Digital Adaptation during and post COVID -19

COVID 19 has changed life the way we know it and many organizations were not ready for how much change was going to occur from the stay at home orders across the globe. Leading to an almost standstill in the business world. While some companies struggle, others are thriving. Amazon is hiring more people due to increased demand. Safe Boda, Jumia, Standard Chartered, Stanbic are among the businesses that are thriving in Uganda. One common theme of those thriving is the digital integration of all the processes in these organizations.

Without a doubt, the lockdown has forced many organizations to have some sort of digital integration into the system to foster business continuity in order to survive as no one knows when it will end.

So what can you do if you fall in group C

1. It can not be business as usual. The heads of the organization need to eat, sleep and breathe digital going forward.
2. Companies should use this time to figure out what works for them, as many of them have gone digital out of necessity and the need to survive. Not to mention, the market is overflooded with companies selling digital solutions. This way they will be able to identify the digital systems that will yield the best results.
3. Invest, invest, invest. Most companies either could not afford the hefty cost of digitalization or didn't think it was necessary for their business processes. The initial investment will be high no doubt from designing and installing the system to the training of employees. The sad reality is there is no choice but to make the investment. The one upside is many digital solutions have been born during the shutdown and hopefully the cost will be more affordable.
4. Partnerships, depending on your needs, companies need to seek out partnerships that will enhance their business processes from payment to delivery, mobile money is a widely used option in Uganda and East Africa and for some industries that require some form of human contact, especially at the end of the process, partnerships with delivery services such as safe boda would reduce the cost of the initial investment.

As the world grapples with COVID 19, brands that are already in digital heaven are most likely to come on top of this pandemic as people are being forced to use services they had not considered using before and will most likely continue fraternizing them, it is not too late for laggards to catch up because the way we do business will never be the same again and if these companies choose to ignore the digital wave, they run a risk of becoming extinct in the new decade.