Earlier this summer, there was a New York Times story about the challenges healthcare officials face, including a memorable anecdote about how a fax machine spilled hundreds of pages of faxed Covid-19 test results all over the floor of a Texas public health department office. It effectively illustrated a critical larger point: Healthcare providers are drowning in paper.
While many companies were reportedly undergoing some form of digital transformation before COVID-19, it seems they were not far enough along their journey to respond effectively. At the outset of the pandemic, companies scrambled to look for IT equipment such as laptops and IT services like Zoom to get a grip of the new digital reality that came overnight. As the crisis unfolded, it became increasingly clear that those companies lacking a robust digital backbone or the ability to conduct their business online were struggling.
Over the past few months, Covid-19 has been credited as the driving force leading digital transformation for many companies. Organizations that were not already pursuing digital innovation have been thrust into the digital arena and forced to make rapid changes. Regardless of what their strategy looked like coming into 2020, today’s leaders are managing an accelerated pace of change as everyone seeks to serve customers in new ways.
Digital Transformation – No one could have predicted where 2020 would take us: The last six months alone have produced more digital transformation than the last decade, with every transformation effort already underway finding itself accelerated, and at scale. While many of my digital transformation predictions from a year ago benefited from this shift, others were displaced by more urgent needs, like 24/7 secure and reliable connectivity.
Digital Transformation – This is beyond working from home.
The proliferation in working from home has brought new security challenges to the forefront that include attacks on not just businesses, but also government records, celebrities and coronavirus vaccine development data. In the healthcare industry alone, cyberattacks have increased by 150% within the last few months.
As digital transformation initiatives accelerate, it is a good time to think about who in your company is leading these efforts, and who gets a voice in those plans.
In a recent report, 86% of manufacturers have appointed digital transformation leaders—37% are from operations, and 30% from IT and the remaining span across engineering, finance and dedicated digital transformation teams. An important team that must be considered in relation to digital transformation efforts though, is HR and people operations.
Digital Transformation – The past coming back to haunt us is a common theme in literature. Tales of fiction can explain a fundamental truth about business technology: What we did in the past has the power to determine our present and future. As is the case in gothic tales like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” when we try to bury the past instead of going back to make it right, it resurfaces when it is least convenient.
Digital Transformation – Even before COVID-19, the automotive industry had its share of challenges. Sales were down in many markets. Huge investments in electrification, autonomous driving and digital were hurting revenue and profitability. The coronavirus pandemic turned those challenges into a crisis. Global vehicle sales have stalled, production facilities have been shuttered and many supply…
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Digital Transformation – One of the core principles of digital transformation is that it is meant to improve customer experience. But at the end of the day, humans are … wait for it … humans. Which means successful digital transformation isn’t just a company’s ability to earn customer relationship metrics. True success lies in a…
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