2020 – Dark Clouds in the Sky or Light at the End of the Tunnel

The world is changing faster and faster – a headline which you might have already read a dozen of times, yet it is true. It is even more true for the business world. There we experience one of the fastest moving areas of mankind. As a consequence thereof, people need to adapt their way of conducting their work.

What counts for the business world in general also counts for the specific sector of waste management. Whereas customer demand for more flexibility and information transparency is still skyrocketing, fast changing legal requirements tend to put spanner in the works causing rigidity in terms of business process execution time and increased complexity. Moreover, legal requirements vary geographically. Thus, companies must ensure end-to-end reliability when it comes to conducting business. Also worth to be mentioned is the current political shift towards counteracting climate change and increasing business sustainability.

Yet those external circumstances already draw a picture of tension, there is more to be taken into account. In the interest of full disclosure, the global focus on closing the circle of the circular economy and the constantly increasing demand for reintroduction of secondary raw material also adds fuel to the fire when it comes to maintaining economic success for waste management companies.

Reading the paragraphs above might bring up dark clouds in the skies of business executives. Luckily, however, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Though some consider the term of digitalization as being a double-edged sword, the positive aspects of sustainably implementing digital systems into business process outweigh its threats; and the best is yet to come: In order to tackle the above mentioned challenges, a centralized platform can be seen as a technological foundation in order to maintain the required flexibility, pace and consequently success. Though one standalone system itself never represents a savior, a platform with systems (apps) attached to it might get pretty close:

First, you can easily integrate it into the company’s existing digital landscape (e.g. Microsoft Office 365). A survey, conducted in 2001 by the American Psychological Association points out a loss of 40 per cent of worker’s productivity time when switching tasks. The possibility of a seamless integration of your platform makes switches between every-day business applications unnecessary and therefore optimizes resource allocation.

Next, using such a platform makes you, say, “fit for future”. What is meant by that is the fact that you can easily attach further apps. A field example for such a use case is the implementation of a maintenance software if your company also operates a large truck fleet which might not be a core expertise of waste management industry but needs to be done anyways.

Besides, mobile use of IT-systems has seen an undergo from a buzzword to an established concept of the past years. Though third-party apps can also be integrated in the platform, mobile apps for drivers based on the platform toolbox sometimes turn out to perform even better.

Not to be forgotten is the decision-making process. As trust is the precondition for making decisions, platforms in combination with apps enable the generation of a MVP and its testing; at lowest costs and in a short time frame, even within the decision period avoiding sunk costs of licenses due to subscription model. Based on MVP and agile methodology, the platform can grow step by step towards the current demands, and constantly adopt to business needs.

There are many more advantages of using a platform, some might be going beyond the scope of this article. If you want to face the challenges of 2020 together with us, our experts are glad to present all of the features and functions.