Digital Transformation Success Stories in a Post-Pandemic World

“Let me Skype you…. Cool send me the Zoom link”?

-Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, Volume 6, What happens if you Can’t Pay Rent?, Netflix?

Digital transformation has found its way into sustainable business strategies, be it through hired digital marketers or data analytics! It can look very different for different businesses, based on their goals, i.e., the systems or parts of systems they are willing to transform.?

Be it just through hired digital marketing experts- transforming their traditional advertising practices into copywriting, responsive and interactive design, digital marketing and paid advertisement models- or sales, or project management, or entire businesses, digital transformation can involve them all.?

Whatever it may be, it is imperative for today’s businesses, regardless of their age or size, to transform their operational processes to fit in with the ever-evolving technical landscape. This is so because otherwise your business will lose out on customers whose tastes and preferences are changing. To that end, remote digital marketers are game changers.?

However, with a successful digital transformation, not only can you meet your clients where they are and give them what they want, but also cut down on your competition by looking to build better quality products by having an edge over research and analysis inputs that go a long way in development and delivery. Hire digital marketers to conduct competitive and market research seamlessly.?

Mapping the Pandemic’s Acceleration of Digital Transformation?

In 2020, an unsuspecting virus called the COVID-19 took over the world and halted normal life processes almost altogether. Termed as a pandemic, this outbreak destroyed lives and changed the course of livelihood for millions, affecting the day-to-day order of business as we had known in the post-industrial, Age of Information era.?

This alteration in the day-to-day order of business had a lasting effect on how most business was conducted, beyond any of our imagination. First, remote work took over the world, gripping especially the world of IT. A mode of work that was mostly, if at all, only reserved for some very niche IT job roles, is now a part of the daily lives of many.?

Despite the fact that tech companies have trailblazed some modern office trends, including casual workwear, open office environments, and standing desks, some tech giants were against remote work for the longest time, according to many reports by reputed sources like Forbes. However, with the pandemic disrupting normal workflows, many had to curtail their regular office-based work.?

According to a paper on?the impact of Covid-19 on small business outcomes and expectations, 43% of surveyed U.S. companies had temporarily shut down a few weeks into the crisis. During the same time, 45% of both large and small businesses in the U.S. moved part of their staff to remote work, according to the National Association for Business Economists.?

Many other studies have also shown that many Silicon Valley companies had to cut over?40,000 jobs?by May 2020. A prime example being Uber, with over 7000 job cuts. To battle the growing employee dissatisfaction, flee expensive?locations and sell co-working spaces, homes, and cars, these businesses had no option other than digital transformation.?

Digital Transformation Success Stories Post-Pandemic?

1. Coursera- The educational technology (EdTech) industry has witnessed the highest recorded growth or digital transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, with academic institutions and other vocational education units shutting down their physical operational processes in the face of social distancing norms and moving them online. By getting leading companies to partner with them they helped the global response to tackling the educational as well as the unemployment crisis head on.?

2. IKEA- Some businesses find it harder to adopt digital transformation than others. Among them are healthcare and wellness providers, delivery and transportation, construction, manufacturing, installation, maintenance and repair, food preparation and service, protective services, and many others for obvious reasons. However, unlike them, a company that dominates the global furniture industry, IKEA, emerged as a pioneer in digital transformation. By adapting to new working practices, they have built a robust e-commerce platform from where their customers can now directly purchase their products and use their earlier brick and mortar stores and retail outlets more like fulfilment centers for a new kind of purchasing experience. This has not only given them an edge over their competitors but also tripled their online sales revenue, according to Harvard Business Review. Thanks in part to remote digital marketers.?

3. Zoom- Zoom Video Conferencing, or just “Zoom” for short, had a stratospheric rise in its share price during the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than a 500% increase at its peak, from the mid-March pre pandemic numbers. Evidently, a video conferencing platform, as both a safety and productivity tool, is supposed to do well during a time when social distancing evolves as a norm to restrict human contact for curbing the spread of infection or death. Hired digital marketers sure had a role to play in the promotion of this powerful product, that overpowered the popularity of some of its biggest competitors like Skype, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, but that is not all! As the Instagram bio of Zoom reads, it is “one platform delivering limitless human connection”. Its Freemium and Software as a Service (SaaS) business model not only allows seamless access to easy user interfaces, but also enables businesses to use custom features for their benefit.?

4. Instacart- The San Francisco-based online grocery delivery app not only revolutionized grocery delivery systems, an industry that could not be conceptualized in the digital realm for the longest while, but also functionalities for grocery retailers. For instance, their Instacart Platform offering serves up end-to-end omnichannel functionality by giving grocery retailers access to the technologies behind Instacart’s consumer marketplace: offering them e-commerce storefronts; online delivery and pickup for stores or warehouses; digital advertising; enhanced customer experience; and data tools for operational, customer and market insights, as per a Supermarket News article. With the help of hired digital marketing experts, they also created a strong social media presence that their online audience and potential clients could relate with.?