Winners in a pandemic-affected world

On March 11 this year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared that the Covid-19 outbreak was a pandemic. During the last one year, this pandemic has spiralled into an unprecedented global crisis, which has adversely affected the lives and livelihoods of billions.

Bangladesh was not immune to this crisis. Like many countries across the world, the people of Bangladesh observed stay-at-home orders for many months ever since a nationwide lockdown was announced on March 26, 2020.

The Covid-19 outbreak was first detected in early December 2019 and eventually spread worldwide, resulting in nationwide lockdowns. It also resulted in the complete shutdown of industrial and economic activities for a certain period in many countries, including Bangladesh and most South Asian countries.

While healthcare professionals worldwide have been working tirelessly to attend to patients who have tested positive for Covid-19, scientists have been striving to develop vaccines and effective medicines during this last one year.

There has been very significant advancement in science and technology.

A typical multi-year vaccine development timeline has been shortened to less than a year due to proactive global collaboration between research communities, accelerated data-sharing through the use of advanced storage and communication technologies, and the use of sophisticated computers and algorithms.

All these initiatives have taken forward research activities rapidly.

With the initiation of vaccination programmes in many countries, we expect to witness unprecedented achievements in the manufacturing and supply chain segments.  Worldwide, billions of people are being vaccinated at a rapid pace due to major advancements in manufacturing and supply chains that have been modernised through the adoption of advanced technology.

The speed of vaccination witnessed has led to expectations that economic activities will return to pre-pandemic levels very soon.  However, the risk of another virulent infection of the scale we have witnessed cannot be ruled out in the future.

In fact, we are aware that the Covid-19 virus is mutating in many countries and spreading infection at a faster pace than during the past year.

Therefore, businesses, governments and other stakeholders must start learning how they can manage the risk of the occurrence of another pandemic and be productively engaged in economic activities simultaneously.

During this one-year period, technology, especially collaborative and communicative technologies, has become the single-largest contributor to the continuation of businesses.

Business leaders, decision-makers and knowledge workers have been working from home or remotely and communicating with each other by using communication devices and digital infrastructure.

Physical meetings have been largely substituted by video interactions, which have become the norm for both one-to-one and group meetings.

Well-established digital infrastructure has played an important role in business continuity during the lockdown.

For example, Bangladesh had a little less than 100 million internet subscribers in February 2020, according to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).

This number has grown by 13 per cent during the past one year and reached nearly 113 million internet subscribers in February 2021, according to the regulator.

Moreover, the number of subscribers for fixed line internet connections has jumped by 67 per cent during this period, from 5.7 million to 9.5 million, as per the data published by the regulator.

The existence of an already large subscriber base had reduced the last-minute rush to obtain new internet connections at the onset of the pandemic and lockdown.

However, the infrastructure has continued to support the additional demand for high-speed internet and kept pace with the rapid growth in the number of fixed line subscribers during this trying time. Collectively, this has enabled business participants to accelerate their use of digital communication and sustain their business activities in many areas.

Storage infrastructure such as cloud has played a critical role during this last one-year. Most established communication services have been hosted on cloud platforms. This has helped service providers scale up rapidly with the increasing demand for communication services.

Had communication infrastructure been hosted by individual businesses within their data centres, it would not have been possible for them to engage in virtual communications on such a large scale.

Companies that hosted their email and instant messaging services on cloud infrastructure also benefitted from their usage of technology.

Most of them could successfully lock their physical offices because they did not have to keep their data centres operational to run their email systems.

Companies that had their document storage and collaboration systems on cloud could also realise the benefits of utilising their digital infrastructure for business continuity. Many of them have begun digitally signing and executing documents instead of printing and physically signing these.

Prior to the lockdown, many companies in Bangladesh had already embarked on a journey of digital transformation. They had successfully implemented their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and business intelligence systems on cloud and are now realising the benefits of their initiatives.

Digital transformation enabled such companies to continue with many of their functions such as managing receivables and payments even during the lockdown. Companies that have used cloud platforms to implement their ERP systems have been able to continue their business activities more effectively than others that did not do this.

Companies that did not rely on technology or had old technologies in place have been adversely affected by the lockdown. Many of them struggled to continue with their business operations as stay-at-home orders were issued and the authorities instructed companies to lock down their premises or facilities.

Some of these organisations were agile enough to adapt to the reality and quickly migrated to cloud-based infrastructure. This enabled them to maintain their business continuity to a certain extent.

Others had to simply pause their operations during this period.

As the importance and contribution of technology for maintenance of business continuity is being firmly established, business leaders should start thinking seriously about how they can use technology effectively in the post-pandemic world. Evolving health and safety norms, such as maintenance of a safe physical distance at workplaces, have compelled many companies to rethink and redesign their ways of working.

Assisting workforce with the addition of relevant automation through digital transformation has gained momentum. This trend is expected to continue for the next couple of years.

Many companies have started designing their business processes in such a way that their marketing and sales personnel do not need to visit their corporate offices every day. Automating the activities of such personnel is helping them to work efficiently without visiting their offices, and is also helping senior management monitor their day-to-day activities and output.

It is expected that adoption of packaged solutions such as customer relationship management (CRM) solutions will gradually increase in many companies in Bangladesh.

Other functions such as finance, administration and human capital management will also benefit substantially by the adoption of technology through digital transformation.

However, it is important for organisations to focus on upskilling their workforce to enable them to adopt these new technologies. In this scenario, digital upskilling of their workforce will become an important task for human capital development in enterprises as they continue to adopt new technologies through their digital transformation initiatives.

Industries that reinvent themselves by adopting technology will find a significant opportunity to grow in the post Covid-19 'new normal' period.

For example, the education sector will find multiple opportunities to deliver their services through online mediums; Education Technology (EduTech) began emerging as a prominent sector during the lockdown period, and a number of schools and colleges have started conducting virtual classes by using products and services developed by EduTech companies. 

Such emerging sectors will create enormous potential for technology-led start-up companies to innovate new products and services and make a significant impact in the industry. With the right kind of incubation-related support and handholding, some of these technology-led start-up companies in Bangladesh may also emerge as winners in this pandemic-affected world.

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted most businesses in Bangladesh and worldwide. It has, however, also been creating numerous opportunities for adoption of technology and has been making organisations, their leaders and their workforce ready for the new normal.

In this scenario, as the economy is gradually reverting to its usual pace of growth, digital transformation and adoption of technology can help many businesses rise like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes and become winners in a pandemic-affected world.

The writer is a partner at PwC. The views expressed here are personal.