https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj6BvEL1IUs
“We can’t be in survival mode; we have to be in growth mode, ”said Dr. Ricardo Kaufmann, academic secretary of the School of Business and Social Sciences and associate professor of General Management at ORT, during the conference “Operations and Services in the Digital Age.”
The conference was part of the launch activities for the Operations and Services Refresher Courses, organized by the Department of Short-Term Programs, and took place on Tuesday, November 16, 2021, via Zoom.
Kaufmann holds a Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the Public University of Navarra (Spain), a degree in Public Accounting from the University of the Republic, and a degree in Marketing Analysis from Universidad ORT Uruguay. He currently serves as the faculty’s academic secretary, academic coordinator of short-term programs, and associate professor of General Administration.
The disruptions that changed everything
According to Kaufmann, there are two disruptions that changed everything. The first is the digital disruption. “It has changed the way we live and work,” he said.
New technologies “have created new markets, which, in turn, have given rise to new competitors.” These new competitors have also raised new expectations among the public: today, companies must not only provide superior experiences to consumers, customers, employees, and citizens, but they must also deliver on their promises quickly and efficiently.
The second major disruption is the COVID-19 pandemic. Kaufmann recalled a quote from Diego González, general manager of IBM in Uruguay: “The real impact of the pandemic was to turn the long term into the here and now.”
Kaufmann noted that we are no longer in the VUCA environment (an acronym standing for “Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous”), which emerged after the Cold War. Today we are in a BANI environment (Fragile, Anxiety-inducing, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible), in a chaotic world to which we must adapt.
Operations in the Digital Age
According to the expert, it is essential to understand the customer’s perspective: consumers do not distinguish between the digital and the physical. This represents a paradigm shift, in which consumers expect results regardless of the channel through which they interact with companies.
The scholar said that studies confirm that even consumers who are most reluctant to embrace digital technology plan to continue the online behaviors they adopted during the pandemic.
“The success of companies depends on new technologies offering personalized experiencesand solutions, ”Kaufmann said. The key is to reshape businesses in light of the new rules of the game and new competitors.
“Process automation is here to stay,” he noted. “Supply chains are being automated for all those repetitive, standardizable tasks,” said Kaufmann, clarifying that this does not involve robots, but rather various“software solutionsthat will provide us with solutions and allow us to manage tasks more effectively.”
“What once seemed very far off is now a reality in many companies,” he said, adding that there is still room for human management. Technologies such as augmented reality, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things “are creating (…) new roles and new things we have to learn.”
Services in the Digital Age
Services in the digital age are increasingly focused on omnichannel approaches: providing customer service across multiple channels as if they were a single channel. Kaufmann noted that some companies—for example, in the U.S. financial sector—were able to anticipate the behavior of millennials years in advance: a generation of people who grew up with the Internet and are now at the peak of their professional development and financial decision-making.
Studies confirm that 90% of American millennials interact with financial institutions exclusively online. Given this reality, companies must focus on their apps and websites, which need to provide a user-friendly browsing experience.
The effects of digital disruption can also be seen in medicine and education. Kaufmann said that ORT has infrastructure that enables hybrid learning:“On-campus students and distance learners can follow our classes synchronously or asynchronously.”
Distance learning has transformed the teaching and learning paradigm.
“We can’t just be in survival mode; we have to be in growth mode,” he concluded.