How resilience and flexibility can help us survive and thrive going forward
As we wrap up an unexpected and challenging year, I can’t help but taking stock at what happened and how we can use it to move forward as we usher 2021 in.
The new work normal
2020 was the year when most of us learnt how to effectively work from home for an extensive period of time, how to be productive from our living rooms and how to talk to customers and close deals without ever shaking their hand or being in the same room with them.
All this while balancing work and life that seemed to grow more demanding by each day. We all realized the value of robust collaborative tools and access to broadband and 5G to accommodate our business and family communications needs.
We also became so accustomed to this working model that many of us, knowledge workers, may never return to the physical office in a designated space like before.
The new retail experience
When it became dangerous to go outside to malls, shops and grocery stores, all of us turned to the convenience of online shopping. It was safe, easy and time saving for busy professionals and overwhelmed families. Consequently, this pushed retailers that have been putting off digital transformation initiatives for five years out to accelerate these efforts and turn to cloud options and automation practices to optimize their supply chain operations and bring a more streamlined and reimagined customer experience.
Also, this spike in e-commerce created a chain reaction push for financial institutions and fintechs to improve online payments while safeguarding the customer experience from a security and privacy standpoint. Pivoting their business model to respond to new, growing consumer needs created new opportunities that will carry them well into 2021 and beyond.
For this transformation, we’ve seen not only IT driving change but more importantly business decision makers like chief digital officers, marketing leaders and customer experience bosses investing in new technologies and adopting AI innovations to remain resilient despite the pandemic and continue to grow.
Finally, a common thread across organization that did not collapse but thrived in 2020 were the ones that enabled digital ecosystems around them. Companies with healthy ecosystems of suppliers, partners, vendors, and committed customers can find ways to work together during and after times of crisis because those are relationships built on trust, not only transactions.
The smart, connected city
While we did not travel, commuted or got out much in 2020, the pandemic pushed state and local governments to re-think services and operations and how they can automate and digitize them to service their citizens in times of crisis and beyond.
Suddenly, these very traditional agencies needed to manage massive testing operations and drive state-wide communications to keep the public healthy and safe. In addition, the pandemic has highlighted known vulnerabilities in government IT, such as outdated hardware and software and human resources weaknesses that needed to be updated and/or replaced.
The growing need to notify the public of changes and updates regarding health, transportation, education or other administration services pushed these agencies to start moving to the cloud to be more nimble and efficient. Also, this period of rapid change but also uncertainty gave them the opportunity to redesign these services to better accommodate their communities where they return in full swing.
The epilogue
As we’re rounding up 2020 and while we all feel exhausted by this demanding year, let’s not forget that first of all we made it through, let’s remember what we learnt to do faster, better and more thoughtfully and how we can take these best practices to the next year. Being resilient despite the growing pains of change and being flexible to adapt to these changes makes us stronger and helps us not only survive but thrive going forward. Let’s help each other, lift each other up and share our learnings as we continue into 2021.
