Digital Transformation in the Post-Covid Era
Tags: tutorial, cloud
Published: 2023-08-28 15:51:43

In 2020, the world has suddenly stopped due to the pandemic.  
A couple of years later, we began to see changes in the way both home consumers and organizations are using technology.  
## Common areas that have changed in the post-covid era
Here are a couple of areas that adapted in the post-covid era:  
### Customer support
Traditional engagement methods (such as phone calls, Fax, or even emails) have decreased in the past couple of years.  
Today, customers are looking for fast and mobile methods to connect to contact centers from anywhere – from using mobile apps to connecting via chat (in some cases even a chatbot is a viable solution).  
### The use of mobile apps
Customers are using mobile apps for more than a decade - from social networks (for personal interaction), e-commerce (for purchasing products), banking (checking account status, money transfer, etc.), travel (for ordering flight tickets or hotels), and more.  
The use of mobile apps is not something new, but in the past couple of years, we see customers using mobile for almost every step of their daily life.  
### The use of the public cloud
The public cloud has been in use for almost two decades, but during the Covid, more and more organizations began to see the benefits of the cloud and began migrating systems to the cloud.  
It is true, that there are still organizations choosing to invest in maintaining data centers for running their applications, but as time goes by, more and more organizations are embracing the public cloud.  
The fact that we pay for the resources we consume, and the (almost) infinite compute capacity, made the cloud very attractive to most organizations around the world – from large corporations to newly founded start-ups.  
### Hybrid work and work-life balance
In the post-covid era, more and more organizations are offering their employees the option of choosing whether to work from the office or from anywhere else, as long as the employee gets their work done.  
Employers understand the importance of work-life balance and began to respect employee's personal life, which decrease the levels of stress and creates satisfied and productive employees.  
### The use of AI
For many years, researchers have tried to teach computers how to support people in decision-making.  
In the past couple of years, we see AI/ML solutions for almost any area in human lives.  
From advising on which music should listen to (based on their past listening history), aiding doctors in providing better medical care to patients (based on their health status and technological improvements), using AI to quickly calculate customers' credit scores and be able to offer customers with relevant investment plans, and more.  
## How can organizations prepare for the digital transformation?
There are various areas where organizations should adapt and better prepare themselves for the digital transformation:  
### Customer-centric
Organizations should change their mindset and put their customers first.  
Conduct customer surveys and research what can provide your customers the most value, from better customer service to an easy-to-navigate mobile app or anything that will keep your customers satisfied.  
Be transparent with your customers, for example – if your organization is collecting personal data from customers, provide them with information about the data you are collecting, the purpose and what are you planning to do with the data, and allow your customers to choose whether to provide you their data.  
### Keep your employees engaged
Explain to your employees about the coming changes, allow them to provide their feedback, and be part of the process.  
As technology evolves, employees would like to re-invent themselves or even choose a different career path.  
An organization should support its employees and find ways to allow employees to expand their knowledge or even switch to a different role within the organization.  
Conduct training, allowing employees to expand their knowledge (from new ways to interact with customers, new technologies, new or modern development languages, and more).  
Allow your employees the ability to combine work from the office with remote work from home, to support employees' work-life balance.  
### Embrace the public cloud
No matter how professional your employees are, most of the chance your organization will never have the expertise of the public cloud providers, the scale, or the elasticity that the public cloud allows your organization and customers to get.  
Develop a cloud strategy that clearly defines what workloads or data can be migrated to the cloud and begin to modernize your applications.  
### Modernize your applications
Your organization may have many applications, already serving you and your customers.  
Now is the time to ask yourself, what applications are still providing you value and what applications can be modernized or re-architect and provide better usability, higher availability, and elasticity with lower cost.  
Consider embracing cloud-native applications and gain the full benefit of the public cloud.  
### Summary
Digital transformation is disrupting the way home consumers and organizations are using technology to make everyday life better.  
Every day we find new ways to consume information, purchase products, get better healthcare or financial services, or even better ways to conduct business and interact with our customers.  
To embrace digital transformation, we need to adapt to the change.  
If you have not done so yet, now is the time to jump on the digital transformation train.  
### About the Author
Eyal Estrin is a cloud and information security architect, and the author of the book [Cloud Security Handbook](https://amzn.to/3xMI4Ak), with more than 20 years in the IT industry.  
You can connect with him on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/eyalestrin).  
Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.