How Digitalization Makes Business Life Remotely and How to Enjoy It?

We already discussed the topic of digital in our previous article here. Also, recently we have created a number of platforms and solutions that give really new opportunities to enterprises in developing and building new areas in business. As an example, the completely remote recruiting platform Workant, but let talk about it a little later.

And first, nevertheless, let's dive deeper into the digital world and take a look at what he is preparing for us.

So, let's go!

What is Digitalization Mean?

We live in the age of the digital revolution, almost every person can’t imagine his life without digital technologies such as the Internet, various gadgets, and services, and the faster they develop, the faster changed the reality surrounding us.

In simple words, digitalization is the digitization of text, sound, and video. It allows translating a huge amount of information into units and zeros, a language that a computer understands. Digitalization is designed to simplify our lives. For example, by combining information about a person’s location and search queries, a smartphone will be able to determine the user's preferences, as leisure options, and more. Besides, it fundamentally changes the business, reducing production costs, and increasing labor productivity.

In the era of such rapid changes, a business cannot work according to old models, it must change, otherwise, there is a big risk to stay behind competitors, or even stagnate. Therefore, sooner or later, companies will have to adopt new rules of the game. Digitalization deeply transforms and streamlines business processes. It improves company productivity and improves customer experience. The digitalization of a business is an extremely broad concept, it does not offer a single right recipe for each company, it is imperative to show individuality and flexibility.

What Areas Have Digitalization Touched and What did It Bring?

Market

The IT solutions segment dominates and is expected to reach $ 798.44 billion in 2025. This trend can be explained by the rapid development of the latest technology.

In the next seven years, we will see an increase in the share of the service sector at 19.5%. Regarding the analytics segment, growing demand is expected due to the synthesis of a large amount of data and the increase in the number of devices and applications with built-in artificial intelligence.

The sphere of social networks with the growth of more than 20.6% will be the fastest growing. This is due to the popularization of the social media platform, which helps companies determine their target audience and understand their behavior when purchasing goods or services.

Experts expect the professional services segment to grow by 19.9% ​​over the next 7 years. An increase in the number of digital technologies is driving demand for higher education programs to prepare an existing workforce that is successfully adapting to emerging technologies.

The healthcare sector will achieve the highest increase - 19.5%, and all thanks to an increase in demand for electronic devices with built-in artificial intelligence and the ability to monitor the general condition of the patient online.

The share of small and medium-sized businesses will increase by 20.1% until 2025. The phenomenal growth can be explained by factors such as a decrease in the cost of devices and increased attention to the cloud and peripheral computing.

The "combined value" to industry and wider society of digital initiatives across ten industries /cumulative, 2016-2025/

Source: World Economic Forum/Accenture analysis, 2020

Production

The key question for production owners is how quickly and flexibly they can respond to market changes and customer needs. To this end, they are increasingly striving to make the stages of new product development parallel. This requires the consistent implementation of all digitization options, from the first idea to the commissioning of a production machine.

Another promising area is network production. Today, companies provide a wide range of solutions for networking machines and connecting them to high-level IT systems.

Networked machines, production monitoring, and innovative multi-touch display concepts enable companies to optimize their production processes. Intelligent Exploitation is an innovative package for jobs that want to take the first step toward digitalization. Operators use the device to view many graphic formats at once, in particular pdf and dxf. All data necessary for production is available on the company's network.

Business

The digitization process has touched all areas of the business, from how you get and retain new customers, to how you represent and manage the company's reputation on the Internet. If in the past it was enough to build a store using the mortar and bricks to create it, now consumers want to see what you can offer them before making a purchase. So there is no way to do without a digital presence. Before the advent of the Internet, a newspaper column of ads could attract new customers, but these days the target audience is consuming more and more digital data.

Education

The education sector is also undergoing irreversible changes. The most important trend in our time is getting additional education.

But recently, more and more managers have complained that they do not have enough time at the workplace to obtain additional knowledge. This is due to the rapid development of information technology. Therefore, in such an era, it is important to constantly be “capable of learning”. Moreover, you need to be able to combine the individual components of information, approach to solving problems creatively, and quickly respond to requirements.

