Back in the early 1990s, in the aftermath of a tough economic recession, I had some long heart-to-heart chats with the CEO of an ERP software company. His mood was pessimistic, as the sour economy had slowed down his business, and he was uncertain about support from IBM, which had its own problems at the time, and also controlled the underlying platform of his applications.
Those were still the days of first-generation corporate IT -- whose sole purpose was to improve the efficiency of business processes, keep customer records, and deliver reports.
Then, in the mid 1990s, something incredible happened with the IT profession. The technologists became market makers. They leapt from their roles as corporate efficiency drivers to business revolutionaries. With the advent of the commercial internet and web, IT professionals led the way in creating entirely new companies with different ways of engaging with customers and markets. Jeff Bezos, with his engineering and computer science background, launched Amazon. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, with their computer science degrees, launched Google. LinkedIn was launched by Reid Hoffman, another computer scientist. Of course, all had sizable and growing IT teams behind them.
In essence, IT professionals helped take what was a moribund, stale economic system and turned it into something dynamic. We've seen this at work in current times, as tech and data-driven disruptors such an Indigo Ag apply AI to improve seed quality, Rent the Runway apply data and AI to keep people well-dressed, and Stripe apply AI and connectivity to facilitate global e-payments. Behind every industry disruption are visionary IT professionals ready to change the world -- or at least the way we interact with the world.
Which brings us to the current state of affairs. The disruptors are being disrupted. The dispersal of corporate offices across a diaspora of home-based offices and the shutdown of economic activity due to responses to the tragic COVID-19 pandemic -- and its uncertain aftermath -- is creating a new environment and new challenges for IT professionals. Just as technology-savvy innovators upended the rotting economy of the 1990s, they will alter the course of business models in this era in ways we cannot predict. The question is, what do IT professionals need to do to keep things on track, keep their careers on track, and prepare their organizations for the post-COVID landscape ahead?
"If the pace of the pre-coronavirus world was already fast, the luxury of time now seems to have disappeared completely," relates a recent analysis from McKinsey Digital. "Businesses that once mapped digital strategy in one- to three-year phases must now scale their initiatives in a matter of days or weeks." As explored in our previous post here at ZDNet, the COVID-19 crisis is an accelerant that is pushing even the most reluctant businesses into hyper-digital mode. McKinsey notes that "Asian banks have swiftly migrated physical channels online. How healthcare providers have moved rapidly into telehealth, insurers into self-service claims assessment, and retailers into contactless shopping and delivery."
This means it's a time for action not only among tech entrepreneurs, but also for the IT professionals providing the basic services related to process efficiency, customer records and reporting. Overnight, every company has been thrust into "a world in which digital channels become the primary, and, in some cases, sole, customer-engagement model," the co-authors of the McKinsey analysis -- Simon Blackburn, Laura LaBerge, Clayton O'Toole, and Jeremy Schneider, state. "Automated processes become a primary driver of productivity -- and the basis of flexible, transparent, and stable supply chains. A world in which agile ways of working are a prerequisite to meeting seemingly daily changes to customer behavior."
Welcome to the year 2025, suddenly pushed 60 months forward. It's time to make bold moves forward with technology. Those digital dreams that have been simmering on the back burner need to be brought forward -- and IT professionals need to step up and lead the way. Blackburn and his co-authors even have data that shows boldness with technology moves keeps businesses ahead of the game. Almost half of incumbent companies adopting new digital ways, 47%, saw revenue growth exceeding 10% annually over the past three years, versus 30% of their slower-to-adopt counterparts.
To accelerate digital adoption and meet the needs of a suddenly changed world, the McKinsey analysts make a series of recommendations -- which again, mean new roles and leadership opportunities for IT professionals:
This is the time to simplify and focus to avoid being overwhelmed, the McKinsey team adds. "This is perhaps the first global crisis in which companies are in the position to collect and evaluate real-time data about their customers and what they are doing, or trying to do, during this time of forced virtualization. Pruning activities and offerings that are no longer viable while aggressively fixing issues that arise with your offerings will help increase the chance of keeping a higher share of customers in your lower-cost, digital channels once the crisis passes."