Navigating the new world ushered in overnight by COVID-19
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Belatrix’s report highlights the significant changes businesses face due to COVID-19, emphasizing the need for digital transformation and a focus on employee wellbeing. It outlines five key areas for leaders to concentrate on, including company culture, accelerated digital transformation, rapid cloud adoption, cybersecurity challenges, and the emergence of new business models. The report stresses the importance of adapting to new digital frameworks and maintaining employee engagement to navigate the current crisis successfully.
Navigating the new world ushered in overnight by COVID-19
- 1. The role of digital technology in going from business survival to innovation Navigating the new world ushered in overnight by COVID-19
- 2. Welcome to Belatrix’s special report. Last year, I wrote about the important shift of CEOs to focus not just on shareholders, but also customers and employees. During this unprecedented time, this move feels more important than ever. As we find our way through this new world, we will need their support. Both our individual and collective responses to COVID-19 will set the stage for years to come. Our aim with this report is to help businesses navigate this new world - how to balance your priorities from caring for your employees, exploring digital technologies and accelerating your digital transformation, to analyzing new business models. From everyone at Belatrix, we hope you are all staying safe and well. Alex Robbio, President and Co-founder, Belatrix, a division of Globant 2www.belatrixsf.com | belatrixsf.com/blog
- 3. 3www.belatrixsf.com | belatrixsf.com/blog A new world dawns We’re all being challenged by the current situation. In a matter of weeks, much of what we have always taken for granted, has changed. In this Belatrix report, we explore five key areas that we have identified for leaders and managers to focus on.This covers the spectrum from looking after your employees, to evaluating what products and services will remain viable in the long-term. They are: 1. The importance of company culture. We highlight how you can use digital tools to help maintain your culture and focus on employee wellbeing. 2. The accelerated pace of digital transformation. Every business process which can be digitized, is being digitized. Every business which relies on a physical presence is scrambling to strengthen their digital capabilities. 3. The move to the cloud at lightning speed. Cloud technologies, already mature and tried-and-tested, have become ever more valuable to businesses pushed into remote working. 4. Security plays catch-up. As businesses had to rapidly shift their operating models and processes, in many cases chief security officers had to respond after the fact. We explore what this means for corporate IT security. 5. The emergence of new business models and cross- industry innovation. We end the report examining how different industries are responding to the crisis, to see where there are possibilities for innovation.
- 4. While your initial focus during this crisis will have been on reacting to a fast moving situation, and where necessary activating business continu- ity plans, one of the most overlooked elements is the impact on employee wellbeing and company culture. Research shows that employees are nervous about what the future holds. 72% of US workers expect their work life to be disrupted, which rises to 78% in the UK who expect to see further disruption at work. This concern can quickly impact productivity. So as organizations move through the different stages of this pandemic, it be- comes crucial for leaders to focus on their employee wellbeing. Key to your long-term success will be maintaining your usual level of employee engage- ment, but in a remote environment. Leaders that are successfully navigat- ing the crisis are being helped by their emotional capital. Today, more than ever, leadership is about connecting emotionally with people and communi- cating clearly on a frequent basis. Those organizations which have a strong sense of purpose amongst their employees will be well-positioned to adjust and adapt. We have seen wonderful examples of companies, guided by their strong cul- ture, shifting to provide new services to help during the pandemic. Just highlighting one experience here at Belatrix, a video agency which we have worked with, LocalEyes, reached out to us to provide additional cuts of a video we had shot, and is now provid- ing instructional videos to help people with video editing. There are countless other well-known examples, such as breweries shifting to manufacture hand sanitizer. Meanwhile, the strategic use of tech- nology can help you maintain connec- tions and communication between people and teams. Where necessary, look to digital tools such as StarMeUp that can be quickly implemented, and provide a technology platform to build and maintain culture between people. Don´t let your company culture take a hit - focus on employee wellbeing 1 4www.belatrixsf.com | belatrixsf.com/blog
- 5. This pandemic has pushed organi- zations towards digital at incredible speed. From implementing remote working almost overnight to rolling-out new digital tools and applications, many organizations have had to shift how they work at lightning speed. As the Harvard Business Review point- ed out, “In a period of days, almost any process that could be rapidly digitized has been virtualized”. They highlight how this digitalization has not just been to help businesses adapt and survive, but has become a matter of public health and employee wellbeing. These actions were spurred initially by the need to maintain business continu- ity. Now we can start to see what the world may look like over the next few months, it means many businesses are having to shift how they operate and how they sell their products and services. From retailers to museums, businesses are having to evaluate what services will be viable in the future, and how they can operate in a digital world. As part of this change, we’re seeing a major move towards empowering employees to make the right decisions. Organizations don’t have the luxury of time to gradually roll out new pro- cesses or tools. They’re navigating the crisis by enabling their employees to make the right decisions at a local level. For example, we’ve seen businesses drop carefully arranged roll-out plans for new cloud tools that they had planned to implement gradually over the course of this year. Instead, they simply pushed the tool live, with basic user guidance. Accelerated pace of digital transformation 2 5www.belatrixsf.com | belatrixsf.com/blog “In a period of days, almost any process that could be rapidly digitized has been virtualized”
