Doubling Down on Digital Transformation

Several days after Florida began the state’s reopening phase, CIOs and CISOs met virtually to share insights on how they balance operating effectively during this disruption and accelerating their organization’s digital transformation timeline.

In early May, Evanta launched a survey to find out from our leaders how COVID-19 is impacting their organizations. These are a few of the key findings:

39% are continuing standard business operations at a reduced level, up 3% from April

31% report a significant impact on organization’s revenue, down 18% from April

26% predict a high or extremely high impact on their organization’s budget, down 26% from April

65% expect to return to standard business operations in 3-12 months

The virtual panel discussion was led by Shawn Bowen, CISO, Restaurant Brands International; Kevin Grayling, Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Florida Crystals; and Bobby George, VP and Chief Digital Officer, Carrier. They represented different sectors and discussed the implications of the coronavirus crisis to both the direct-to-consumer and business-to-business industries. They shared their perspectives on work from home, digital workplace tools, new digital business models and use cases.   

Immediate Response

At the beginning of 2020, digital transformation goals centered on driving a consumer focus. Since then, some executives have seen a drop in demand for their products and services. However, their organizations still needed to enable their workforce to work from home. One executive leader and their team had to react quickly to the workplace shift by enhancing their VPN, purchasing hardware for their employees and equipping the team with successful collaboration tools to work seamlessly from home. Meanwhile, other executives prioritized building out their back end systems. Executives are focusing on digitizing their supply chain, ordering and accounting systems to build a more fluid and efficient process. 

Executive Leadership During Crisis

Over the last two months, organizations have become primed to do more with regard to digital transformation. For most executives, collaboration tools and learning management systems for online training have taken priority. Depending on the industry or the role, employees may require new training or have additional downtime to learn a new skill. Online training platforms provided an excellent resource center for invested employees to learn something new for their role. This is one change that they are implementing now within their organizations as a reaction to COVID-19. 

As CIOs and CISOs look towards the future and consider how COVID-19 will impact their overall business operations, they anticipate it will be critical to implement touchless ways of doing business to ensure future safety. Updates like touchless transactions, facial recognition and temperature readings will be necessary to provide a safer environment for employees and customers. Additionally, demand sensing programs will likely emerge from this unprecedented event to improve customer analytics and insights.

The restrictions in movement of our citizens has led to an inflection point of digital privacy. How much privacy will people give up for freedom of movement? As leaders, we must ask ourselves, how we will approach the moral implications of monitoring our employees and customers?
 

Sustainability and Future Planning

During this time, every organization has proven that work from home is possible for their company and that people are productive from home. While it depends on the environment, all participants agreed that work from home or a flexible work environment will remain part of the future work environment. 

One leader noted that the leadership team within their organization was extremely resistant to working remotely, but the resistance dissipated the moment the crisis hit. Leadership teams are embracing this new normal. Another leader noted the agility of decision making improved significantly within the time of crisis. 

As organizations shift to a more permanent remote environment for their employees, a main challenge will be how to lead people remotely for a prolonged period of time. Businesses and teams require connectedness, trust, and engagement to form the culture of a company. Although leading and building this culture through remote work will be a challenge, generational barriers are now being broken down through the use of collaboration tools. The cultural gap across generations is being removed through the exponentially increased digitization of team collaboration. 

Final Thoughts

As the panel wrapped up, a set of takeaways emerged. 

• Digital transformation is constantly evolving. As an individual, organization, or society, leaders must prepare for the what-if situations, be prepared to think on their feet and make decisions quickly. 

• Right now is the time for digital and technology leaders to stand up and lead. Within organizations, they are in the limelight on how they transform digital offerings and engage customers. There is no better time to be a leader in the IT and technology world.

• Recognize the progress that they have made in the digital transformation of their organization over the last two months, and identify how they can propagate the new familiarity of digital to other areas of the organization. 

by C-Level, for C-Level

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