“For the last twenty years, companies have been gradually transforming themselves with digital technologies to adapt to new realities of the Internet and mobile. You’ll
often hear brands discussing their “digital transformation” initiative. Digital transformation roadmaps could be anywhere from a year to ten years. Then COVID-19 hit.”
(from COVID-19 Digital Engagement Report overview, by Twilio, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) company in San Francisco, California. Founded in 2008, it employs more than 3,000 people and is the last turnover amounted to $ 1.13 billion)
Both the global economy and business continue to measure losses from the COVID-19 pandemic. The global health crisis may have had a huge economic impact, but it has had a very significant side effect. It has acted as a digital “accelerator” for the global business community.
Twilio conducted an international and specialized survey, from 6 to 24 June 2020, with a sample of 2,569 business executives, evenly distributed as geographical origin, from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan and Singapore. The companies of origin of these executives, employ more than 500 employees.
The results were extremely interesting. Eight out of ten companies have increased their budget for digital transformation in order to meet the challenges posed by the pandemic, thereby slowing down the pace by six years.
The company’s research, which is a leading cloud platform, explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on digital strategy and digital business engagement around the world. Almost the entire sample (97%), estimates that the pandemic accelerated the digital transformation of their company. This is because, according to the COVID-19 Digital Engagement Report, companies have activated their digital reflexes to meet the unprecedented challenges posed by the crisis. “In recent months, we have seen the business roadmaps for digital transformation change dramatically. “The times of implementation of the digital business strategy around the world were compressed in time, even in weeks”, the study finds.
New ways of approaching
The need for digital answers to the problems posed by COVID-19 has eliminated, in record time, many of the obstacles associated with digital transformation: lack of a clear strategy (37%), reluctance to replace old-fashioned software (35%) and lack of time (34%).
Meanwhile, in order to adapt to the new reality of COVID-19, almost all of the companies (95%) sought new ways to communicate with their existing and potential customers, as a result of the pandemic. 92% of executives say digital technologies have been extremely or very critical to meeting current business challenges.
In this direction, the multichannel approach has acquired a new meaning. 92% of executives say that their organization is very likely to expand digital communication channels. Already, more than half of global businesses (53%) have added new channels amid the pandemic. In fact, one in three companies started using live chat channels for the first time as a result of COVID-19.