The COVID-19 pandemic overnight changed the way we work. One-year on, we are still working from home but looking forward to a return to the office. Jason Cort, Director of Product Planning and Marketing, discusses the business lessons learnt from the pandemic, and how we need to accelerate and incorporate these learnings as we begin the return to the office.
No one will easily forget where they were on the 23rd March 2020 when the order came down from the Government to stay at home in order to protect the NHS. Certain businesses and venues were forced to close and everyone was required to stay at home, except for limited purposes, effectively shutting offices and business premises down overnight.
12 months later we find ourselves still in a state of flux, lockdown to unlocking, but with the COVID-19 vaccine in its various forms now being administered, there is a ray of light at the end of the tunnel. As a result, business leaders are starting to think about moving their organisations forward, taking the experiences of the last 12 months, and how best to incorporate them into business practise and strategies.
It is safe to say that the last year has seen both business winners and losers. In the IT sector, many businesses have clearly had a strong year with IT equipment in all forms, from PCs and laptops through to peripherals including headsets, monitors, speakers, all in high demand. So much so that supply chain issues have been a challenge, especially in the early stages of the pandemic when such volumes of people working from home had not been factored into orders.
IT Services, those companies that manage the IT infrastructure on behalf of customers, have also seen solid growth. Sharp’s own emerging business within this space is reflective of this continuing to expand over the last 12 months, demonstrating how robust the market segment is, even in the most extreme of economic climates.
In the collaboration space, the cloud-service providers, such as Microsoft, Google or AWS have seen a massive adoption of their platforms, as the demand for applications and service providers running on top of these have equally seen huge uplift as companies move more of their processes into the cloud.
This has had clear benefits for the IT security industry too. With a rapid move to home working early in the pandemic, companies were not able to structure or orchestrate robust ‘Work From Home’ polices - not just in the home but between the home and wherever the business servers and applications are located. This left them potentially vulnerable and playing catch-up.
How Business Strategies Have Evolved
It is safe to say that any business strategies that were in place at the start of 2020 quickly changed, or were completely scrapped as the impact of the pandemic became a reality.
Digital transformation is a well-used phrase but for those companies that didn’t already have a strategy in place, COVID-19 quickly forced them to adopt one purely from a tactical basis. As we have moved employees to home working, organisations have created ad hoc practices that meet the immediate needs but don’t look at the long-term impact.
Digital transformation was always going to happen, regardless of market sector, it was just a matter of time, or disruptive event, forcing businesses, especially smaller ones, to look at how they use technology and implement it. We at Sharp have been saying to our customers that COVID-19 has not created a need for change, it has merely accelerated it.
The hardship is that while planned digital transformations often take five or 10 years to plan and implement, businesses have had to compress it into 12 months.
What businesses now need to do is take those ‘emergency tactics if you will, and turn them into a true growth strategy. By automating processes, moving operations into the cloud, implementing a virtual meeting room setup, they will all have seen the benefits of digital transformation. They will also have realised that for sustained growth planning is required.
Businesses should not try and work through digital transformation alone. They should look to partner with a proven third-party who knows how automating processes, delivering hybrid working and better collaboration tools can create the cornerstone of that new post-COVID-19 strategy.
If you would like to know how Sharp Europe can help with your digital transformation, please Get In Touch.
