Webinar: The 5K Strategy + Digital Signatures – A Shield to Protect Businesses During and After the Pandemic 

With the desire to share practical experiences and advice on building and optimizing remote business operation processes, while also providing direction on self-defense solutions for businesses post-pandemic, the webinar “5K Strategy + Digital Signature – A Shield to Protect Businesses During and After the Pandemic” was held on the morning of September 18th.

The fourth strong outbreak of Covid-19 has made it more difficult for businesses to manage. Although many businesses have their own solutions, they may not be effective during this period. As the market gradually reopens, our goal is to normalize operations after the pandemic, which is a key focus of today’s event.

The event, with the message “A Shield to Protect Businesses During and After the Pandemic” as its main theme, focused on sharing three topics: The value of the 5K Strategy during and after the pandemic; Sharing practical experiences and advice on building and optimizing remote business operation processes through specific case studies; and Providing direction on the 5K Business + Digital Signature solution from 1Office.

Accompanying the program were two speakers, both of whom are leaders and business management consultants with many years of experience: Mr. Le Viet Thang – CEO and Founder of 1Office, and Mr. Pham Van Luong – Chairman of the Board of Kisato Architecture JSC. The special role of connecting the two speakers with the business guests was played by Ms. Nguyen Huyen Chau, CEO & Founder of the HUYEN CHAU NGUYEN fashion brand – a former MC at VTV24.

The Current Situation for Vietnamese Businesses

Currently, over 84% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) out of the total number of Vietnamese businesses have suffered heavy losses due to the Covid-19 pandemic in the first 8 months of 2021. Among them, up to 14% of businesses experienced disruptions in their raw material supply chains, 40% lacked business capital, and 52% had to reduce staff to ensure survival. Accordingly, about 85,000 businesses had to withdraw from the market under force majeure conditions. These are indeed very sad figures for a developing economy like Vietnam, which has had to retreat under the impact of the “Covid-19 storm.”

Even businesses that are currently considered more “fortunate” face many obstacles due to social distancing when working and managing remotely. Prolonged distancing causes everything to stretch, such as imbalanced work morale, broken processes, and a decline in connectivity and contract signing with customers. Many businesses choose to hibernate or operate in a semi-conscious state, not knowing how long to hibernate or when to wake up, or when they do wake up, they have to grapple with a series of other problems regarding new personnel, supply, customers, etc. These are the very concerns that speaker Le Viet Thang – CEO of 1Office – has always had when meeting and interacting with his community of 3,500 customers throughout the pandemic.

Optimizing Remote Business Operations with the 5K Criteria

Sharing at the webinar, Mr. Le Viet Thang said: “During the two months of social distancing, 1Office’s revenue decreased by 30% because our customers were affected, which in turn affected us. In addition, many customers who needed to digitally transform were not really willing to invest the costs, making it very difficult to implement survival strategies for their businesses. The pandemic creates an uncertain future, and no matter how optimistic we are, we don’t know whether to move forward or backward, whether to lay off employees or keep them. The fourth wave of Covid-19 is the uncertainty that creates a sense of helplessness for businesses, causing leaders to let go and feel powerless, like pulling the plug on a patient (the business) who is still struggling and then dies completely.”

Mr. Thang also shared a real-life story he experienced with a customer during the pandemic: “On a Friday at the end of August, a CEO was preparing to urgently sign a contract with a customer, but due to social distancing, it couldn’t be done. Therefore, this CEO had to use his own money to buy a Digital Signature integrated on 1Office so that the contract signing would not be interrupted.” This is an example of how determined a leader was to protect their business’s survival with business activities in these difficult times.

Therefore, Mr. Thang’s advice to the entire business community is the need to establish a “digital shield,” a solution that is both new and powerful for businesses to operate normally after the pandemic. Speaker Le Viet Thang brought the 5K story, which is also the main message of this event for businesses, as follows:

No Distance: The problem here is how to bring the distance down to zero when working remotely, which means shortening all distances between leaders and employees, and among employees themselves. You don’t need to meet in person to assign tasks, but you must have a tool to assign tasks to employees.

No Interruption: This means that all traditional business operation processes must be replicated in the digital environment without causing any interruption or change. There are tasks that required face-to-face meetings before social distancing, such as getting signatures or approvals from leaders, or payment approvals from accountants. You can’t wait for your boss to return from a long business trip or for social distancing to end to complete all administrative procedures. If you had known how to use a digital signature earlier, you could have solved all these problems.

