When the pandemic hit, organisations across the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) were forced to rethink their business continuity plans. If they didn’t already have a remote working plan in place, or were operating with a dispersed team, then the scramble was on. In the MENA region, more than half of working professionals believe that remote working will increase after the pandemic. In the GCC, 71 percent of workers think that technology provides more opportunities than risks as a result of accelerated digital transformation during the pandemic.
Lessons of the past
In an ever-changing world, with higher chances of cyber security risks, organisations are now seeing the importance of safeguarding business continuity by putting long-term solutions in place. The risk of relying on technology that has been adopted too rapidly – which happened out of necessity last year – could be dangerous as it may lack the security, scalability and features that are essential for successful and sustainable business collaboration. Moving on from these temporary fixes should become a priority for the year ahead, before behaviours become embedded into a company’s culture, making it harder to change. Lessons from the hazards of shadow IT still haunt some organisations who remain unable to re-educate employees to use official file sharing applications rather than unregulated alternatives such as personal email, USB drives or cloud-storage applications.
The acceleration towards digital transformation brought about by the pandemic is good news, but for many businesses, there are still a lot of challenges. According to ‘The state of digitalisation in GCC businesses’ report by Strategy&, only 37 percent of businesses have a digital strategy in place while only 3 percent are at an advanced stage in their digital transformation. Add to this the fact that IT infrastructures face unique security implications due to the widespread adoption of remote working and it is understandable that there is hesitation and false starts.
Security first
As economies continue to open up and the return to normality accelerates, many businesses will continue to offer employees a hybrid-working model, with some days in the office and some at home. This means the need to make remote networks secure is here to stay and must be addressed for the safety of employees and businesses. Office-based corporate networks provide security protections not available at home or in public spaces and without these, businesses are far more vulnerable to cyber-attacks, especially if personal devices are being used. In addition, it can take longer to detect an attack when employees are not plugged-in to the office network and the longer the delay, the more damage can be done.
Many organisations not yet operating with large numbers of remote staff have therefore looked to replicate the security of their managed networks. It is for this reason we’ve seen a growth in public cloud services spending in Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) – up by 27.3 percent in 2022 according to IDC’s prediction. Cyber security is a key part of cloud-led digital transformation – enabling employees to work together easily and safely to message, call, meet and collaborate without delays from any location.
Firm foundations
After the last 18 months, many companies may feel that major tech projects are out of reach. This doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try to push ahead with digital transformation to gain competitive advantage; however, transformation doesn’t need to come from drastic change, one positive first step could be to just refocus on the foundations, identifying simple changes that can have a big impact. For many businesses, image capture technology is a great place to start when refreshing digital transformation strategies.
By capturing and digitising information on documents, business cards, receipts or paper, a scanner can be the first step in using data to drive positive business outcomes. Digital information can be quickly analysed and actioned upon much more quickly than if it’s stored physically. From a security perspective as well, removing access to physical documents and information in favour of storing it in a secure digital suppository, the risk of secured information ending up in the wrong hands can be reduced. With more people working from home as well, capturing documents and storing them securely digitally can ensure all employees in an organisation can gain access to the information they need to do their job, wherever their office happens to be.
The true value of this approach to businesses is once data is scanned and digitally captured, employees can repurpose the information in whichever way works best for them and their business – enabling a great first step into the digital transformation journey.
