How COVID-19 pandemic has changed records and data management?

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on the way businesses keep their records and manage their data. New approaches to document management were required as the so-called ‘new norm’ took hold in 2021 and, no doubt, beyond. This article will provide some insights into how COVID-19 changed records and data management.

Records and data management are not exactly the ‘sexiest’ processes of a business. Often, the perception is that the keeping of records and management of data is dry, dull and uninspiring. Exciting they are not. However, their importance for any business cannot be emphasized enough. The document management services of a business provides its backbone. Things fall apart with poor record-keeping and weak data management.

As with so many other aspects of business and the way we work, the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on the way businesses keep their records and  manage their data. New approaches to document management were required as the so-called ‘new norm’ took hold in 2021 and, no doubt, beyond. This article will provide some insights into how COVID-19 changed records and data management.

 

The Critical Importance of Data

Probably the most important thing that the pandemic drove home for businesses was the importance of data. As businesses scrambled to deal with the impact of official lockdowns, forced social distancing and heavily-impacted logistical supply chains, so it became obvious that having sound records and data management was imperative. Data about customers/clients, suppliers, contractors, inventory, warehousing and a host of other business inputs became make-or-break factors for many businesses.

Perhaps even more important than knowing the how, what, who, where or when questions of a business, was knowing how to optimize available or emerging data. After all, the pandemic that emerged in 2020 was a global ‘black swan’ event, the likes of which the world had not witnessed in the modern era. The criticality of data analytics grew exponentially due to the pandemic. This was borne out in numerous studies such as that undertaken by Sisense in 2020 of 460 businesses across Australia and New Zealand. The ability of businesses to effectively analyse and harness their data was the leading finding of the study.

 

Data and Organisational Resilience

A leading legacy of the pandemic is that data and the management thereof became central to strategic considerations at the highest levels of an organisation. More than ever, data needs to be considered holistically as a system that requires sound management throughout an organisation. This was immensely important for what would be the business buzzword of the pandemic: resilience.

The emergence of resilience as a hot button issue in the COVID era is not surprising. The pandemic was a veritable ‘Grim Reaper’ for many businesses across many industry sectors, and so what made some businesses survive and others not became a major point of analysis. One factor consistently emerged as to why many businesses were resilient to the ravages of the pandemic: their ability to collate, manage and use their data.

Deloitte devised a strategic path based on ‘7 lessons’ in its report on data strategy considerations for government entities during the pandemic that is relevant for any business in any sector going forward. The proposed strategy commences with the need for real-time data to ensure all-important operational resilience, culminating with how understanding one’s data results in better decision-making, as seen below:

 

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COVID-19, Data and Digital Transformation

The stereotypical vision of records and record-keeping was of reams of paper in countless dusty files stuffed into creaky cabinets in seldom-visited storerooms. This is an exaggeration worthy of Charles Dickens, of course, but until recently it wasn’t a far-off vision of record-keeping for many small and medium-sized businesses. Large and multi-national corporations have been investing heavily in digital data for years, but most smaller businesses have struggled to keep up.

COVID-19 changed all that, as effective real-time data and analytics became key factors for business resilience. Only the digitalization of data could ensure that.

“In 2020, data also became pivotal in the decision-making process of business leaders. In fact, COVID-19 became a catalyst for digital transformation…”. That is a quote by Experian in its 2021 Global Data Management report. The report was based on its survey of 700 data practitioners and business leaders regarding the impact that the pandemic had towards data in their organisations.

A decisive aspect of this revolution in attitudes towards data centred on the fast-evolving requirements and demands of customers. If business leaders were struggling to keep up with this evolution of what customers wanted before COVID-19, it only accelerated once the pandemic hit. Equally important for many companies was how employees needed to be factored into data management considerations, now that many of them were working remotely.

Little wonder that the Experian survey found that 93% of companies surveyed had data management issues due to the pandemic. It’s fair to conclude that COVID-19 laid bare the data management inadequacies of most businesses.

 

COVID-19 As Data Management Accelerator

The pandemic didn’t simply transform data management in nearly every business – it turbo-charged it. Consider this: a 2020 global survey of executives by McKinsey found that companies had accelerated the digitization of their customer and supply-chain interactions, as well as their internal operations, by an astounding three to four years. The graphic below highlights this dramatic worldwide uptake:

 

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Importantly, most executives confirmed that these dramatic and sudden investments in new technology, including those pertaining to digital records, data management and analytics, would be permanent commitments. The pandemic was clearly a ‘technological tipping point’ for most organisations. In the words of the McKinsey report: “The notion of a tipping point for technology adoption or digital disruption isn’t new, but the survey data suggest that the COVID-19 crisis is a tipping point of historic proportions—and that more changes will be required as the economic and human situation evolves.”

This accelerated uptake of digital data solutions highlighted an important outcome of the pandemic for business: technology is not simply a tool for cost efficiency. Technology should not be a reactive, dreaded cost undertaking to ‘keep up with competitors and please customers’. Instead, in the post-COVID-19 era technology should be viewed as strategically and operationally integral to the viability and even survival of an organisation. And central to this surge in technology solutions is the maturation of data management.

Digital transformation in the documentation management services of organisations courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic is here to stay. The changes in how data is collected, analysed and harnessed have clearly been transformative for many companies and will become their ‘new norm.’ The financial and other investments incurred by the digitalization of data, for example, cannot be underestimated either, of course.

There is no doubt an expectation that the ROI of these data management expenditures will reap rewards for businesses going forward, including SMEs. There is no reason why that shouldn’t occur. Ultimately, smarter data management and analytics should make for smarter, more resilient businesses. That will surely make the difference when the next ‘black swan’ event comes around.

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