Connectedness, Collaboration, and Innovation – Three digital insights from Covid 19

by Kevin Brown

As we complete our fifth week of social distancing, the lessons from our experiences are starting to give way to visions of our new normal, post-pandemic. Many of us are itching to safely get out of our homes when the time is right, and to escape the demands of juggling parenting, teaching, working and incessant snacking.

Still, we are also having experiences that we have grown comfortable with or even enjoy, and may want to keep as part of our lives when we start to create new routines.

While many companies had previously embarked upon – or intended to embark upon – their digital transformation and hyper-automation journey, it has become evident that COVID-19 has created a heightened urgency around the need to move forward now.

Here are five digital transformation insights coming out of the first five weeks of our journey:

Connectedness

With required social distancing in effect, the need for digital solutions to drive human connection and support the human experience has never been more critical. The true test of your purpose and your brand is measured in these times by how well you take care of your customers, your people, and your community, as much as it is about managing the bottom line.

This is a tough balance to maintain, but we have seen countless examples of digital technology rapidly deployed to serve amid a crisis. Providing employees access to virtual agents for real-time critical updates on COVID-19; leveraging shared service centers using robotics process automation (RPA) to back up transactional processes and enable remote work, and enabling ongoing operations through remote work with by machine learning and virtual agents are examples of digital being put to use now to connect us during a crisis.

 Collaboration

Digital collaboration has hit a tipping point and will spawn new models around meeting, collaborating, and working together. This experiment in working from home has forced our hand in exploring connectivity in a very different way. We are accustomed to an environment that defaults to “in person” as the standard for working together, with “dialing-in” being the less attractive, but sometimes necessary fallback.

Now that many more of us have dabbled in using video calls and online collaboration tools with surprising effectiveness, the need to get on a plane for a meeting or be in the office every day will give way to a welcomed increase in flexibility.

And the impact has the potential to be significant: working parents will have the option to spend more time at home with their families, routine business travel will become less routine, yielding financial and environmental benefits, and increased automation will redefine how, when, where and by whom work gets done.

Innovation

Digital transformation and hyper-automation were already priorities before COVID-19; however, the last five weeks have created increased urgency around accelerating the pace of change. The key takeaway from this experience is the understanding that a successful transformation, while often triggered by the necessity of today, should not be reactive and myopic. In order to create the impact that is required in the long term, these investments must be thoughtful, strategic, and phased over time.

As has been proven countless times before, necessity is the mother of invention. COVID-19 has triggered in all of us a sense of renewal. We have been forced to think differently about everything we know about our working world.

The pace of innovation in the last five weeks has surpassed anything I have seen in the last three decades. People from all levels both within our own organization and at our clients have been stepping forward with innovative ideas about working differently, supporting each other, and refining strategic direction.

The brightest silver lining no doubt has been the increased sense of teamwork and care that has become a part of our working world.

Kevin Brown is a Digital Business Transformation | Intelligent Automation | NYC EY Ripples Lead