Sri Lankan authorities implement a strategic lock-down to curb covid-19 infection rates. (source: economynext, AFP)
During the recent Covid-19 pandemic that has engulfed the world, it was no different in Sri Lanka. Many organizations and businesses were brought to a near standstill. Employees were unable to travel to work and the lack of training and work from home policies further strained organizations’ efforts to bring back a sense of normalcy to operations.
Nearly all businesses faced an unprecedented dilemma – how to do business without meeting people or leaving their place of shelter. While many businessmen, senior professionals and entrepreneurs struggled to get used to the idea of remote business management, a few companies noticeably stayed ahead of the rest – by parallelly running on digital platforms and facilitating seamless and secure transactions.
While a number of organizations managed to strategically overcome the health crisis, a few businesses caught our attention – they successfully managed to stay ahead of the problem and instead of reacting to a situation, they proactively overcame the crisis to their advantage.
PickMe –
PickMe is Sri Lanka’s homegrown hero in the logistics based gig-economy. PickMe was one of the first successful respondents to the crisis. Having negotiated a strategic collaboration with the Government-owned chain of supermarkets and gas distributors, namely Sathosa and LitroGas – and enabling curfew passes for its fleet of delivery riders, PickMe was able to slingshot its way into the hearts and minds of its target market. While its competitors were struggling to make head or tail of the situation, PickMe proved its resilience in the face of a pandemic-induced lockdown. To make matters even more impressive, PickMe was able to work with local banks to help its customers gain access to liquid cash via its trusted delivery network.
NDB NEOS –
Nations Development Bank is one of the newer and innovative financial institutions in the country. And thus it behaves as such. The staff are extremely friendly and their products are effectively designed to help its customers achieve prosperity in partnership. NDB Bank recently launched its own digital banking app. Whilst it is important to acknowledge that the app itself was made available long before the term Covid-19 had been coined, the proactiveness of the establishment itself is worth appreciating. The NDB NEOS app is powerful and robust enough to help users access funds, transfer funds and make payments to authorized merchants. At a time where ‘shelter in place’ was the rule of the land, the NDB NEOS app allowed its users and customers to easily transfer money to relatives and friends, manage funds and all in all, bring about relative peace of mind during an indefinite lockdown.
Dialog AXIATA –
Voice, SMS and Data – Dialog Axiata is the Island’s leading Telecommunications Service Provider. Having already heavily invested in the business of remote field communications, Dialog was able to add further value to its customers by enabling individuals and businesses to stay online, communicate with loved ones and stave off isolation induced boredom with exciting data packages. Dialog also offered a number of free packages to help its customers stay connected and ensure that no one is completely isolated. Dialog managed to keep its subscriber base activated throughout the lockdown period albeit most of its staff had to work from home; and ensure that the telecommunications juggernaut continued to roll despite the real-world struggle to mobilize and ensure safety of its staff.
Is your organization thinking of investing in digital infrastructure to protect against a second wave of Covid-19 towards the latter part of 2020? Does your team require a digital service that can enable it to operate remotely? Does your business need to transform its key business processes to a digital medium and reap the benefits? Talk to us now – we are experienced in the field of transforming analogous operations to data rich digital solutions.
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