Would you like to start a conversation with other industry leaders to brainstorm a challenge or to just know more on a particular topic?
Engage in online discussions with your Peers
Start Now
For several organizations across the globe, digitalization of business processes is a long-standing ‘way of life’ to ensure seamless service delivery and business continuity in good times and in challenging ones. Transformational digitalization strategies have been implemented the world over to guarantee that when the going gets tough, the tough get going digitally!
Strength & Agility
VDP Global Services is an HR outsourcing company. Since 2010, VDP Global has been partnering with organizations to streamline their HR services and achieve their vision of an efficient and trusted Human Resource function. Operating through a centralized setup, it has grown from being an in-house HR expertise centre into an HR outsourcing organization. With an ever-growing expertise centre and associate network that caters to various HR functions across industries and geographies through IT enabled services, VDP Global is now a trusted partner of several clients.
With the impact of COVID-19 and the consequent onset of corporate executives working from home, now more than ever, the tenacity behind an organization's digitalization strategies and applied solutions are being tested. To all business operations, be it external or internal, providing undisrupted services is a top-priority – almost a mandated necessity. However, proficient, on-time, top-quality and continuous service delivery in circumstances where an organization's biggest strength, its people, work remotely, stands as true testament to the agility and robustness of the technology behind its digital framework. Thanks to its keen foresight and prevailing digital framework already in play, VDP Global Services was quick to ramp-up and equip its remote working systems several weeks prior to the national lockdown in India and, subsequently, in countries across the world. As of today, the company’s entire business model functions digitally with complete remote access and virtually zero impact on its service delivery. To VDP Global Services, the realities of the current global situation stand as a glaring reminder of the critical need for digitalization of key systems. It is a validation of VDP Global Services’ business strategy, which is intuitively designed to keep-up with the present and keenly focused in the right direction for the future.
Technology is the Master Mover
VDP Global Services has been effectively using its robust online platform supported by ‘ServiceNow Technology’, a service desk tool that is GDPR compliant and secure as per various security standards in the world, to swiftly manage all transactions and documentation, and to keep the business units connected with every customer. Furthermore, the end-to-end digitization of essentials such as payroll mechanisms and employee support services ensure delivery within defined SLAs.
This keeps the employee moral up in times of uncertainty – something any HR professional will concede is vital to ensuring the sustained delivery of superior services.
One must add that VDP Global Services’ systems, work culture and interactions are at the fore-front of digitalization. However, the company does frequently face challenges with clients, partners or sub-contractors who are not fully equipped with online delivery models and still have some dependency on manual in-office processing or face-to-face interactions. Additionally, several government bodies are currently functioning at less than half their staff strength, which is impacting services related to pensions and statutory insurance, among others. Situations like this act as prudent reminders that for every giant leap taken to digitalize processes, organizations must remain cognizant to the true environment in which they operate and be nimble enough to cater to differentiating needs.
Having said this, it has been observed in the market that several entities that preferred a combination of face-to-face interactions and servicing are now accepting new ways of service delivery and are working towards digitalization to keep-up with the changing times.
In actuality, due to limitations faced with conducting face-to-face discussions or physical participation in engagement, people are overcoming them with higher usage of VC features and conducting activities which involve shooting videos or taking pictures and updating on shared spaces. Such limitations continue to drive greater utilization of existing digital options while accelerating the rollout of new ones. There is no room for complacency in the digitalization world.
It is only wise to continue to ensure the organization's ‘fluency in digitalization’, the true global language of the world. There is no doubt that it is prudent to keep the corporate digital expansion one step ahead of the curve and well-equipped, to effortlessly take on challenges as they come.
The BCP is now BAU
A few weeks before the lockdown began, VDP implemented its newly redesigned business continuity plan using its cloud-based service delivery interface in a two-phase ramp-up called ‘InTouch’. The system is a remarkable application which not only handles tickets raised by users/ customers but can also handle tasks which enable work to be done remotely, without the need of an office entirely. During the lockdown, this process kicked in and the organization, its staff, users, customers, vendors and management, continue to work seamlessly without a break in services or communication, thus ensuring that business is ‘as usual’ despite a worldwide lockdown.
Benefits of ‘InTouch’ Application
The system enables users and customers to connect with VDP for services that they want, without relying on email, which they may not be able to access during the lockdown, all over the world.
Customers/ users can chat with a chatbot or a live agent through the system in a secured environment, making the system live with real human interactions.
Staff of VDP can work on the system from any location, even without the laptops issued by the company. They can use their personal computers since all their documents and communication is secure on the cloud-based system itself. There is no need for a VPN – saving additional expenditure and need for IT support.
The monitoring of work is through a dashboard and automated as well, as customised reports ensure that productivity is always high and tracked. In fact, the productivity during this period increased and the response time decreased, making it a better model to work in.
The staff are able to balance their personal and professional lives better, since they do not have to spend additional time traveling to office. Being in their own environment, they are more comfortable and their work/ off time has been given adequate focus. They feel healthy and their stress levels are lower during the phase of working from home and by being able to not only keep their jobs, but also flourish.
In Summary
The pandemic and the subsequent lockdown have brought to the fore our ultimate dependency on technology. At the end of the day we have come to realize that we have no control over the vagaries
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kavita is the currently the head of VDP Global Services. She is the head of the business strategy, operations, technology development as well the growth of the company. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and has a master’s degree in Human Resources from the University of Mumbai. She has also attended Management Program from IIM Ahmedabad.
Kavita started her career in 1998 and has a total of 22 years’ experience in the industry. She joined the Kuoni Group in 2007 and continues to be with the company in its newest form at VDP Global Services, making it more than 13 years with the company. During her career, Kavita has played an active part in the development of Human Resource as a field. She has implemented robust compensation and benefits mechanisms that are considered benchmarks. She is an avid learner and has a keen eye for technology. She is considered a futuristic leader – with a passion for continuous development.