Betting On Trusted Technology To Navigate Crisis

As businesses emerge from crisis mode to a recover-and-revive phase, technology's role is heightened.

Rise of network economy, virtual engagement environments, enhanced need for data and analytics to find solutions in staying essential to businesses and citizens, artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver citizen services, cloud and machine learning - organisations can now employ all of these fully not only to meet immediate needs but also to ensure better adaptability and resilience.  

The new normal that we find ourselves in, is defined by three fundamental shifts.

First being digital turning mainstream. The pandemic has accelerated a digital revolution and pushed us to adapt with urgency.  Second, there are new business models and opportunities. Digital technologies are fundamentally disrupting the business landscape. To address the needs of this digital age, businesses need to be agile, efficient and be built on a foundation of trust, powered by technology.

The third shift is towards a network economy. Virtual networks are becoming critical for how we conduct business, interact with customers, community, business partners, stakeholders. Virtual networks are becoming work enablers.

'Technology' is the unifying force, the 'sutradhar', as we navigate through these shifting paradigms. Complementing technology is our 'trust' in technology. Trust that it is safe, reliable, secure and protected. Trust that it will work with reliability. Trust that data and privacy will be protected and trust that connectivity is secure. This is GoodTech in action. The way technology has enabled us to navigate across these shifts in the past few months can be categorised under three key areas -- powering a new work paradigm, driving innovation for the greater good and building sustained resilience.

A New Work Paradigm
We are operating today with a digital workforce in a digital world. Every organisation has been tested on agility and efficiency of its infrastructure, supply chain networks, customer engagement, enabling and engaging a remote workforce. This is where cloud and AI play a significant role. Organisations must consider hybrid cloud architectures that are open with built-in enterprise grade security. This will enable and allow seamless secure movement of mission critical applications and data across multiple infrastructure platforms and also help strengthen business continuity plans. As organisations look at new customer engagement models, AI-based solutions can help manage customer call surges, augmenting customer service agents, disseminate timely information, alerts and more.

Innovation For The Greater Good
Technology is enabling researchers, scientists, doctors to sprint faster in finding a Covid-19 cure. To understand the threat we are facing, the research work in the field of bioinformatics, epidemiology and molecular modeling involves massive amount of computational capacity. To aid this, technology firms have formed a Covid-19 High Performance Super Computing Consortium. They are lending their aggregate computing capabilities to help researchers execute complex computational research programmes to help fight the virus.

IBM too has also taken a pledge to provide access to its patent portfolio to help diagnose, prevent, contain or treat coronaviruses like Covid-19. AI based chatbots, like the one developed by IBM for Indian Council of Medical Research, is equipping both frontline healthcare workers and citizens with information, awareness and answering queries. Technology is also starting to play an integral role in the identification, prevention and treatment of mental health crisis, which is highly prevalent in these times. The advent of preventive technology tools is allowing patients to check their own moods and conditions, and then prompting them to take corrective actions. Several companies are educating their employees about treatment tools and selfcare approaches to mental health.

Building Sustained Resilience
We cannot ignore the exposure to vulnerabilities and cyber risk in this new digital age. As remote workforce becomes the new normal, confidential content is shared in virtual meetings, digital transactions increase, cyber security will continue to be a relevant issue. Enterprise grade security, across an organisation's technology infrastructure, with constant monitoring of threats, early detection and action is a requisite now. While technology solutions continue to help with this transition, creating cybersecurity awareness is also critical to build resilience.

Throughout economic history, skills are the impetus for growth. Today, multiple factors, including continued and rapid technological developments and business model innovations, have contributed to market shifts that are redefining industries. Combined with economic and market disruptions, as well as significant demographic shifts across geographies, these factors have created a perfect storm impacting the demand and supply gap of relevant workforce skills. The result is a looming global talent shortage. The role of digital learning will be key as business, education and governmental agencies work together to equip the workforce with the industry relevant skills.  

Eventually, we will return to some form of normalcy. The question then will not be whether we survived the pandemic, but how we managed this crisis, what we learned from it and how well prepared are we for the next unknown.