FINAL WORD
Change has been largely a reaction to society ’ s expectation for ‘ everything now ’ – which in turn has bled into customers ’ expectations in our working life .
In some respects , it ’ s hard to imagine a time before COVID-19 . A time in our society , the economy and the business community , where things were less strained and before our world was turned completely upside down by the devastating impact of a deadly virus . However , experts and industry would argue that even before COVID-19 was upon us , the world was already going through a period of great change . For many years now , businesses have been under intense pressure to digitally transform or lose out to the competition . Whether businesses were focused on adapting to changing consumer shopping habits , taking advantage of the benefits of cloud or using software to create new revenue streams , change has been largely a reaction to society ’ s expectation for ‘ everything now ’ – which in turn has bled into customers ’ expectations in our working life .
What is clear now is that the pandemic has amplified and accelerated this change . Last year , IDC predicted that more than half the global economy would turn digital by 2023 . While Digital Transformation was previously a slow burn for many companies , it instantly became an immediate imperative in order to survive . Overnight , businesses were dealing with the challenges of meeting the demand for contactless payments , healthcare organisations had to scramble to ensure reliable , compliant telemedicine methods and small businesses had to reconfigure their entire offering to make it suitable for e-commerce . As Microsoft ’ s CEO , Satya Nadella , aptly explained , the reality of COVID-19 meant that businesses were forced to implement two years ’ worth of Digital Transformation in just two months .
So , how did this rapid acceleration of Digital Transformation impact the IT department ? And how can businesses manage the associated risks of spinning up technologies quickly ?
The risk of tech debt caused by COVID
While the immediacy caused by the pandemic proved to business leaders that Digital Transformation projects could happen far faster than was previously thought possible , many IT departments were under such pressure to spin up technologies to support the business , that they often didn ’ t have the necessary time to complete their usual due diligence .
This involves the management of tech debt – the off-balance-sheet accumulation of all the technology work a company needs to do in the future . If this is continually deferred then it can prevent companies from being competitive as they spend their time not on innovation but managing the challenges hidden in the architecture – for example modernising systems , simplifying applications and retiring legacy databases . In fact , in a recent McKinsey survey , CIOs reported that 10 to 20 % of the technology budget dedicated to new products is diverted to resolving issues related to tech debt .
However , in the COVID-19 environment , the common challenges which typically hold back Digital Transformation projects don ’ t simply go away . CIOs still have to grapple with old infrastructure which isn ’ t designed for the modern digital age in that they can ’ t support critical data services or business models
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS Issue 36
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