The future of digitalization is now

How digitalisation prevented a business nightmare

On an October night in 2009, we watched our office at Pottelberg in Kortrijk go up in flames. What was really unthinkable had become reality: all our physical assets, including all paper documents, literally went up in smoke in a matter of hours. All that was left was the digital data, which was fortunately enough for us to continue being fully operational.

"After the fire, we didn't miss a single appointment and our support team didn't fail for a minute. Even our early Cloud customers were not impacted by this disaster, as their data was in the safe hands of our data center."

In short: if we didn't digitise by that time, the outcome would have been worse. Our Document Control for example was this intact. 

Future of digitalisation

This dramatic event determined our mind-set forever and armed us especially during the outbreak of covid-19. From one day to the next, no one went to the office anymore. All our employees had the necessary facilities and tools for their home office. Obviously, the fact that we had been partially teleworking before made the transition to full remote work easier.

We already had applications like Microsoft Teams and Slack. Now we are using them even more for online meetings, synchronous communication (chatting), and the exchange of information. Our accounting and phone services run in the cloud and are 100% virtual.

The value of Bizzmine for us is also priceless, even for many processes not related to quality. We can smoothly monitor our Sales: from planned and to-be-planned activities, telephones, and mails, to the follow-up of offers, lead generation, sales funnel... And we can also easily manage our HR data in Bizzmine: info on our employees, asset management, facility management, onboarding, off-boarding, annual appraisals...

"We have the perfect application for our quality and document management. And all R&D is fully integrated in Bizzmine: the coordination of the sprints and the follow-up of tickets that need to be developed, tested and validated."

The only thing that is standing still in our company is the printer. We try to work in a fully paperless environment, including inbound and outbound invoices. In fact, it is fortunate that for almost all of our customers, this is now the standard.

An agile QMS that grows with the organisation

Covid-19 turned into a tangible reality what had been coming for a long time. In 2020, many organisations suddenly had to accelerate their search for digital solutions, which resulted for us in a revenue growth of more than 25%. The digital future is wide open and we embrace this as a positive side effect of the whole Covid affair. We obviously all look forward to renewed social contact, but we will definitely not return to the office 5 days out of 5.

At the Quality Management level, it is no longer an option in the year 2021 to manage this analogously. Companies that still have a paper system for their QMS, want to get rid of it as soon as possible. They need a decent solution that is ready for the future, for the growth of the company, and the change of the specific needs. (Read also How agile QMS Software can grow with your organization)

The new mobile worker needs tools to work just as efficiently on any device, whether in or out of the office, at home, or somewhere on the go.

By Peter De Brabandere, CEO Founder of BizzMine