COVID-19 Forcing Business Digital Transformation
In an article from the Enterprisers Project, Digital transformation is defined as “The integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers”. Digital transformation is also a cultural change within organizations that requires them to continually challenge their status quo, experiment and get comfortable with failure. This might mean walking away from established business processes that companies have followed for a long time in favor of relatively new practices that are being defined in the fly.
Digital Transformation has become the buzz term in the last couple of years with many companies raising it to the top of the agenda in strategic management planning meetings. Searching LinkedIn for Digital Transformation, you will find that that is has become a skill that people add to their resumes as well as an official title – it is not uncommon to come across the Head of Digital Transformation for a given company. But what does digital transformation really mean for your organization? It seems to mean different things for each company. The core elements might include migrating from traditional systems to hybrid clouds, modernizing financial and operational software, improving the customer experience using technology, and creating a more dynamic and flexible working environment. It might also mean the recognition of data as a strategic asset which is innovatively leveraged to build new business models and disruptive lines of business around it.
How has the COVID-19 Pandemic impacted this digital transformation?
Most businesses globally have been faced with the decision of either working from home or going out of business in the last couple of months, and most businesses out of necessity have adopted some of the elements that we would find in a digital transformation. Even though they had to rapidly migrate to the cloud and enable working from home options for their employees out of necessity, this constitutes a departure from business as usual with a significant step on the path to digital transformation.
Sadly, the below well-known internet meme holds a great deal of resemblance to the reality faced by many companies.
The situation caused by the pandemic has forced short-term adaptation but should be viewed as a step, or leap, towards digital transformation, offering more flexibility to customers and employees and potentially opening new revenue opportunities.
Now as the world starts to emerge from the first wave of COVID-19 people are talking about the ‘new normal’. What does this new normal mean for the IT infrastructure of a business? What does it mean for physical office spaces? What does it mean for the way we conduct business with our clients or business partners? Will strong company cultures suffer since we are not in the office anymore?
We are seeing significant shifts in the way we do business and with that comes completely different requirements. We are creating new business models, new products and services to fulfill different needs. We see existing companies altering their manufacturing facilities or producing different products to meet needs that have arisen from the pandemic. We are seeing breweries producing hand sanitizers, companies that make hockey helmets now manufacturing face shields for medical use, companies that make store fixtures make protective acrylic shields for retail. It seems that every business came up with a new webinar, newsletter or digital ad in an effort to stay connected and keep top of mind with consumers.
In the last 5 years, many businesses have taken small steps towards digital transformation usually lead by visionaries that had to fight their way through corporate resistance…. But it only took a couple of weeks for the world to turn upside down due to the pandemic and for businesses to realize that it was now or never.
Businesses are starting to realize that:
- Employees can reach a high level of efficiency and satisfaction by working from home.
- That a lean business with less overhead generated by carrying expensive physical locations and the associated overhead is more adaptable and able to fare better in times of economic pressure.
- That innovative new business models are possible, and that people are incredibly adaptable when faced with challenges.
- That technology was and is meant to be a facilitator that represents a substantial competitive advantage rather than a cost centre and not a deterrent to keep the business evolving.
- That the ability to be Agile and deliver something within two weeks is more important than delivering a perfect product/service to market after 6-9 months.
- That businesses can be Agile in their business processes even without a scrum master.
With that, my hopes for a new normal are that businesses imagine and embrace the efficiencies that this technological shift is bringing without fear of cultural demise – rather seeing this as an opportunity to innovate, adapt their business model, make technology work for them and build new cultures that are strong, productive, adaptive and grateful to be part of this great new opportunity. This may in effect became a watershed moment that poise the global economy for a new growth spurt based on new models that companies have devised, envisioned, or simply forced into due to a global pandemic unprecedented since the first Great War.
