Escaping the Catch-22 of Post-COVID Digitalization

Innovation expert

COVID-19 has escalated and turbo-charged digital transformation across the globe. Prior to COVID, many organizations planned to build out more options for their employees to be more productive by working remotely. They planned to create a way for customers to interact with them and buy from them online, and allow for their management teams to have dashboard views of their internal productivity and customer interactions. Most planned for these enhancements to be phased in over the next few years.

Now digital transformation is a necessity for successful business in a post-COVID economy. Yet companies without those capabilities already integrated in will struggle to build them.

With the onset of social distancing measures and state mandates for keeping business fronts closed, remote work has never been more essential. It’s not just for the sake of productivity, but for safety–and ultimately, worker engagement.

Success is now incumbent on a company’s ability to adapt, and in this day and age adapting means moving more to online services. Companies must have online customer portal(s) for the web and mobile, whether they’re a B2C or B2B company. Customers will go somewhere else if these companies do not.

But there’s a Catch-22…

The companies most in need of these capabilities are hampered so much from lacking them, they feel they can’t afford them… 

Many of the solutions to these challenges are capabilities the tech industry has ready to go. The challenge is how to implement them in the midst of a recession when revenues may be dropping, and when workforces operating without these tools are significantly hampered in their collaboration. Many internal tech teams lack the experience of bringing these capabilities to fruition.

This is why outside expertise has never been more critical or valuable to aid in the integration of digital capabilities.

Companies can’t afford mistakes or delays in this critical moment. Bringing in outside expertise not only helps to ensure companies avoid missteps, but to also ensure organizations get the “biggest bang for their (limited) buck.” It’s a tough thing to allocate funds to a consultant during a downturn. Companies who’ve been forced to lay off some of their valued workforce are loathe to turn around and “bring in outsiders” for any purpose. But failing to address this emergency need may doom many companies to further pain, and will increase the likelihood of their eventual failure.

It will take courage for CEOs to escape the Catch-22 in which they find themselves trapped, but we’re seeing businesses and organizations all around the world taking those first steps and adapting to a new environment. Innovation Vista’s team is ready to come alongside your business and begin the process of equipping it for digital transformation.

Contact us to start a conversation about how Innovation Vista can help your organization escape the Catch-22 trap and build these digital innovations; they’re needed more than ever, and needed to enable your company to innovate in other ways.