The recent COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be one of the most transformational events of the modern era. Its impacts were felt in every aspect of everyday life worldwide – in their own way, every nation was hit hard. Some argue the pandemic is not over; we are simply in a new phase.
The transportation industry was hit particularly hard for a number of reasons. Most facilities and providers relied on legacy systems and processes with manual, staff-intensive, transactional customer interactions. Contracts supporting services were based on high-volume, pre-pandemic daily averages with no opportunity to scale when demand evaporated. Once limited travel began, businesses needed non-contact, limited-interaction processes, automated communication of health status, and service costs based on actual demand.
The net of these experiences for businesses created obvious new digital transformation priorities: scalability, serviceoriented contracts, automation to absorb change in business imperatives, more robust analytics driven by real-time, relevant data, and an omni-channel ability to dynamically interact with customers.