In the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic, norms have been thrown off and new ways of conducting business have emerged, affecting some businesses more than others. COVID pandemic, the related lockdown and other restrictions have left businesses struggling to operate in a smooth and profitable way. Despite their current plight, one thing that we hear constantly is that the digital is the future and data science is the key to an easier transition to post-COVID. As the crisis winds down, more organisations will be thinking about how to reinvent themselves and gain traction while the field of data science has had tremendous momentum. In addition to harnessing data, companies will be looking for trend-predicting tools to prepare for future shocks.
Company executives are using digital technologies and data science models to optimise operations, regulate expenses, analyse ROI, estimate long-term business impact, and more as remote working becomes more common. Businesses are even seeking to maximise their engagement and investment in technologies like AI, AR, VR, and cybersecurity to achieve the necessary business breakthroughs.
Why Are Businesses Relying on Data Science for Business Continuity?
Even though data science has been important before the pandemic, its ability to help businesses become resilient to disruption and change will become even more apparent as we emerge from it, finding a lot more applications in many potential sectors. In addition to helping predict business interruptions, customer engagement, improvising services and products, and safeguarding data, analytics and data science can lead to improved and profitable business outcomes.
Data science can be used to ensure business continuity and productivity in the following ways:
1. Identifying and adapting to new market opportunities and changing consumer trends
Ensure business continuity, adopting data science that enables the identification of new business opportunities is crucial. When analysing data resources, gaps can be identified, and improvements can be made to discover new opportunities. Data science questions the current processes and assumptions thereby devising new methodologies and algorithms to improve the business value by making derivations constantly and constructively from the organisation’s data. The COVID case data has been aggregated by many companies and combined with employee data to determine better and more unique ways to assist employees in times of crisis and that way enabling HR to take appropriate decisions on on-site work or work from home. Without data science, businesses may miss opportunities and make unreasonable decisions.
2. Anticipating and mitigating threats/ risks
During the COVID pandemic, businesses were taught to be more aware of sudden changes or abruption within the company. Data analytics is the best way to predict future critical events, analyse risks and develop mitigation tactics. Businesses can use existing data from the pandemic-affected situation to analyse a pattern and implement insights and solutions that will help them forecast and combat challenges ahead. During the adverse phase, they can depend on historical data to plan different business outcomes. Also, with the right audit management software, data science can prove to be more impactful in imparting business resilience.
3. Enhancing Data security and protection
The business world during covid has witnessed many cyber security issues and data protection concerns. This was due to the vulnerability of data that came along with the shift to virtual/ remote working situations. Furthermore, the growing use of cloud computing entails the tracking of technical components related to maintenance and recovery. AI and data science-powered cybersecurity applications support the detection of points of non-compliance and vulnerabilities with VPNs. Programmers can improve their tactics and sharpen their expertise by adopting data science to produce more effective interventions that can effectively mitigate cyber threats. Companies will be able to reduce cyber-attacks and enhance cyber-alerting strategies for better combating cyber threats because of data science being applied to cybersecurity, even in remote-working scenarios.
4. Improvising the use of AI and machine learning to leverage data for emerging trends
AI-based solutions help companies take advantage of insights on how they can best meet changing consumer demands in various areas and optimise supply chain management to reduce disruptions. In addition, AI chatbots have become increasingly popular to answer customer questions and scale the solution externally. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are helping us better comprehend and respond to the COVID-19 situation. Machine learning allows computers to mimic human intellect and assimilate enormous amounts of data to uncover patterns and insights swiftly. Surveys imply that pre-COVID projections for chatbot sales will be fifty times higher.
5. Utilising available resources to enhance productivity
While contingency planning is one of the most effective ways to mitigate unfortunate incidents from interrupting business, data science can assist businesses in making the most of the existing scenario. Setting up a strong analytics approach can aid in navigating important business equations and acquiring interesting new insights about the existing performance of the business. They can aid in determining how particular changes affect business outcomes. Data can help with resource allocation, allowing for more responsive and significant impacts in the long term. Businesses have already proven resilient by making the most use of data in enhancing productivity with careful and wise use of existing resources.
Data science has of course proven to be of excellent value during the pandemic-stricken business scenario by strengthening organisational stabilisation, innovating new processes and tactics as well as forecasting what will be/ what can be next. The establishment of new workflows and shifts in communication channels are also factors that came along. Data science, if used with the desire for business continuity clubbed with innovation, has a promising future, and will continue to have a lot of applications and advantages.
About the Author:
Akhila Nasneem is a young aspiring brand communications and digital marketing enthusiast. She enjoys writing blogs and promoting brands, and her favorite topics include GRC Software, Risk Management, Digital Marketing, and Artificial Intelligence, among others. Her other hobbies are creating artwork and befriending movies.
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