Business Strategy During the Recession: Leverage Automation to Do More With Less

Heading into Q4 of 2022, layoff announcements hit our news feeds daily. As of September 2022, more than 52,000 workers in the tech industry alone have faced job cuts. Those who remain after the layoffs face another challenge: Facilitate growth in a world where “inflation” and “recession” are buzzwords in every conversation.

Regardless of experts debating whether or not “recession” is the correct term, the state of the world right now is clear: Businesses are bracing for cost-cutting measures. According to a recent survey by PwC, approximately 50% of businesses expect to cut their workforce in the next six months to a year.

We won’t see budget increases or clearance to hire new team members any time soon. Instead, we have to learn to do more with less. In this article, you’ll learn about business strategy during the recession and how to leverage technology to reduce costs and fuel growth.

How Businesses Are Bracing for the Recession
Weirdly enough, companies known for embracing and promoting change have mainly used traditional cost-cutting strategies in 2022.

Increased Credit Loss Provisions
Banks and financial companies are reacting ahead of looming recession calls, bracing for what they see as a “mild recession with a soft landing”. This means, according to S&P Global Marketing Intelligence, that most large U.S. banks boosted their provisions for credit losses in the fourth quarter of 2022 amid mounting recession fears and persisting loan growth. This differs greatly with the fourth quarter of 2021, when a great majority of banks booked negative provisions due to a strong economy and near-pristine credit quality.

Job Cuts
After a banner year for tech, layoffs are here. Job cuts have increased exponentially. Tech companies as colossal as Netflix and Meta have taken part in the trend, as well as Robinhood, Glossier, Better, Stripe, Lyft, and more. Some organizations blame the COVID-19 pandemic for drastic layoffs, while others attribute them to over hiring during periods of rapid growth.

Even eCommerce giant Amazon is engaging in belt-tightening, shutting down projects, and freezing corporate hiring.

Innovation Emerges from the Darkness
During a year that featured mass layoffs, crashing stock prices and extensive crypto scandals, ChatGPT emerged as a major step forward in AI innovation. The application, which quickly surpassed one million users, can carry multiple conversations at once, write software code and answer questions – signaling a new phase in natural language processing using AI.

In fact, according to tech industry data firm Pitchbook, early-stage investors and software developers have moved from crypto based to generative AI projects across the board. Many have even cited ChatGPT as a search disruptor, potentially putting Google’s iron grip on the search market at risk. Whatever the future holds, ChatGPT shows that even as economic conditions get tough, innovation is sometimes unstoppable, even without major investment costs.

Shifting Business Strategy
Companies that previously thrived in the brick-and-mortar space have had to shift their focus to online operations to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s not just retail-focused businesses that were directly affected; many companies have had to adjust their concentration from in-person sales and interaction to online and digital marketing.

Which Under-Adopted Cost-Saving Measure to Embrace
While the above methods are commonly implemented and can be effective, under-adopted cost-saving strategies may be the key to coming out on top amid rough economic times.

One of the most prevalent and effective solutions is automation or embracing advanced technology over the hard cost of labor.

Moving into an AI-Driven World
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman recently offered advice to business leaders about the prevalence of AI in our modern world. Hoffman said, “You are sacrificing the future if you opt-out of AI completely.”

While AI may not have a place in every department in your organization, doing your homework and knowing when to use it is critical to business strategy during a recession.

In the world of language translation, machine translation solutions combining AI with MT technology are changing the game for organizations around the globe. SYSTRAN has helped a number of banking and finance companies with this, as just a single example.

Rather than paying numerous salaries of in-house translators to keep up with the demand for translation within your organization, you can invest in advanced technology to do the work for you—and at a greater volume and faster speed than even the best translation teams can produce.

SYSTRAN’s neural machine translation software is a highly sophisticated example of a cost-saving system that can accurately translate your business’s documents, communication, and other critical components.

Solving Language Translation Issues Across Multiple Departments
All too often, several teams in a single organization have the same problem—but siloed communication and geographic separation prevent them from identifying their shared headaches.

Case in point: translation needs for teams as varied as legal, marketing, customer support, finance, research and development, and IT. The cost-effective solution to this problem will never be giving each team a separate translation budget, with each team choosing their preferred resources. Rather, a single robust MT engine accessible by every team universally solves the problem while providing the side perks of drastic cost reduction and increased productivity.

How SYSTRAN Helps Banks Cut Costs with Advanced Technology
Take SYSTRAN’s case study with Lombard Odier, for example. Lombard Odier is a global leader in wealth and asset management focused on providing solutions to private and institutional clients.

Lombard Odier partnered with SYSTRAN to elevate their communications workflow, seamlessly translate documents and emails, reduce confidential data leaks, and minimize translation costs. Before they implemented SYSTRAN, employees tended to use ad hoc translation applications, but the company’s IT security department quickly understood that this put their mission – to guarantee Lombard Odier data security – at risk.

By integrating into the communications workflow SYSTRAN provided Lombard Odier with an integration-friendly translation system that immediately increased productivity and cut translation costs dramatically. The solution proved to be such a success that the company immediately set about expanding it throughout the company with SYSTRAN-provided APIs.

Use NMT from SYSTRAN as a Cost-Saving Opportunity
Constructing a solid business strategy during the recession requires using tactics that your competitors aren’t adopting. Technology provides us with resources to reduce costs and fuel growth in an economic downturn.

For many enterprises, neural machine translation software can be the pathway toward achieving more with less. You can test the power of SYSTRAN’s NMT software for free today. It only takes a few seconds. Come and see what all the excitement is about.