I talked about workers, now how about customers. New survey of National Association of State Chief Information Officers. Quoting State Scoop: 94% said the pandemic had either “somewhat” or “dramatically” increased the demand for digital government services. While the public-health emergency has cooled somewhat over the course of the year, citizens’ growing expectations that their state governments be accessible online has prompted a surge in development, with one CIO telling the survey they oversaw “10 years worth of deployments in eight months.”
More broadly than just governments, Tech Republic looks at the SMB market in a new poll. Quoting the article:
Last year, 60% of respondents said that COVID-19 forced them to alter their digital transformation plans. That number increased to 62% this year.
Digital transformation priorities also changed year over year. In 2020, the majority of survey respondents (68%) focused on implementing remote digital tech that could facilitate collaboration, digital and online training (56%) and IT and business process automation (39%).
In 2021, however, only 32% of respondents were prioritizing collaboration technology for remote workers. Further, focusing on digital and online training decreased to 26% and IT business process automation only ranked high for 23% of respondents. Social media initiatives topped digital transformation projects for 23% of respondents last year, but that number decreased to 8% this year.
By far, digital capabilities centered around collaboration tools brought the greatest benefit for 42% respondents in 2021. Cloud-based computing for systems such as HR, CRM, ERP and office systems benefited 17% of respondents, and 8% of respondents cited data analytics as the digital tech delivering the most benefit.
And TechAisle too…. With a warning of uncertainty. The most significant proportion of SMBs – 42% of small businesses and 32% of midmarket firms – state that they are unsure of what the next 10-15 years will look like for their industry. Other SMBs worry about their ability to cope with the pace of change: an average of about 25% of SMBs report that they “are struggling to keep up with the pace of change,” and nearly 20% state that they “do not know if they will be able to complete over the next decade.” Against this backdrop, a cadre of forward-looking organizations – 15% of small businesses, roughly a quarter of midmarket firms – “are battling barriers to become a digital business by 2030.”
Why do we care?
Because we’re also not going back to what was from technology implementations. The landscape is moving pretty fast – those priorities shifted in just one year, probably because they addressed those issues in 2020 around collaboration because they had to. Now companies are moving onto new priorities… and struggling to keep up too.
In my editorial this weekend I pushed back on those who arent’t embracing change – not at reckless speed, but the core idea that technology services firms need to help in this space. The pace of change and the confusion on the future is a space to charge paths in… but not moving along leaves one behind faster than ever.