Digital Transformation benefits to organizations in a post-covid world

The pandemic forced all kinds of organizations across all sectors, whether MNCs or SMEs, e-commerce, healthcare, financial or any other, to take a leap of faith by placing a hurried trust in digital transformation. Leaderships had to appraise their immediate priorities and translate them into action by adopting digital routes almost overnight. The pandemic has taught every brand and every sector to look beyond just the present and visualize how they will interact with their environment in future. The global crisis pushed organizations to learn to be ready always; technology adoption has proven a reliable resource in current times.

The impact of Covid-19 has resulted in demand for either new ways of fulfilling the needs or creation of entirely new categories. The new demands and the need for new ways of servicing will last beyond the pandemic because the customer and the industry both have evolved.

Catering to new consumer demands

Even while the world was locked indoors, it continued to demand goods and services. Organizations previously focused on physically servicing their customers had to adopt digital routes by integrating multichannel and omnichannel service routes, and these routes are here to stay. GlobalData, a leading company in data and analytics, studied shopping habits in the US and Europe. Its report, ‘Multichannel Retail and COVID-19′, shows that pandemic disruptions have caused dramatic shifts in the shopping habits resulting in rapid adoption and growth in services that offer online buy and pick-up in-store.

The emergence of new needs

The need for online communication and connectivity exploded during the pandemic. Zoom, of course, has emerged as the massive winner in this segment. The global CIO of Experian, Barry Libenson, said his company went from 2,000 VPN users to about 20,000 almost overnight. Learning, health and fitness are the sectors which were highly physical services went through digital transformations of their own. The time for remote learning, telemedicine and online fitness came much earlier than predicted, and many of these categories will likely stay in demand.

Long and wide Digital Reach

Another lingering benefit of the ‘forced’ digital transformation will be the widening of networks and long reach. Digital long reach existed even before the pandemic, but it took a lockdown for us to adopt it and explore its utility fully. Ever since we adopted remote working, no person – an employee or an ally or a resource – is now too far to be reached. The limitation of distance binds none; all are now a click away at a mutually convenient time. This has resulted in new partnerships and exploration of digital spaces where an organization was earlier yet to involve itself. This understanding of the availability and benefit of long reach will allow the organizations to engage in new partnerships, employ new resources, look forward to opportunities beyond the comfort zones and gain visibility in places where they can garner better results in the new emerging ecosystem.

The pandemic forced organizations to recognize the strategic magnitude of technology and its criticality in success matrix, which stands true even in the post-pandemic environment. Data security, usability and scalability are a few factors to take care of while adopting a technology. Digital transformation is not just a linear evolution; to be able to survive in a futuristic world, leadership teams ought to weigh-in on the challenges and choose the best digital practices in the industry.