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The Worldwide Pandemic Digital Transformation:
Covid's Impact on Technology

 

   The Covid Pandemic was a technology tipping point of historic proportions, transforming businesses forever. It propelled organizations and leaders to rethink, re-envision, and re-strategize the way they do business:  Organizations have accelerated the digitization of their customer and supply chain interactions and their internal operations timelines to meet the needs of consumers, employees and students, as well as work-from-home and online educational challenges. To meet these challenges, industry leaders focused on the re-prioritization of technology and reallocation of funding to related projects because the digitization of businesses, government programs and services as well as education was required to keep pace with the new normal.  The focal point of how people do business has evolved into a predominately digital experience: both web and mobile applications updated and improved upon to meet the growing needs of a digitally based consumer, employee, community member, and student base.

   Digital adoption has taken a huge leap at both the organizational and industry levels. There is a rapid shift toward interacting with customers, employees, students, and other community members through digital channels.  Both the digitization of customer facing and core internal operations are needed to keep up with the new way we do business, interact with colleagues, inform and assist community members, provide services, and approach learning.  We learned this very quickly during the pandemic. 

The Trend and Hero During Covid

   The role of the Cloud Computing Environment (CCE) has emerged as the trend and hero during Covid. E-learning, E-commerce, entertainment, healthcare, government agencies, non-profits, have either introduced (electronically converted their services) and/or expanded their usage of CCE to do business and/continue their service/ offerings.  Many companies  are extremely dependent on cyberspace for their day to day activities. During Covid, the sophistication of technologies enabled more to be achieved easily online such as merchandise purchases, food delivery services, bill payments, bank transactions, education, medical consultations, purchasing of airplane tickets, sea and land transport, hotel reservations, customer and technical support, legal consultations, and access to community programs and services, etc.  While the competition between organizations has increased to engage, gain, retain, and reward their customer base, governments have expedited their digitization of their core programs and services, providing more informational tools online to replace in person interaction.

Meeting the New Challenges
   To stay relevant and competitive in this new “business" and economic environment requires new strategies, practices, and priorities.  More advanced technologies are critical in meeting these new challenges.  There has been a refocusing of offerings to attract and retain customers, as well as processes of rewarding loyalty to one brand encourage repeat users and consumers. For the public sector, increased importance has been given to providing more comprehensive digital access to government related services and programs, including but not limited to: economic/ unemployment assistance, supplemental nutrition assistance, healthcare services, department of motor vehicles, paying tickets, board of elections, transportation, the police department, the court system, education services, childcare services, and programs for people with disabilities, children, veterans, those involved in domestic violence, the elderly, as well as emergency management, environmental protection, consumer protection, and mental health services, etc.  With an increased demand, comes a different set of challenges: One, an increase workload on the system. Two, more technology integration. Three, more plentiful digitally enabled products, programs, and service offerings. Four, more online engagement. Five, a  fine-tuned and quality user experience (to keep pace with the competitive marketplace as well as the increased need for access to online government tools to assist community members).  
   The execution of successful responses to the crisis, require a wide range of technology capabilities: One, the use of more advanced technologies. Two, an improved speed and quality of the technology environment. Three, a greater responsiveness to consumer and user needs. Four, more integration of technologies. Five, more innovation to not only stand out in the competitive marketplace, but increase efficiency, productivity, increase revenue, save resources (people and money), as well automate processes which have been previously done manually and in person.

The New Normal

   The largest shifts during the Pandemic are most likely to stick post recovery.  The new business strategies, priorities, digital advancements, integrations, and innovations will become the “new” normal”.  Companies and leaders must evaluate long term goals, needs, and scalability when introducing new digital products to their user, consumer-base, and/or community members. For most, the need to work, communicate, and collaborate digitally, require investments in data security and an accelerated migration to the cloud.  Pre-crisis bottlenecks have been removed from virtual interactions, improving business impediments.

An Alignment Between Organi-zational and Digital Strategies

   The key factors to success include the alignment of organizational and digital strategies, coupled with strong leadership, to facilitate the digital transformation. The modernization of digital technology investments, if scalable, give organizations: One, a competitive advantage. Two, refocus  businesses around digital technologies. Three, an increase in revenue growth and productivity. Four potentially changing the collective mind-sets of the organization, as to what is possible. Deciding which technologies to execute and how, as well implementing these changes, occurred at a pace far exceeding that of prior experiences. Welcome to the Post Pandemic World.