The world has changed…
And I don’t think it’ll ever go back to exactly the way it was before COVID-19, with people embracing new ways of working, socialising and living.
A great example for this is an event we were planning with Microsoft recently and had to cancel. Rather than just waiting for lockdown to be over though we decided to run it virtually and instead of twenty or so people within thirty miles of London turning up we had attendees from Ireland, South Africa, the USA, Finland and Canada.
In fact, one of the big things I’ve noticed during lockdown is that there’s been a massive trend towards ‘eyeballs’ on a business’s webinars and content.
We’re all stuck at home after all!
No matter how far along a digital transformation journey your organisation might be, COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the way we approach things.
It’s probably made us go a little bit faster and a little bit harder into Digital than we might have before but there’s real opportunities out there for those who are ready to pivot.
Always try and think about your long-term view because, quite often, there’ll be no additional cost to doing something slightly differently today that’s going to make a huge difference down the line.
Why Is Leading With Technology Important?
I started thinking how I use technology (as you can imagine, running a tech business, there’s quite a lot of it!) and I concluded that it pretty much permeates every single aspect of my life.
In fact, with the advent of the coronavirus and the rapid changes to the world we’ve all gone through I’d say that’s even gone faster and deeper in recent weeks.
Take banking for example.
I can’t honestly remember the last time I went into a bank, instead using my card or iPhone (in fact I’ll probably try not to use cash at all now going forward).
Does that mean cash is dead?
Is that one of the things that’s going to change?
Should we all be thinking about the various ways we enable people to pay for services with us?
Because let’s be honest, at least in the short term, who’s going to want to touch things?
Think about how you order a takeaway…
I literally can’t stand picking up the phone to my local pizza place, trying to spell my address to them three or four times and then repeating the order over and over again, only to find they can’t find my address and when they finally do the orders still wrong. It’s so much easier to just order via an app.
That physical disconnect is literally everywhere, even in the way I socialise now but why are technologies like this permeating our life so much?
I think there’s a number of factors.
- It removes unnecessary interactions – Not everybody wants to pick up the phone; some people just aren’t comfortable with that; they give us the opportunity to get what we need when we need it.
- It’s mobile – I know we’re not particularly mobile at the moment but the great thing about tech is that it’ll go wherever you go. Being able to interact with the services you want, wherever you might be is important.
- Personalisation – Tech has the ability to be personalized and tailored, remembering who you are and what you like and what you don’t.
- It reduces human error – it makes services better in the way they delivered.
So it really is everywhere.
Sometimes it’s done well, sometimes not so well.
One thing I do know though is that, fair or not, whatever we’re doing digitally will be compared to what others are doing digitally, whether that be their platforms, company or organisation.
We both judge and are being judged all the time which means new technology should absolutely be part of all our strategies, now more than ever….
You can read the full article here, on the cloudThing website >>
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