Struck by Thunder

How Digital Transformation was the shield against the negative economic implications of the COVID 19 Pandemic.

What often hurts most when you are struck with a surprising unaccounted for event is the surprise element. It is the shock factor that entirely paralyzes us.

We have all -more or less- experienced this lightning strick mid-March with the emergence of the so-called "COVID 19 Pandemic". While I have infinite reservations of the whole episode and its origins, reasons, and crisis management worldwide starting with the WHO cascaded down to every leading responsible health institution. However, it is still a crisis; on multi-levels health, social and economic.

The fast spread of the virus has led to an almost complete clinical death of the economy mainly driven by fear of the unknown. We all paused voluntary or involuntary and quite justifiably but after ten entire weeks of lockdown it has become apparent that such paralysis is driving the world to an end with much more frightening unfortunate events that could emerge.

"Business Leaders & Business Owners are coming to the realization that avoiding life isn't necessarily making peace with the virus"

tribute to Virginia Woolf.

It is transforming the way we live and work which will bring about some level of safety and peace of mind, as well as ensure life's fast beats are maintainable.

Throughout my twenty-five years of career as a business analyst, I have examined endless business organizations, work practices, and professional settings that desperately needed redesign and improvement.

Some of these malpractices lies at the core of the transformative journey every business should have started;

• Lack of common vision and a privately-held encoded strategy, if at all.
• Non-existent/ Ambiguous or pretentious processes to get your product or service to your end customer which almost inevitably causes poor communication in long never-ending meetings and ultimately leads to unmeasurable or superficial levels of productivity.
• Unorchastered (non-integrated) extensive usage of technology or lack of any which are usually limiting to any business.
• Excessive reliance on manual work with a pinch of individual genius apparent in reinventing the wheel for mundane automatable tasks.
• Equating all professions in the same manner, pay based on an hourly basis; whether you are a bottler standing at a soft drink production line, a business developer, or an engineer, all professionals are paid versus time. Which led to everyone unconsciously lengthening the time to do their work to ensure their worth and justify the pay despite how this fires back at the expense of customer experience.

We have all been guilty of making such professional mistakes, as they do sneak on us and emerge day after day and accumulate to a suffocating peak. The fact that digital transformation has become a buzzword in the past few years has made the matter worse as it was often misused and improperly grasped.

Throughout the coming weeks, I will be explaining in separate weekly articles what is digital transformation and how the above symptoms and many more are addressed through the transformation of any business for digital competitiveness. I promise not to be redundant as many publishing I have read recently which only show how Zoom and Netflix Market share and stock value have flown over the roofs. I will emphasize more on how we can use this crisis to fragment the business to its core building blocks and improve each essential block and toss away the waste padded activities. I will explain in pragmatic terms where to start and how to start and most importantly how to maintain and when to stop.

If you can explain in your own words, what is digital transformation? Please do add your understanding in the comments section to stir up a community discussion. Don't Google it just explain what it means to you !

Written by; Angie Eissa

Founder & Managing Partner of BBL