No Decrease in Performance: If in peacetime the goal is to increase performance, in wartime it is to not decrease performance. Whether increasing or decreasing, the first principle is to be able to measure it. To measure, you need checking tools: for the quantity and quality of processes, tasks, projects, timekeeping, etc.

No Waste: In peacetime, businesses might be generous with bonus policies or costs for office space, personnel, benefits, etc. In wartime, we must save every penny on time and office supply costs. The no-waste criterion must be ensured from the smallest expenses, such as printing, paper-based approvals, meetings, leave requests, etc.

No Forgetting: This means you must not miss anyone, whether it’s your employees or your customers. Two long months of social distancing have led to prolonged mental exhaustion for employees, so you need a tool that serves as an internal communication channel to connect everyone, encourage interaction, and active exchange to create a united digital space. Secondly, do not forget customers. Instead of chatting on social media, we can gather them into one channel to communicate with them. 1Office itself has applied SLA for employees with the ticket feature – for responding to and caring for customers. Accordingly, within a maximum of 2 minutes after a customer asks a question, a support staff member will send the first reply.

Corresponding to the 5K criteria shared by Mr. Le Viet Thang, Mr. Pham Van Luong, Chairman of the Board of Kisato Architecture JSC, also shared his company’s smart business operation methods during the past period.

Mr. Luong stated:

“Kisato’s strategy is to approach customers 100% from online sources. To acquire such a customer base, the company had to focus entirely on online communication channels like YouTube, Fanpage, telesales, etc. However, these work processes require managers to measure how many customers call telesales, the success rate of customer conversion, how they are cared for, and how employees perform at each stage. I looked for many different solutions, and it wasn’t until I found 1Office that I realized all problems could be solved more easily on a single platform, without the complexity of using many different software.

Before 1Office, all of Kisato’s processes had to be done manually, managed separately through social chat software, which made it easy to lose data and information. But with 1Office, we map out the lifecycle of a task and just need to follow that diagram. This ensures that the stages are seamless and not interrupted in any situation.

Furthermore, as a company specializing in construction design and execution, Kisato’s workforce is diverse, including office staff, on-site staff, and staff at various locations. This posed challenges in recruitment, timekeeping, and centralized work management. Kisato has fully utilized the 1Office software by integrating GPS timekeeping for on-site employees. Next is the matter of requests. In a month, there are many different requests such as sick leave, overtime, shift changes, sudden personal matters, etc. Kisato has also implemented a request approval process right on 1Office. Thus, when a manager receives a request, they just need to approve it, and the work time will be updated directly in the employee’s timesheet.

In addition, features like customer care and comprehensive reporting are all integrated into the 1Office software. All operational tasks of each individual and department are fully recorded and stored on the platform, so we just need to search and evaluate them.”

Direction for the 5K + Digital Signature Business Solution

Through the sharing of the two speakers, both CEOs of large enterprises in Vietnam, it is clear that we need a common digital solution for all business operations as well as a smart operating method to ensure smoothness, no interruptions, and good performance during and after this pandemic.

In particular, in addition to the 5K standard, Mr. Le Viet Thang also proposed adding the Digital Signature solution. This is likened to a “vaccine” for businesses to complete their “immune system,” helping them to apply it in any stage or during any fluctuation. Digital signatures bring three main benefits to businesses: first, saving on office supply costs; second, saving time; and third, easy storage and retrieval.

In reality, many businesses currently use standalone e-contract software for electronic signing. However, it only allows storage on that software and not in the customer’s file, making it more difficult to search for later. 1Office, on the other hand, allows digital signatures to be embedded in the software, weaving into every customer work management task: it can be used to sign on HR records, on project processes, on commercial contracts, etc.

Mr. Le Viet Thang shared: “1Office provides software integrated with Digital Signature to make it more convenient for businesses in all business and operational activities. It no longer needs to be stored on a USB; with just a mobile phone or computer, you can approve processes, requests, or sales contracts from anywhere. A business digital signature is equivalent to a company seal. This means that with a digital signature, a physical seal is no longer needed, which is convenient for management and working anytime, anywhere.”.

The event “5K Strategy + Digital Signature – A Shield to Protect Businesses During and After the Pandemic” was a great success with the participation of over 300 guests, including CEOs and leaders from businesses across the country. Hopefully, the content shared by the speakers at this event has provided useful value for managers in optimizing processes and finding a powerful solution to protect their businesses from all socio-economic impacts.

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