Covid-19 unleashes wave of innovation and investments: study

Covid-19 has reduced operating expenses for 88 per cent of global businesses surveyed in a ServiceNow study, potentially creating opportunities for investments in digital transformation, R&D, marketing and growth.

‘The Work Survey”, is a study on Covid-19’s impact on work and the opportunities ahead by the IT operations software company.

Businesses have innovated rapidly but will need to step up to continue the pace. Half of executives (50 per cent) and a little over half of employees (53 per cent) think transitioning to the new normal will be even more challenging than the initial shock of Covid-19.

This challenge is exacerbated because most businesses are at a digital disadvantage, with 91 per cent of global executives admitting they still have offline workflows, including document approvals, security incident reports, and technology support requests. Progress has been made, but months into working from home, 60 per cent of executives and 59 per cent of employees say their companies still do not have a fully integrated system to manage digital workflows.

New systems that were developed, and put in place on the fly, as a result of Covid-19, were seen to have created new and better ways of working by 87 per cent of employees across the globe. However, such systems are felt to still be vulnerable to the next major disruption, with most executives and employees stating that key business functions (such as customer service, HR and finance) would not be able to adapt within 30 days in the event of another disruption.

This highlights the need, and opportunity, for robust digital transformation across the enterprise.

“The world’s dramatic pivot to working digitally is showing everyone what the future of work looks like,” said ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott. “Digital workflows are the way business gets done in the 21st century. There’s no going back. Digital transformation will accelerate. New ways of working will become the norm. We are on the cusp of an unprecedented wave of workflow and workplace innovation.”