Amidst the pandemic, with cities under lockdown, people practising social distancing and professionals working from home, technology has become an essential part of our daily lives. It’s also helping accelerate the development and commercialization of several emerging technologies
Technology has always been there in the forefront and now the importance for the same is being felt even more strongly. With the current situation, it’s critical that one has the capability in going digital and being able to engage with the customers and prospects. In long term there will definitely be a huge surge in the way the businesses, specifically in India will look at technology. Already many technologies have transitioned to ‘Must Haves’ and post lock down, we might see many technologies becoming a habit.
Rajeeb Dash, Head – Sales & Marketing, S D Corp, Shapoorji Group is of the view that with the current Work From Home (WFH) scenario , most of the brands would invest much more in technology. “Digital is going to be the way of life and add to that, it’s getting contact less so brands needs to deliver the experience being invisible. That’s the challenge one needs to map for the future. It’s going to b an interesting opportunity overall as digital will give more reach at lesser cost and more importantly it enhances the engagement process with the usage of artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. The top technologies that will help in organizations business growth are going to be, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for progressive profiling of the customers & prospects, Data Mining and Digital immersiveness to give the brand experience to the customers.”
TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS FOR CONSTRUCTION AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECTORS The construction industry is one among the worst-hit sectors by the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering the gravity of the current crisis and its business impact, companies are strategizing their business continuity strategies and integrating custom-configured applications. To mitigate the lockdown impact, (IoT) is enabling the top management to receive real time alerts from the construction sites to eliminate losses owing to any untoward incident at construction sites. In addition, with employees including confined to their homes, an employee self-service portal can help ensure real-time updates to the workforce. Likewise, Cloud-based collaboration tools are helping seamless flow of information across teams working from different locations. And document management solutions have evolved from being mere digital repositories to business enhancement tools and have emerged as pivotal solutions for business continuity and agility for construction enterprises. As per Anurag Singhvi, Managing Director, Xanadu Realty, the following are the break down for the different points where technology is aiding Real Estate players and its customers. Digital led sourcing – With people at home and digital consumption increase many-fold for consumers, it is imperative and but natural to utilize the social media platforms, search engines, affiliations and other digital sources to capture customers’ imagination. In many ways, today interest based digital leads are the only source of possible qualified business, especially when customers are not too positive towards the concept of cold calls. Social media analytics tools are helping organizations reach many customers at lesser costs, especially when price wars on these platforms have reduced and there is a natural flow of impressions, which is usually quite cut-throat. One important thing here is that this concept of work from home, or the idea of remote working plus digital consumption will become a new norm for quite a bit of time and under these circumstances, understanding the consumer behaviour of information consumption – like time, communication type, age, and many more and interplay among them = can help build robust strategies in the future. Technology led content development and the Virtual reality of realty –If we really think about it, the whole idea of information dissemination to customers on a remote platform is as simple as having a conversation on a phone. And hence, using smart tech that simplifies the communication for customers are the main tools of the business, which are also being used today – drone shoots and smart map animations to understand the location, virtual tour of your development and show residences, tools to design your home upon bareshell homes, 3D representation of your layouts, EMI calculators and tools to simplify the payments for customers, tools to select your choice inventory basis real views and vastu, and much more can be done remotely without physical presence. How is your team reacting – while one always thinks about the end consumers, we usually forget about our first customers in the complete scheme of things – our front line team who will have to use the many platforms of reaching out to customers (Zoom, Hangout, Webinarjam) and the product representation in the form of digital content. In this scenario, how are we training our teams, monitoring their input and information dissemination to the customers becomes very important. Training of these tools and finally bringing large teams together are the main challenges of this Pandemic more than anything – and Real Estate or otherwise, how we are making sure that throughput of our people is high in these times are going to be a critical aspect of business growth. TECH TRANSFORMATIONS IN REAL ESTATE Once the pandemic is over, it’s likely that some element of social distancing will remain. As people around the world have been forced to work from home, many have got used to online services to connect, it has the potential to change the way we engage in real estate design, and use buildings in the future. Till now, it was not possible to purchase property without physical engagement of some sort, but regulators may see advantages for using online tools – for example allowing documents to be signed electronically. This will speed up the process of buying and selling real estate, and has the power to disrupt, displace and eliminate traditional service providers in the transaction life-cycle. Moreover, it seems people will continue communicate more than ever through virtual reality platforms rather than in person. Virtual reality will be used increasingly to maintain both psychological and physical well-being. Govind Rai, Co-Founder, Insomniacs feels that going forward automation will be preferred at every touch point. “Companies engaging in tech developments will benefit the most in current scenario and post it. We got to understand with time in hand and the daily tight schedules, business leaders across the world will rely on technology. Wherever savings and budget cuts are possible business leaders will have to make those decisions. And while that happens, technology will be the only friend which will help them automate processes, cut down delays. They will revisit all their decisions with regards to their operations and think about performance at higher efficiencies at lower costs. Like now, the uncertain times can strike any time and the one who is prepared for the next such scenario making their business crisis-proof will triumph.” Read the Full Story
