing teams — even as the data and the situation changes hourly.
However, while the shift to digital selling has been a part of most business plans for the last few years, the global shift to working remotely has foundationally transformed how manufacturers interact with employees and customers. Selling was already rapidly moving to a virtual space, driven by changing buyer preferences for online commerce, and manufacturers will likely continue to adopt this approach for a large portion of their transactions in the future based on both necessity and the realized gains in productivity.