The introduction of digital technology led to rapid changes within several industries, from Finances to Retail. But with a new viral player on the field, the popularity of digital is going sky-high. COVID-19 brought a wave of closures, cancellations, travel bans and restrictions. While staying homebound is necessary for combating the outbreak as soon as possible, stepping away from business tasks and goals is not an option.
So, let’s take a look at the latest digital transformation trends and how they meet the current business needs.
Finances got hit pretty hard by coronavirus. In the UK, major banks such as Lloyds Banking Group and TSB had to close large parts of their branch network, thus limiting access to financial services for offline visitors. The same tendency can be observed globally, with both local and international banks. The number of transactions has reduced for all fintech firms in the payments area, affecting their profit and ability to update their software to stay connected to the consumers. In turn, consumers started choosing safer investments, causing damage to new fintech companies and venture capital funding. This change may lead to many small fintech services firms to collaborate or seek investment from larger banking enterprises.
The outbreak was a huge blow to the retail industry worldwide. Luxury brands, supermarket chains are closing down worldwide to secure the safety of their customers. However, how do they secure their survival in the crisis when their consumers mostly stay at home and don’t go out shopping?
In that case, e-commerce is the answer. According to the report by Marketing Week or Econsultancy, the number of online buyers is going to increase considerably within the next few months. This transition to online is already happening. For some areas, it’s a slow and gradual process, for others, it’s incredibly fast. For example, Coolblue (retail company in Netherlands) had to transform its approach to retail overnight due to the increased number of online numbers. The retailer had to close all physical stores and expand its shop with new categories to meet the needs of homebound consumers.
It's estimated that by the mid-term of the COVID-19 outbreak, all retailers are expected to go fully online. That happened in China during the quarantine – the majority of offline consumers switched to online orders, thus allowing retail shops and businesses to maintain their target audience and quickly recover after the end of the epidemic.
This is a deciding moment for many retail businesses. To ensure smooth transition without losing potential customers and buyers to a faster and more flexible competitor, they need to ensure that their online shopping options perform at their pull capacity and provide the following features:
The development of healthcare software used to be focused around apps and smart tools, while the primary goals were patient data organization, appointment management, and improved data security. However, the emergence of COVID-19 has put healthcare systems under pressure. The experience of China indicated the necessity for protecting medical workers from contracting the disease by limiting any human-to-human contact that is not required for providing treatment. That means, that healthcare systems found themselves in a need of software capable of:
Given that video services were made available to citizens on Medicare, it’s a clear sign that coronavirus will force healthcare to fast-track its digital transformation, providing a window of opportunity for many telehealth developers across the United States and Europe.
As you can see, the main digital transformation trends can be divided into three directions:
With great power comes great responsibility. With great trouble comes great opportunity.
In the case of the COVID-19 outbreak, new digital transformation trends are generated by the urge to work around its challenges and stabilize the industries that serve as the main supporting pillars of our community. It’s a joint effort, where every initiative is welcomed and every new idea can become a game-changer.
Therefore, it’s a good opportunity to see how you can apply your services and product in any direction mentioned above in order to see what industry would benefit from your assistance – and whether this benefit will be there after the pandemic ends.
What do you think about it? Do you believe that COVID-19 will accelerate digital transformation? What industry is going to be completely redefined by innovation? Please, share your thoughts, comments, and experiences! I’m looking forward to your feedback.