After months of writing about the acceleration of digital transformation that has been brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, I have finally come up with a name for the early months that sent organizations the world round scurrying to go remote while keeping the lights on at their businesses. I am calling it the Great Scramble of 2020. Not the most imaginative name mind you, but after having spoken with more than my fair share of industry experts and leaders, it paints a picture of both how unprepared we all were for the moment that the virus up and disrupted most everything that we thought we knew about how businesses were run over the past half century.
Sure, there were plenty of those in tech who have been working remote and migrating towards the cloud for a decade. But despite the advances of technology, the vast majority of organizations still rely on legacy technology systems.
For many of these organizations, they have had digital transformation on their roadmap for some time. But it has never been a top priority and the rollout was slated to take two to three years.
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David Spears[/caption]
But now, organizations are realizing that the time has come to move past survival mode and progress into making their digital transformation a competitive advantage.
For many of the large enterprises out there, this transformation revolves around their use of the Microsoft collaboration platform, especially as it comes to communication with their colleagues and customers.
Hoping to get a better understanding of how the market is handling the transformation nearly eight months into the pandemic and where the gaps are that need to be closed to reach the next stage, we caught up with David Spears, Tata Communications’ Director of Microsoft Cloud Solutions.
He explains how his company is helping their customers to automate their digital transformation and prepare themselves for the next evolution of business.
Meeting the New Normal Head On
“COVID-19 caused a leapfrog of a scenario that we were probably heading to, long-term,” Spears tells UC Today. “The world has changed and we have to change how we work in order to map to the new way of work.”
“I think that what organizations need to understand is that in order to survive and be competitive, you've got to really think about the foundation of your business, and ask if it is ready for the new way of work?"
“Most organizations are not yet ready for the new way of working and the ones that get there first will win, because they will be ahead of their competition,” he says, driving home the point that most businesses are busy working out where they need to be and how to get there instead of focusing on their core business in ways that will let them grow. Not just survive, but thrive.