Recruiting

Digital processes challenge traditional jobs. This applies to HR professionals. The digitalization of this area reduces the burden of hiring and training interns.

Thanks to new tools, specialists can communicate with candidates through mobile applications, social networks, and cloud technologies. For example, a person before an interview does not fill out a questionnaire familiar to everyone on paper, but an electronic form. Thus, the employer promptly receives and processes information.

Automation is confidently established at all stages of hiring and training:

• video presentations that replaced the group
• completing a quest instead of interviews
• training through special portals

Digitization in the field of HR gives excellent results, namely, reducing the burden on recruiters and recruiters, staff turnover, and improving the recruitment funnel.

At the same time, digitalization has touched not only HR. Experts predict that in 5-10 years, professions such as:

• IT specialists
• virtual reality architects
• big data model developers
• intellectual-property appraisers
• virtual lawyers
• designers of "smart homes" and others

And will you be a future virtual lawyer or developer of Big Data models, you need to learn all your life. A change of 8-12 professions will be considered the norm.

Digital technologies can create up to 6 million jobs worldwide in the period from 2016 to 2025 in the field of logistics and electricity. In other places, automation will crowd out many people. With both winners and losers as a result of the digital transformation, the enormous premium is based on the short-term ability of enterprises to improve the skills of employees and form a new generation of talents for the machine age.

Is Remote Working The Future For Business?

Remote work is a buzz phrase that has been gaining a lot of attention in recent years. It’s a revolutionary step for most businesses, but also a very practical one. Increasingly, we’re seeing startups and organizations switch to working remotely, and thriving while doing so. This begs the question: is the future of work, remote work?

The nature of how we work is shifting, whether due to technological advancements or generational mindset changes, and the data shows that distributed, flexible, and now, global teams are the future, and they’re certainly the answer to creating business resiliency in times of crisis.

In 2010, analyst firm Garner predicted that by 2020, half of the world would be working outside of the traditional office setting. Today, an International Workplace Group study shows that 70 percent of the global workforce telecommutes at least one day per week. Remote workers, in general, have increased by 115 percent over the last decade. And Deloitte reports that almost 75 percent of millennials believe that a remote work policy is important.

Today, all the usual rules of business and social interaction are annihilated daily, remote work has become a lifeline for thousands of enterprises. Many organizations that have previously ignored remote working are making an overnight u-turn, or those that only allowed hybrid working when team workloads overflowed, now need a framework, some rules, and fast ideas for keeping morale up.

But with today's enforced working from home likely to last for weeks and months, how will teams sustain their productivity? How can executives reorienting their businesses hope to ensure remote workers’ focus and mindfulness?

What Are 10 Tips for Running a Remote Business?

1. Maintain a professional website

No matter what the primary purpose of running a remote business, it’s imperative to maintain an online presence that informs potential customers about your business dynamics, who to contact for more information, and offers details on the products and services that are available.

2. Develop a web presence in a variety of social media networks

Beyond your main company website, it’s also important to be available and active on various social media outlets that your customers may frequent. Consider using each social media outlet for a different purpose and cross-reference each.

For example, you could use your company’s LinkedIn page to make announcements for job openings, you could use your company’s Facebook page for exciting announcements and advancements at your company, and you could use your company’s Twitter account to announce breaking news. It’s ideal to keep your social media accounts active with engaging content to keep readers interested.

3. Post customer satisfaction reviews and testimonials

No matter whether your business is a startup or you’ve been in business for decades, it’s imperative to get testimonials from satisfied customers that you can share on your website or social media pages. Nothing tells future customers more than honest reviews by existing customers.

To run a remote business well, ask your best customers to provide a testimonial in writing, it will pay off!

4. Register with the BBB

Registering with your local Better Business Bureau (BBB) and Chamber of Commerce are two important steps in driving business to your site. When someone moves to your community, they’ll likely search for existing, credible businesses where they can find products and services that are meaningful to them. Getting and maintaining a positive BBB grade will tell potential customers that you’re a qualified, trustworthy business.

5. Create strong channels of communication with remote staffers

As a remote company, it will be exceedingly important to maintain strong communication throughout your workforce. As the owner and leader of your company, you must set an example of how communication will flow throughout your company. Use tools like Zoom, GoToMeeting, Skype, and others to have face-to-face virtual meetings with staff and managers. Keep your employees abreast of changes in company policy, new products and services offered, company goals, and other vital information through regular and consistent communication channels.

