As the global economy continues to recover from the pandemic, the pace of digital transformation for businesses has significantly accelerated. Whilst the commercial sector tends to be ahead of the trend, social profit organisations (SPOs) should also keep abreast of their digital transformation to catch up with the progress. A study showed that 74% of the SPOs recognise the need for digital transformation, but only 12% of them are equipped with adequate digital skills.
Shortage of designated experts has always been a deep-rooted challenge in the social welfare sector. In today’s digital era, many SPOs still operate heavily manually in most of their operations, making it inflexible for changes – resulting in inefficiency: high workload and lots of administrative work. SPOs dedicate a rich portion of their budgets on serving clients, hence it is difficult to fund the recruitment of professionals with non-servicing-driven skillsets, and viciously, shifting the huge workload onto social workers. In reality, many social workers are multi-taskers: they have to serve at the front line, and then handle backend work such as personnel, finance, and administration. Naturally, they are overwhelmed with a heavy workload.
To break the deadlock, SPOs must promote digital transformation. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system is one of the digital transformation solutions that can immensely simplify administrative steps and reduces the complexity of various procedures. In Hong Kong, we have helped large SPOs to have successfully streamlined their workflows, reduced human resources misallocation, and minimised the time and cost of physical document storage, by adapting customised ERP solutions to integrate different internal systems. This allows social workers to focus their efforts on serving their clients. Digital transformation should not only be a top priority for commercial organisations but also for SPOs with practical needs of utilising technology in their operations to enhance efficiency.
Interested in learning more about how to start your digital transformation journey? We have been in close communication with the SPOs, organising workshops from time to time to share our technology expertise and provide free professional consultations to solve digital problems for them. If you are looking for a digital transformation partner, please don’t hesitate to contact us for further information or to schedule a consultation.
(Reference: Nonprofit Trends Report published by a leading cloud CRM platform in October 2022)
This article was published in Headline Daily【Grow with Breakthrough】column
