Technology Challenges of a Post-Covid World

As restaurants and cinemas open-up, life is returning to normal cautiously.

IT teams did a commendable job of going into a sudden lockdown keeping the lights on, what do they need to do as customers come back?

I doubt if anyone really expects to “go back” to the pre-Covid business environment. New business and people strategies are being drawn up and these have deep implications for the CIO.

Here’s my take on Post-Lockdown business changes and implications for IT strategy:

1. Changes in store/branch economics - Lower footfalls means that branch viability has to be reworked.

Implications for IT: Tech to replace other resources, Increased innovation experiments, reduced tolerance for downtime

2. Era of greater unpredictability - Assumptions of long life of assets can no longer be made. ‘Agile IT for agility’

Implications for IT: Low sunk cost projects, plug n play, true scalability & reduced customization

3. Emergence of New Business opportunities – Opportunities for global manufacturing, diversification, sudden burst of demand or scaling up of dwarf sectors

Implications for IT: Business model agnostic design & policies, Quick roll-outs, modular approach, standardisation & central monitoring

4. New Employer-Employee Contract - G More performance pay, greater accountability, more flexibility, more gig workers providing specific deliverables

Implications for IT: Enable & support Work from Anywhere, balance individual privacy & measuring work effort, end-user self care, simplification

Cloud computing, SaaS, SD WAN, edge security, zero-trust, IoT etc may be some tools that IT could use better.

If Covid triggered your biggest digital push, post-Covid could do it even better.