Can harnessing technology’s transformative powers help leaders forge a path through and beyond COVID-19?

Even before the COVID-19 crisis struck, the world was in the midst of a powerful technological revolution with far-reaching implications for organizations. EY’s recent survey, Tech Horizon: leadership perspectives on technology and transformation, found that organizations that had successfully harnessed the power of disruption to drive their transformation initiatives were more likely than their peers to achieve a 10% increase in revenues and profits.

In today’s unprecedented circumstances, most leaders are understandably more focused on how they can use technological tools to achieve short-term enterprise resilience rather than drive long-term growth. Nevertheless, the process of transformation is continuing to accelerate amid the pandemic. For example, businesses around the world switched to large-scale remote working processes within weeks this year, making even greater use of technology as they focused on ways to engage their people and serve their customers.

Today, with lockdown measures varying per market it is clear that we face an extended period of disruption as a result of COVID-19. So, an evolving challenge facing COOs and CIOs relates to how they can sustain the operations of their businesses during this time. Organizational resilience is a priority since the pandemic poses major threats in a number of areas, including employee health and well-being, supply chain effectiveness, financial management, and technology and information security. 

To build organizational resilience in this difficult environment, COOs and CIOs need to apply the same principles that they would apply to any other transformation initiative. In other words, they need to put humans right at the center of everything they do, deploy technology at speed, and look to achieve innovation at scale. With this mindset, they can go forward and take the necessary actions that will allow them to transform their organizations.

So, which actions should they take?

Action plan for COOs

From talking to our clients, I know that COOs have been responding to this period of widespread uncertainty by prioritizing humans in their crisis response. They have provided enhanced support services to their people, and communicated regularly with them, as well as with customers and stakeholders. They have put crisis command centers in place, which are overseeing day-to-day operations on a business-as-usual basis. What’s more, they are looking ahead and devising strategies to keep their businesses sustainable in the future.

So, what happens next and beyond? COOs are starting to look at revising the organization’s resilience governance structure, by integrating key stakeholders from across business functions, crisis management, continuity, technology and security services. Other priorities include regular performance testing and addressing resilience challenges in the supply chain – for example, reduced service from critical suppliers.

Looking even further ahead, COOs are aiming to embed resilience into their organization’s day-to-day business operations. New controls will be included in enterprise lifecycles while resilience platforms will be used for ongoing crisis management. COOs will be proactive about re-evaluating business processes and learning lessons that will enable the organization to serve its customers better.

Action plan for CIOs

While COOs are paying keen attention to operational resilience, CIOs are addressing the technological resilience of their organizations. New threats and anomalies can be disguised by a rapidly evolving environment where traffic patterns are changing, and a plethora of connected devices have network access. During the crisis, many CIOs have added extra capacity to key infrastructure and updated network policies to ensure appropriate protection and performance across end users and applications. They have revised and renewed their contractual relationships with technology providers and invested in cloud-based tools that enable their remote workforces to collaborate more effectively.

With resilience addressed, CIOs are now looking to modernize their infrastructure solution capabilities so that the organization benefits from faster and more automated systems. They are looking to develop next-generation, software-defined network architecture intelligence and security. Additionally, they want to re-evaluate the effectiveness of enterprise collaboration and communication methods including voice, video and collaboration tools.

Beyond that, the priority for CIOs will be to explore the potential of automation and artificial intelligence methods for IT Operations (AIOps). These will enable organizations to improve their provisioning speed, optimize their operational costs, and gain more visibility and control over their on-premise and multi-cloud infrastructure. In addition, CIOs with a higher ‘transformation IQ’ are proactively partnering with LoBs and corporate functions to bring innovative technological advancements in support of higher operational resilience and throughput (e.g.; intelligent workflow and chatbots to amplify the capacity of HR helpdesk professionals).

Humans and ecosystems

Sorting out the operational and technological challenges of resilience and recovery are not enough. The pre-COVID rapidly evolving expectations of customers and employees has only been accelerated and made more complex by the pandemic. Our Tech Horizon research highlighted that, above all else, successful business transformation relies on organizations putting humans at the center of their strategies – by focusing on customers and nurturing talent. That principle applies just as much in the context of business continuity as it does in the context of business growth – if not more so. Right now, the sustainability of every organization is inextricably linked to its capacity to engage effectively with both its people and its customers.  

Similarly, our research highlighted the importance of ecosystems to organizations that are transformation leaders. Three-quarters (75%) of the transformation leaders we surveyed were investing more in ecosystem partnerships than they had a year ago. Again, ecosystems are crucial to business continuity – the survival of every organization depends on its ability to interact with, and support, the other members of its ecosystem.

These are the most difficult business conditions that most COOs and CIOs have ever experienced. Yet, times that test organizations can also be periods of opportunity and reinvention. This crisis will allow COOs and CIOs to completely rethink how their organization can sustain its operations and engage with its people – especially because remote working will become even more commonplace in future.

Post COVID-19, we will be living and working in a world that has evolved to address the changing needs of people – both customers and employees. It will also be a world that has been even further transformed by technology. The leaders of tomorrow know that – and they are preparing for it today.