Covid19- World meets her Digital Twin: Part 3

Hope you liked the second part of the article, please check the link below for you to recap.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/covid19-world-meets-her-digital-twin-part-2-dc-/

I concluded the second part of the article with this picture below. This clearly shows what people are busy leveraging during this lock down period. Zoom & other video conferencing based collaborative tools are seeing the spike in the download, in addition to the ones that are used for the social connect be it google hangouts & others that are available for free downloads. TicToc has become the medium for expression for talent, hobbies, and passion. While we see them as a sigh of relief to connect and kill the boredom, the real technologies we need to rebound the post Covid economy are still gearing up to deliver. 

The total global economy impact of covid19 is estimated around is 8 -9 Trillion USD , which is approximately 9-10% of the world GDP. US allocated 10% of their GDP, that is around 2 trillion dollars to tackle Covid and invest in the rebound. The estimated job losses in US already exceeded the financial crisis of 2008 and likely to hit 4 million number in the next couple of weeks. Now think about the other developing countries like India where the unorganized sector already experienced a job loss of over 30 million & possibly, we can expect 1/10 of this number in the organized sector as well. Covid19 crisis is hitting below the belt for both supply as well as demand, its bit different from other crisis where supply was excess, but demand was less or vice-versa. This is the first time in a century, we are seeing the entire giant wheel of economy coming to a grinding halt, which was spinning at a mad rate before the pandemic. Thanks to the government stimulus package, Liquidity will come to the market once the lockdowns are lifted either fully or in phases depending upon the severity of the virus spread in each of the countries.

I see there is a big opportunity for Equilibrium, balancing the play between the Industry giants vs the Digital natives. The classic example would be the play between Walmart and Amazon. We see both of them hiring thousands of employees as against other major companies who are laying off the workforce. The surge of demand for household essential goods but with limited brick & mortar stores operating, the shift is to the eCommerce & logistics players to deliver the products through the workforce practicing contactless service.

The equilibrium here is the technology equilibrium, how the digital technologies are going to be leveraged in addition to the workforce. Indeed, one could see the current times as the first real test of the digital-first business , For instance, the shift from cash to digital payments is clearly accelerating ( 31 countries have lifted contactless payment limits this year to support social distancing measures). The businesses that have designed their solutions to use the full potential of cloud computing, will not be hit that bad by this lockdown as compared to ones that are more dependent on their on-premise infrastructure. For instance, the cloud gives businesses easy access to digital payment methods. It has enabled companies to continue working, by rapidly and securely providing access to business applications to their employees working at home. Yet it also provides financial flexibility, allowing those seeing a slow-down to wind down the technology costs of business lines that are facing challenges.

The crisis will cull out the traditional business models and force to the businesses to converge towards digital technologies. I see the major investment will now be made in the direct digital business models as against the conventional spend on the Infrastructure. For example, the real estate and posh offices will no longer be a differentiator rather empowering the workforce with digital nervous system for them to connect and leverage the data, intelligence and virtual experience of the team across the globe will be more meaningful investment.

Think of a situation where people use office spaces for more of collaboration point rather than a necessity to drop in and drop out for 8 hrs of work. The time that is cut of commutation could be used for another good discussion with your customer or partner. A welcoming home office investment sponsored by the company for making your work from home much comfortable than what it is today. Lot of us figured out that we need a better place at home for 9 hrs productive work, not just locking ourselves in a room without much of space and ventilation. The digital disruption is growing beyond the walls of the corporate and its branching towards our home and personal space. The focus is shifting towards the value rather than differentiator approach, how valuable are my investments today for providing a service to my customer at their affordable cost that's equilibrium we are talking about, can we cut cost so we can retain the work force to delivery the same optimal quality through digital enablement meaning enable the Digital twins for the physical infrastructure.

Watch this space for more insights on this topic.

I welcome your thoughts, opinion and feedback.

Cheers

Dinesh Chandrasekar DC*