The business landscape has changed drastically as more people use their smart devices because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For some, it is like an opportunity as the situation enables brands to use the technological advancements in customer experience. They gather, engage, and retain customers’ loyalty.
The new normal that we’re practicing now – at least until the vaccine is ready – customer engagement and experience matter even more. Customers now use their mobile devices for almost everything. Hence, the need for digital is growing exponentially. Many businesses have re-strategize their marketing campaign, putting digital transformation as their priority.
For instance, some industries such as Services, Retail, Travel, and Food have adopted mobile marketing and engagement as their digital transformation strategy. Also, IDC reported, to retain customers and improve their experience before the end of 2020, two-thirds of the CEO’s of Global 2000 companies will transition from orthodox, offline strategies to more modern digital strategies.
Spending To Transform
At the same time, shifting to digital has increased their budget. The increase happened even before the pandemic hit our shores. In 2018, the net global spending on digital transformation was estimated to be $1 trillion. Plus, we can see the number increase to more than $2 trillion by 2022.
Meanwhile, 79 percent of businesses increased their budget for digital transformation because of COVID-19.
The International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Digital Transformation Spending Guide concurs that despite the challenges caused by the pandemic, the digital transformation of organizations will continue at a steady rate. They forecast the shift to increase by 10.4 percent in 2020 to $1.3 trillion.
Ascend To The Cloud
However, some businesses are heavily affected because of the pandemic, has to choose between engaging customers digitally or reducing costs. Or they have to figure out how to engage their customers and reduce costs simultaneously.
Because of the sudden rise of digital interactions and online activities, businesses are relying on their infrastructure that couldn’t keep up with the demands. Consequently, this reduces customer experience and leads to customer churn.
Nevertheless, adding new hardware is no longer a viable solution. Businesses that are transitioning to digital are looking at cloud data platforms. With it, they have better options in modernizing legacy databases. Furthermore, the benefits of moving and backing up data to the cloud are:
- Reduce specialized hardware costs without giving up a business continuity
- Reduce database or data warehouse licensing costs
- Maximize resources by paying only for the resources used
- Increase data load without the downtime and implement AI machine learning models on enterprise data
- Preserve all existing code and reports without rewriting them
With this in mind, for businesses to survive and grow, they need to have a strong recovery and risk-mitigation strategy. It is even more crucial for them to focus on long-term viability. Hence, they need to keep the culture of continuous innovation and pursue digital transformation.