- 6. As organizations shift to a distributed, remote way of working, businesses need to move everything from workflows, data, and tools to the cloud - everything from how you sell and stay close to your customers, to how your technology teams develop and release software. We’ve witnessed organizations urgently deploy new SaaS tools to enable their workforce to continue to collaborate and ensure the continuity of key business processes. The research company IDC found that despite overall tech spending declining slightly in 2020, companies are prioritizing spending on the cloud, stating: “As a result of Covid-19 there’s a premium on agility, and the cloud and associated services can give enterprises a high degree of agility”. The added flexibility of cloud services, where organizations pay less during times of lower usage, clearly becomes highly attractive as executives look to cut down on costs. For startups or those businesses with few legacy systems, this may require almost no change. For others however, this will now become one of the top priorities for tech executives. For example, can your executives easily access your legacy ERP system from their new home office? How fast can you realistically migrate these systems to the cloud? What are the key priorities? And as organizations shift to becoming cloud-first, there will likely be further challenges around implementation and ensuring they have effective analytics for these cloud systems. This also means that software vendors need to focus their efforts on providing their products and services in a cloud, as-a-service model, rather than solely on-premise. Move to the cloud at lightning speed 3 6www.belatrixsf.com | belatrixsf.com/blog “As a result of Covid-19 there’s a premium on agility, and the cloud and associated services can give enterprises a high degree of agility”
- 7. As businesses adapt to a COVID-19 world, cybersecurity is also having to adjust. It is resulting in shifting cybersecurity strategies, particularly as executives need to ensure the security of their, now remote and distributed employees. One cybersecurity company stated it has seen a “500 percent increase in attacks directly related to work from home individuals” resulting from the COVID-19 situation. Leading security organizations have seen “phishing attacks, malspams and ransomware attacks as attackers are using COVID-19 as bait to impersonate brands thereby misleading employees”. And no organization is immune from the threat - attackers have also targeted healthcare providers and research institutions looking into COVID-19. The biggest challenge for chief security officers has been adjusting to the rapid speed at which businesses shifted to a work from home model. As businesses moved in a matter of hours to employees working from home, they have had to address security after the fact. And it was only after it occurred that they had the chance to review and implement security tools and policies. It’s a case of playing catch-up and balancing competing priorities between business continuity and preventing threats. As a first step, many organizations looked to quickly implement end user security controls, such as VPNs and multi-factor authentication, as well as their associate policies (such as controlling the number of VPN connections to further improve security). Security plays catch-up 4 7www.belatrixsf.com | belatrixsf.com/blog “There is a 500% increase in attacks directly related to work from home individuals”
- 8. In this time of tremendous change, there are also new opportunities. As businesses shift from the immediate need to maintain business continuity, they will start to explore new avenues for revenue growth. The pandemic is accelerating many of the existing trends in different industries, but the overall dynamic is clear - there is a major shift towards digital business models. As executives explore what this means, they’ll be asking about the long-term impact of COVID-19? As part of this, it’s critical to look at what is happening in different industries, and see how they are responding. This will help find cross-industry learnings that can help in new product development for this new world: E-health Hospitals around the world are having conversations with technology companies specialized in developing mobile electrocardiograms, digital stethoscopes and other devices able to remotely monitor vital signs. How will all the different players in the industry, from providers to healthtech startups respond? Media and film “Trolls World Tour” became the first film from a major studio to be released online at the same time as its theatre release - and had the biggest digital debut in history. Will studios continue with this direct-to-consumer model? Gaming While the online gaming industry may appear to be in robust shape as individuals spend more time playing games in quarantine, it has nonetheless been impacted on everything from game production to new hardware releases. Emergence of new business models and cross-industry innovation 5 8www.belatrixsf.com | belatrixsf.com/blog
- 9. 9www.belatrixsf.com | belatrixsf.com/blog E-learning 91% of the world’s student population have been impacted by governments closing educational institutions. Having spoken about the opportunity of e-learning for several years, will the crisis now push schools and universities to fully embrace new ways of learning? How will institutions change their business models? Medical equipment Leading manufacturers from industries as diverse as automotive and household appliances have shifted production to help generate medical equipment during the crisis. Many are looking at 3D printing to help ramp up the manufacture of equipment such as nasal swabs and face shields. Will 3D printing be a long-term solution to supply challenges? Travel How fast will business travel rebound? Should those airlines, such as Lufthansa which focused on business travel, now look to explore more leisure travel destinations?
- 10. Belatrix Software helps companies thrive in the digital world. Organizations partner with Belatrix to turn ideas into high quality, innovative software based on highly-tuned Agile development processes. Customers use Belatrix’s digital transformation services to create best-in-class software products, lower time to market, and gain competitive edge. Belatrix’s dedicated labs, focusing on UX, Blockchain, Cloud, mobile, RPA, DevOps, and QA automation, help organizations become digital leaders. Belatrix’s clients include both established Fortune level and emerging, venture backed firms. Some of the firm’s clients include Disney, Adobe, AOL, PwC, and Shutterfly. Belatrix is a South American company with offices in New York, San Francisco, Barcelona, Mendoza, Buenos Aires, Bogotá and Lima. For more information, visit https://www. belatrixsf.com. About Belatrix Software Contact us 10www.belatrixsf.com | belatrixsf.com/blog