The world has changed quite fast.
A few months back, COVID-19 was not yet a global pandemic. Now, it’s the greatest challenge the humanity has faced in decades. COVID has impacted people’s lives at unprecedented levels, transformed every industry and changed how companies think, act and do business in just a few months.
Today, we try to explore how business is shifting and how their digital strategies are increasingly becoming inadequate. COVID has highlighted the issue of misalignment of business value with technological impact. It is now very important that business think about outmaneuvering today’s crisis by rapidly adopting digital strategy.
1. The Human Experience
People and their behaviours are changing and businesses should ramp-up their personalization strategies, their understanding of individual’s wants and needs, and quickly adjust their digital experiences will ride out the pandemic faster than their slower peers. In the long-term, shared digital experiences and communities will be in demand and the businesses that provide personalized, interactive and shared experiences today can thrive far into the future.
2. Artificial Intelligence starts to show real impact
Combining human and AI capabilities collaboratively bringing AI’s unlimited capabilities with human ability to conceptualize and create ideas can overcome the constraints and challenges the pandemic is introducing in both medical and non-medical fields. Pandemic is pushing companies to move past the roadblocks of human-adoption of AI and is now enabling people to experience technology at its best. Companies need to re-imagine their enterprise and workforce in future to open new possibilities.
3. Accelerated Robots Ecosystem
Robots are now helping frontline workers to fight the virus and the case of robotics and automation is now stronger than ever. While robots are currently boosting up to fill the pandemic-related roles, businesses should think long-term to build a more automated future. Opportunities lie in development of robots and robotic applications for smart retail, drone traffic monitoring, smart office, fleet management, autonomous driving and autonomous delivery.
4. Smart Things & Smart Spaces
COVID has increased our need for smart products which have great public health impact. Many non-smart devices have been repurposed with smart features and many more smart devices have been rapidly deployed to help enforce safe distancing, dispensing essentials. While smart devices may have seen slower adoption in the past, they are much more welcome in the context of COVID.
5. Smart Health & Privacy
Smart health devices can help identify symptoms, monitor patients and can process valuable health data that can help researchers and governments to save lives. But, businesses must keep the threat of future backlash in mind when the pandemic fear is blown over. Device-driven efforts to fight COVID has started conversations about privacy, data ownership and government / regulatory overreach. Enterprises must explore the smart ecosystem without overstepping, otherwise their benefits could be short-lived.
6. Innovation in business
Businesses shall be differentiated based on how they innovate in interlacing seemingly disparate technological and strategic shifts from different directions like digital technologies, business trends and gaining momentum of innovation timelines. COVID has forced companies to work in new ways, collaborate remotely and partner with each other apart from just competing for business. Leaders need to form new ideas and new partnerships that help their businesses pivot quickly and continuously as crisis continues to evolve.
7. Cybersecurity gets serious
When millions of people are forced to work remotely, volumes of private and corporate data becomes vulnerable as people may communicate and share data on less secure networks, making them prone to data breach, phishing, ransomware, banking & mobile malware etc., This issue will give much needed impetus to the development of security technology and its immediate impact can be seen in crowd-sourcing, governance, supply-chain, file storage, predictions, IP protection, IoT, microgrids etc.,
8. Extending reality with VR, AR and MR
Until recently extended reality (XR) technologies are limited to creating immersive digital experiences in snapchat filters, pokemon games and some limited design applications. The influence of virtual (VR) and augmented (AR) reality will grow offering new ways to interact with customers, providing new purchase experiences, making workspace smaller with virtual collaboration tools replacing the need for expensive office space. AR and VR can bring people virtually into physical spaces.
9. Zero-distance connectivity with 5G
5G is acknowledged as the future of communication for many industries. It holds the potential to revolutionize the way mobile networks work and the pandemic has only accelerated the 5G markets. As millions of people are forced to isolate, demand for mobility has been stressing the 4G networks and higher demand for bandwidth and connectivity. Increase in voice assistants, visual assistants, TV and other entertainment components, appliances and other fixtures become smarter and start connecting to mobile networks, the need for faster data sharing, reduced latency is more real than ever.
10. Cloud, Virtual & Touchless Tech
Cloud companies reported sudden spike in workloads with a flood of millions of new users. Microsoft saw a 775% increase in cloud services demand because of COVID. Work-from-home and online learning models drove the demand for cloud-based video conferencing, teaching and virtual meetings and many businesses actively upgraded their functions and business practices to meet this demand. Conversational interfaces will continue to grow beyond mobile phones and into other smart devices providing seamlessly personalized experiences now supplemented by vision, gesture based interfaces in the physical world.
Ask yourself these questions.
- How fast can you act ?
- Are you willing to explore new models to transform your business with digital experiences ?
- Can you champion your team to create agile, resilience and innovation DNA to meet new needs and capabilities faster than ever before ?
Ready to get take action yourself?
Work with IMSS 3A Digital Disruptive Strategy at imss.co.in/en/3a/ or write to business@imss.co.in.
