The digital unlock of 2020

This global pandemic has caused such astounding blows to so many parts of our community, society and economy. From a commercial point of view, the public and private sectors have worked feverishly to rotate from analog to digital, from physical to virtual. And in doing so, another technology wave swelled up — quickly. 2020 changed the way we work.

What was so remarkable about 2020 was the pace of tech adoption. The public sector, the large enterprises, the mid-market, and the all-important small businesses too — each procured, deployed, and built software solutions as their defensive and offensive responses to the massive downdraft that was 2020. This past year marks the first year in my almost thirty years of business experience where the alignment between market needs and the availability of solutions was so in tune. The shift to cloud and mobile over the past decade set the stage for markets to shift to digital at record pace. Now, the IT topography allows organizations to be free to pick the best tool, to address a specific need, and to build their optimal solution to serve their employees and customers alike. Gone are the days of enterprise tech ignoring the end user. 

2020 was fierce, of that there is no doubt. However, the response from the Canadian entrepreneur has been more than commendable. We know waves are caused by a recipe of speed, time and distance, and all three compressed hugely as COVID realities were addressed by many resilient Canadian entrepreneurs and leaders. To apply this type of rapidity to the advancement of technologies, there must be a series of forces driving this shift — and we haven’t seen forces stack up like this since the mid-1990s and the dawn of the commercial web. With that, here are three forces driving increased adoption of technology today. 

Force #1: COVID-19

COVID-19 produces challenges for everyone, and this pandemic has either pushed Canadian small businesses online or out. According to Statistics Canada, in 2017, only 33 percent of firms in retail had adopted advanced technologies, and 46 percent of firms in retail thought that investing in tech was “not applicable to business activities.” 

Fast forward to this year, when technology is the lifeline for retailers. The (online) Black Friday and Cyber Monday numbers industry leaders reported this year were unprecedented. The biggest players are scaling at rates we’ve never seen before, and the ecosystems that support them are in hyper growth — from service companies that deploy these technologies and build apps in these ecosystems (WeCommerce is a good Canadian example from the west coast), all the way to logistics, warehousing, and delivery. 

And, of course, it’s not just retail. Remote work is a new normal for many industries, and we’ve been forced to pressure test our capacity to work differently and digitally — something many Canadian businesses simply weren’t prepared for. 

That said, I’m confident that, even as we enter into this new vaccine phase, the global economy will finally default to our new and ubiquitous interconnection through technologies. As we reopen closed doors, 82% of companies plan to allow their employees to work from home sometimes, and nearly half plan to offer a fully remote model, according to Gartner. 

Activity-based workplaces will become more popular, offering employees the choice between multiple different workspaces designed for different tasks — the concept of “Choose Your Own Adventure” applied to the office — from client meeting rooms to unstructured co-working spaces, etc. The worker commuting an hour only to sit down, plug in and work has surely lost its appeal. (Did that ever make sense?)

The tech CEO always knew her business’ success was dependent on constant and rapid evolution to stay at the fore adoption and deployment of technologies, and now that is arguably true for every C-Suite, everywhere. Did every CEO just become a tech CEO? In part, they certainly did. It took a pandemic, it seems. 

Force #2: Low code / no code

Low and no code platforms require little to no coding to be done as applications are built. These software platforms are designed to empower non-technical users to build web applications easily. Microsoft’s Power Apps, Amazon’s Honeycode, Google’s AppSheet — all in-market and scaling quickly. Further examples include Webflow, Bubble, Notion, Shopify, and Squarespace. This train has left the station.

Low and no code platforms have had a massive impact on businesses and their capacity to digitize (themselves) — to solve their analog-to-digital problems in-house, to transition to virtual, to delve into e-commerce, to bring their workflows to the web — particularly this year, as we’ve shifted towards digital in all aspects of our lives.

These technologies have also forced traditional service providers to evolve their offerings, while creating a whole new crop of innovators to build businesses around these new(ish) ecosystems.

Force #3: API-first

At its most basic level, an Application Programming Interface (API) is a software interface that defines interactions between applications or systems. An API provides the capacity for an application to communicate data to another. APIs are the reason we don’t hear about huge software integrations anymore — they deliver integrations.

For example, a product that the PwC Products team and I are building today, Active Workforce, turns data into knowledge through a chat interface. I can open Google Chat and ask Active Workforce a question anytime. The response, while delivered by the core application itself, is sourced through an API making a call to another system’s API. API connections can be made to Human Capital Management systems, Customer Relationship Management systems, Enterprise Resource Planning systems, etc. — and the knowledge comes to the user through data provided by the APIs, delivered through the chat interface. Easy through APIs, hard otherwise.

Just as low and no code platforms have changed the build and deployment models for websites and cloud applications, APIs have changed the interoperability of our software. Pure-play API companies (like Mulesoft, Snaplogic or Tray.io) have serviced this gap by making a host of APIs accessible and changing the scale and economics of application interoperability.

API-first is an architectural shift in how software is designed and built. The shift acknowledges that the end product will be consumed, delivered, and experienced in a multitude of ways. As a component in another experience, as a destination in a web-facing application, as part of a larger enterprise solution. The API drives atomization of the functionality being built and can create real scale. Build it once, maintain it once, and have it consumed and used often.

What’s next?

Building. Canada has, since time immemorial, been replete with great people who rise to challenges. We’ve got exactly what this building moment calls for — resolve. Let’s use the compression of this pandemic, and the opportunity that the promise of a vaccine presents, to build at rates we haven’t seen in generations.

The OECD listed Canada as one of the world’s leading countries for start-ups. We’re one of the most educated workforces in the world, and ~3 million of us are STEM graduates. Start-ups are a wager on the space between the current state and the future, optimal state, and Canadian start-ups have a great track record in closing that gap.

This revolution towards an optimal future state is not, however, limited to start-ups. Established enterprises and public sector institutions are also striving to feed the engines of positive evolution when it comes to their own operations.

The tech required to drive the “future of work” is available, and the opportunity before us is to finalize the changes in how we work. The costs associated with digital transformation are amongst the most important investments a business can make. It’s no longer about aligning transformation strategies to our corporate strategies — they’re one and the same. 

And yet, there’s still a push-pull effect occurring in-market — the juxtaposition between the new, modern company with tech at the core, and the older, more established operations doing their utmost to inject technologies into time-tested processes. Having had the pleasure of building in both scenarios, I know firsthand that each has its advantages and its challenges. Don’t cast either aside.

At PwC, we are on a constant quest to better our clients’ experience and to deliver more value to our client work through technologies. From our New World New Skills global program that upskills our teams and those of our clients, to our PwC Products offering of software solutions that create competitive advantage for our firm (and, more importantly, for our clients), our firm is walking the walk and building into the headwind that was 2020.

The long-term success of any business is ultimately measured by its ability to transform. 40% of companies that experienced the biggest revenue hits in recent years stated they had fallen behind in their use of digital technologies. The worst investment decision we can make is to not make one. 

With 2020 just about in our rear view, here’s to building a healthy and prosperous 2021 for all.