Digitisation is accelerating because of coronavirus – an up-to-date guide on how to change

For years now, digital transformation has been “obligatory” for businesses. Some pass the test with flying colours, many scrape through by the skin of their teeth, and others keep putting it off. The coronavirus pandemic has speeded everything up – our enforced physical disconnection has brought to light that digital is a valid and useful solution, not just for customer-facing matters, but also for company processes.

Nowadays, digital transformation is no longer an option or a way of keeping your finger on the pulse of the market, and companies in different industries must design a definitive roadmap for post-COVID-19 digital transformation.

Coronavirus: a mandatory incentive

In a cartoon there are four people in a room. One of them says: “Digital transformation is years away. I don’t see our company having to change any time soon”. At the side of the building we can see a huge steel ball with the words “COVID-19” written on it coming towards them. This illustration perfectly represents what has happened in recent months, according to Carlos Lau, co-founder and CEO of the startup KURIOS, which prepares companies for the digital era. He took part in the InnovaHome Festival organised by BBVA Open Innovation, and will do the same again on 11th June to look more closely at how to tackle this digital transformation.

“The pandemic has made it definitive – digitisation is imperative, the time is now”, explains Lau. Before coronavirus it was also the time, but not all companies could see it. The industries “most connected to the end user” have always been among the most advanced sectors, suggests Lau, who specifies: “Banks with fintechs, the retail sector and large information technology firms”.

Adapting digitally to the post-COVID customer

During these months of confinement, consumer behaviour has already revealed what’s to come – digital consumption will take off, and companies and their operating models will have to adapt to this new situation, says the Opinno report ‘RESTART: 10 Post-COVID-19 Trends’. They will do so by relying on mass automation (both physically, with robotics, and digitally, with artificial intelligence), and so it will be critical to remove friction from technology once and for all.

For example, “we have seen companies who have committed to digital channels and marketplaces to make up for the drop off in physical sales”, says Lau. This means that on a daily basis, workers also have to implement new skills. That is to say, the challenge of digital transformation goes in two directions – towards consumers and towards workers.

Accelerating the digital culturecan allow companies survive in the current situation, although this does require training. “Many companies are opting for education and training so that their staff can contribute in digital, changing environments”, states the CEO of KURIOS. One example of this isBBVA’s digital talent and culture development programme, Ninja, which makes it easier for employees to acquire technological knowledge and adopt a continuous learning culture thanks to gamification. The programme has already trained more than 9,000 of the bank’s employees in areas likemachine learningand experience design.

Certainly people have tolearn and continually adapt to the new digital landscape, because routines such as remote working are also going to become established as part of the new normal. According to a survey by IDC Research España entitled ‘Impact of COVID-19 on Spain’s IT market’, measures adopted by companies around smart working are seen as beneficial by 50% of companies, andthey are here to stay.

Talking about technology, theEuropean Commission’s‘Digital Transformation Scoreboard’identifiesnine essential technologiesfor digital transformation in business – 3D printing; big data and data analysis; mobile services; cybersecurity; cloud computing; social media; the Internet of Things; robotics and automation, and artificial intelligence.

A roadmap for post-COVID digitisation

With this multitude of factors, a company can pose a somewhat more practical question – which attitudes and skills must a company have in the middle of the year 2020 in order to complete a digital transformation?

Conscious that it needs to be adapted to each sector and particular situation, Carlos Lau has launched asimple guidewith four key values that can guidethis digitisation:

• Obsession with customers:“Particularly for companies that work directly with end users, they have to consider everything and build everything with them in mind. When doubts arise or in confusing situations, we put the customer in the middle of it all and answer the question, what do they really want?”.
• Agility is key:“We should haveagileas a value and as a philosophy, be incremental, adaptable and iterative, to mould the versions of our products and solutions according to customer feedback”.
• Experiment constantly:“Running many experiments every week lets you know very quickly what works and what doesn’t, to be able to discard ideas and to know what customers want”.

Be data driven:“You have to use all the data that you have around you. It’s not just a case of having them, it’s about using them to train your algorithms and make them useful”.

Open innovation is also key, as the expert reminds us: “It’s another mechanism of digital transformation. You have to build internally, but digitisation is also about collaborating with startups”.

One of the few certainties in these times is that change is the only constant. For Lau, “we shouldn’t let more than three months go by without acquiring new knowledge or skills, because the most important thing for a company is the ability to keep learning and to be adaptable”.