6. Post your job openings at reputable sites like FlexJobs and Remote.co

Filling vacancies with the best and the brightest will require strategic effort on your part. Post positions with employment companies, like FlexJobs and Remote.co, that have a solid reputation. Evaluate the incoming resumes with care, vet each candidates’ credentials and references, and be sure to meet with them in a face-to-face virtual interview. During the hiring phase, it’s best to take a cautious approach to hire the best available candidate for the position.

7. Create remote teams throughout your organization

Once you have your team in place, be sure to create teams with managers at the top to allow for a consistent flow of information and guidance. Arm your managers and employees with important resources such as a company handbook, guidelines and policies for service, and other important information that will help them do their jobs most effectively.

It’s imperative that you don’t create a bottleneck in your organization by forcing employees and managers to wait for your green light on every decision, doing so will only turn off employees and customers.

8. Check-in routinely with your remote staff and managers

Create an environment of open communication and meet with your managers on a regular basis to discuss any ongoing concerns and to advise them about changes in policies. Also, meet with your entire staff through a regular virtual monthly meeting so everyone is getting the same information at the same time. Be sure to share your company’s successes and growth during these meetings to keep your employees motivated.

9. Provide upward mobility for staff

Depending on your business, you may have areas that require more specific training than others. Placing the right candidates in these roles is important, but also can cause you to “pigeonhole” certain employees and diminish their growth potential.

To run a remote business effectively, be sure that you’re creating cross-training opportunities so each employee has the opportunity to grow in other departments and seasoned employees can become managers. Staff members who feel stifled will move on and that training and knowledge will be lost.

10. Reward staff and customers for their loyalty

Keep your eye on the prize, not only for the growth of your company but to the value of your customers and staff. Put in place regular performance evaluations with well-known markers so that your staff can achieve rewards and bonuses for good performance. Same with customers, reward your loyal customers with special discounts, loyalty programs, or deals to keep them coming back for more.

Pros and Cons to Act Remotely

Pros

1. Cost

Companies shift to remote work for a variety of reasons, but the benefits are the same across all fields and disciplines. From a business perspective, going remote saves money. Companies don’t need to pay for physical office space as well as the infrastructure that comes with it. They also do away with setting aside budgets for equipment and office facilities. For example, a company won’t have to hire caterers, cleaners, or pay for rent. With remote working, these costs can be used to invest in other parts of the business to help the operations expand quicker.

2. Productivity

From an employees’ perspective, working remotely ensures that professionals can perform optimally, given that each person has different levels of productivity at different times of the day. Remote work helps employees find a working environment that suits them best, so they can work at a time that fits their needs. The optimal environment that remote work provides benefits the management as well since employees is more likely to work longer and produce better quality work. According to the remote work research conducted by TalentLMS, 90% of remote workers believe they’re able to get more done when working remotely. Moreover, 76% of telecommuters are willing to work more hours and feel more loyal to their company.

3. Recruitment

40% of employers worldwide are struggling to fill existing positions with qualified candidates. One of the top benefits of remote work is the growth of opportunities it gives to companies. Businesses don’t need to be bound geographically in finding top talent for their company. On the other hand, gone are the days when companies had to pay extraordinary amounts to recruit qualified employees who needed to relocate for work. Looking for top talent now entails casting the net across the world, so long as the candidate has a laptop and stable internet connection, they can work. In discussing the future of work, Firneo CEO Scott Pollack predicts a bright future for companies moving towards a remote working model: “companies that can find new ways to nurture, discover and empower talent no matter where they live will find it easier to hire top talent and thrive.”

Cons

1. Self-motivation

The first point is that for many it gradually becomes difficult to maintain self-organization and motivation at the proper level. When no one is above and you are practically the boss, you, in fact, have no one to report to. And you can begin to take off from business, disrupt plans and deadlines that assign to yourself or, worse, to customers. When you are at home or lying on a beach under a palm tree, it can be difficult to tune into a working mood. How in this case to conduct business remotely and remain productive? It all depends on your determination and perseverance. The main motivation and desire to succeed should go to emerge within you. Motivation from the outside can be strong, but often short-lived, so you need to look for reasons and strength in yourself.

