Digital transformation: 5 ways the pandemic has forced change: The pandemic has reshaped customer behavior and team expectations. At a recent MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, CIOs detailed what this means for organizations, IT, and the role of CIOs.
The speakers and panelists one hear at proceedings like this year’s MIT Sloan CIO symposium series are not typical. They come from companies at the forefront of using technology to drive their businesses or are academics and consultants studying these companies. But they represent what is possible for digital transformation in rapid change. And as the most recent event demonstrates, they highlight topics you can explore in your organization.
1. Quick change is the subsequent norm. How fast?
Barry Libenson, Experian’s global CIO, said his company grew from 2,000 VPN users to around 20,000 almost overnight. He estimates that it took nearly two weeks for everyone to be fully productive. Consumer behavior has also changed rapidly in many ways. Dirty Pentland, a professor at the MIT Media Lab, described how optimized, automated systems, to an extent like supply chain management, have collapsed in the face of rapid changes in demand and supply, a reality almost everyone has come to grips with and confronted on a personal level.
2. Some rapid changes in consumer behavior will be permanent
No one was making reliable predictions about long-term changes from the pandemic. However, Rodney Zemmel, Global Leader, McKinsey Digital at McKinsey & Company, shared some redolent data. On the consumer side, he says, “Digital has accelerated in almost every category.” An essential factor to consider will be the extent to which forced change (three in four Americans have tried a new buying behavior, for example) returns when possible after the current stand-alone approach.
Here, McKinsey found a range of possible outcomes. He’s not surprised that most people see distance learning and probably telemedicine as necessary evils. On the other hand, Zemmel says the data shows the accelerated shift to online streaming and fitness is likely to remain permanent.
But the most significant changes were in the food. Home cooking and online grocery shopping, which have generally resisted moving online, will likely continue to be more popular with consumers than in the past. Cashless transactions are also gaining momentum.
3. Forced experiments produced surprises, good and bad.
Equinix’s senior director of solution architecture, Mark Anderson, described this year as “a forced examination of a lot of things we’ve thought about but haven’t tested.” For example, he observed, “Many source chains are not well understood and are not paper-based. We started looking at technologies like blockchain and IoT.
Similar dynamics are widespread. For example, Zemmel says that McKinsey data shows that B2B remote selling works: “It’s easier to plan, more efficient than in-person [and leads to] faster buying behavior.” No one expects in-person vending to go away, but it might be a smaller part of the mix than before.
As is the case with many companies, Anderson assumes that employees may not be traveling all the time in the future. Additionally, even when industry events return in person, many are generally expected to have at least a hybrid virtual component.
Prior to this year, some circles were skeptical about the cost of digitization and digital transformation; Zemmel calls December 2019 “peak disparagement about digitization.” But, he adds, “COVID has accelerated the move to digital.”
4. The new role of the CIO: Chief Influencer Officer
Zemmel says the evolution of the CIO role has also accelerated. He gets CIOs increasingly reporting to the CEO because they increasingly consume a dual mandate. In addition to their historical operational role in managing the IT department, they are now in contact with customers and generating revenue. This mandate is not new to forward-thinking IT organizations, but the epidemic has made other organizations aware of IT’s role in driving rapid change. CIOs become “influential leaders breaking down silos and heavy adoption of digital products,” Zemmel adds.
Experian’s Libenson says this means: “The pandemic has forced us to be faster to the business than ever before. We had a seat at the front table. But I think we’ll be a better organization after that.
5. A renewed focus on data besides, people
The different panelists winked at the role of technology, particularly the use of data; Zemmel describes the second generation of B2B digital sales as “capturing the ‘digital exhaust’ to generate new analytical insights and use data to drive performance and create more immersive experiences.”
Libenson also emphasized that it’s not just about continuing to do things the same way. “It’s not about doing what you do differently. You have to adapt with novel processes, new tools,” he said.
However, much of the IT manager’s focus is currently on people. Zemmel identified talent, specifically retraining and retraining the existing workforce as needed, as unique of the keys to digital transformation. And even the use of information has a humanoid side. While data management is another vital part of digital transformation, Zemmel said, “It’s habitually more of an organizational challenge than a technical challenge.”
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