Is The New Digital Transformation Here To Stay?
If there is one thing the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us, it’s that ‘digital transformation’ is no longer just a buzzword used in business circles, but actually a necessity for pretty much all of us.
With the current social distancing rules and the majority of people working from home, it’s no surprise that the number of people using Zoom, Google Hangouts or Microsoft Teams to hold internal or client meetings has skyrocketed. This situation has now brought us to a stage of ‘a remote everything’.
Aside from business, Netflix’s numbers have continued to grow – which is expected, along with the introduction of new platforms such as the Houseparty – Face to Face Social Network, which allows friends and family to catch up over video call whilst playing a variety of games and activities.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO explained that the crisis has brought forward the adoption of a wide range of technologies by two years. These heightened levels of digital activity taking place show a clear direction, meaning that the impact of the current situation has forced pretty much everything online – work, education, shopping, medicine and even entertainment.
But the question is, will it stay this way?
If anything, this has shown a lot of businesses that they can work remotely and remain as effective as before, and having most likely had to invest money to create an infrastructure that allows this, we could see this adopted as more long-term strategy. It may be that once social distancing rules are relaxed, we don’t go back fully to how things were before, but more than likely somewhere in-between where we were and where we are now.
On the consumer side of things, we’re seeing changes in behaviour that would usually have taken years to materialise, happen overnight. The issue has never been convincing people that a new product or service would satisfy their needs but getting them to change their ingrained habits long enough to let technology into their lives – now we’re being forced to do this.
There is more than likely going to be plenty of time for these new behaviours to become second nature, with social distancing rules expected to stay for a while yet. But as old ways of living and working gradually return, it will be interesting to see which behavioural changes stay and how quickly things revert back to how they were before – if they even do at all?
Either way, there is no doubt that the behavioural changes we’re currently witnessing across the entire world is something that some of the biggest tech companies couldn’t have even dreamt of.