2. Control

The second difficulty may be in the absence of personal control over employees. This is also largely a psychological moment. However, if you hire a professional, he will work efficiently as in the office, as remotely. Therefore, the main question is where to find such professionals. It is best to work with someone according to the recommendations, look at the candidate’s portfolio, conduct tests, take for a short internship.

3. Time

The third difficulty is the instability of earnings and, in some cases, a long buildup. Remote work, a business on the Internet take time to build a profitable system. There are different development options, and it depends on which one you choose, how fast you will move towards the financial goal.

How To Be Successful Remotely?

What is important in order to succeed in building a business in a remote format. First of all, you need to set clear goals. It is not only about global goals, making a million a month, becoming a leader in a niche, and entering an international level. Healthy ambitions are good, but you need to go towards their realization gradually.

Learn to set realistic goals that can be achieved in the near future. For example, if you are a beginner, set the first goal to go to earn 30-50 thousand in two months. This is real, especially if you have competently chosen a niche, worked out your target audience, and decided on advertising channels.

In this case, it is necessary to prescribe a strategy for long-term development, for a year, two, five years. Large-scale goals and ways to achieve them just fit in there.

Another important point that needs to be implemented to succeed is delegation. At the very start, you can do almost everything yourself, but as the business grows, you need a team.

For many, this is not easy, since they think that no one will do it better than me. Here you need to let go of over-control and try to be more open. Judge for yourself, if you close all the questions yourself, you are depriving yourself of one of the main advantages of a remote business is free time.

If you delegate everything that you can delegate, in any case, you will need to maintain interaction with the team, set tasks, work closely with new employees, and communicate with clients. However, with a competent organization, you do not have to be included in the work all the time. Try to initially build a system that can work without your constant control.

What is Our Experience in Developing a Remote Business?

Our team is engaged in daily development, constantly learning from the experience of our business colleagues and also sharing the experience with those who require it. We have developed a decent series of projects that you can take a look at here https://amoniac.eu/works

But we would like to focus on building an almost remote business for one of our customers, a business that allows working completely remotely without being localized in any part of the planet. This is a Workant recruiting platform. Thanks to additional features allow simplifying the hiring process greatly. With several built-in tools, the employer and the applicant have the opportunity to meet and discuss all interested parties, issues. The main difference of Workant is the possibility to assign and conduct a video interview without additional contact with the applicant. And this is a great opportunity not to waste time on unnecessary phone calls, long conversations, regular Skype meetings, waiting for feedback. Workant platform saves a lot of time and optimizes the hiring process.

Several technologies were used in the project, but the main one is OpenTok from TokBox. OpenTok is the PaaS cloud platform, which is WebRTC's leading communications platform for integrating video communications and messaging tools into websites and mobile applications. OpenTok has a distributed infrastructure that contains data centers around the world.

TokBox's open-source OpenTok platform provides developers with the ability to embed cross-platform WebRTC API-based video chats in web applications and websites, Java, Android, and iOS applications.

The OpenTok architecture consists of the client part of the OpenTok WebRTC library, for example, OpenTok.js, which provides embedding video communications in the client part of the application, web page and toolkit, OpenTok Client SDKs, for developing client-side JavaScript applications, Web applications, Java, Android, and IOS.

And more details about the project can be found here https://amoniac.eu/works/workant

So, we can do any manipulations to build a client’s business from scratch, or its complete reorganization, restructuring. We will not only do all the development but also tell you what they should be, how to make it better, and more convenient for the implementation of a particular function.

Summary

A remote business is not just a fashion trend. This is a relatively new format of work, which is actively developing and becoming more and more popular. To manage a business, new tools and services are constantly remotely created to simplify all processes. Since remote work is generally very popular, it is becoming easier to put professionals in your team. To succeed in this area, you need to set a goal and understand why it is needed at all. It is advisable to find a more serious and deep motivation than just high earnings.

Well, perhaps you already have ideas for developing your own startup or thinking of any improvements, you can contact our developers at any time at hello@amoniac.eu or +372 5770 7573.