COVID-19 is currently the global buzzword! We are witnessing the severe and unprecedented impact of Corona Virus on the businesses – international and domestic, across all sectors. Corona Virus continues to grow in the world and the effect of this pandemic is incalculable in human life. The measures which are taken for safety during this coronavirus pandemic are disrupting the businesses globally. However, the businesses are sustaining and ensuring continuity with employees working remotely.

Read our blog – How to Ensure Business Continuity During Corona Quarantine.

The Impact of COVID-19 on IT industry

The IT industry faces several challenges since its evolution, be it global financial recession, anti-outsourcing sentiments or increased protectionism. However, the industry came out stronger every time by adopting counter-strategies. It is correct to say that most of the global companies depend on the IT sector for their major operations and transformational projects. The crisis of coronavirus is the biggest challenge ever faced by the IT industry and it has countered the business continuity plans and disaster recovery strategy of the companies.

HOW IT INDUSTRY IS SURVIVING COVID-19?

The major challenge faced by companies is to manage an immediate shift to remote working and this issue can be overcome by creating an Elastic Digital Workplace. This can be created by implementing new ways of working through –

  • Providing the required technology and optimizations to enable remote working effectively.
  • Deploying collaboration tools across the organization and filling the gaps with your customers, employees, and suppliers.
  • Leveraging virtual environments to facilitate large scale workshops and conferences.
  • Enabling secure and reliable remote network connectivity for seamless integration with customers.
  • Enhancing business continuity plans and including mass sick leave and travel restrictions.
  • Constructing a workplace of trust and start cultivating a digital culture.

An elastic digital workplace is empowered by the culture, policies, communication, and technology. The IT companies have done an amazing job by enabling work from home for their employees very rapidly. This timely action ensured the safety of all the employees along with ensuring business continuity for most of the customers. The concept of the elastic digital workplace is working seamlessly during this global crisis. The companies just need to look for increased security controls to prevent cybersecurity threats and data breaches. This remote working model is quite flexible and offers the IT companies to hire the right talent globally without any location constraints.

IT Companies need to work across these five contexts

  • Addressing the immediate challenges encountered by the company’s customers, workforce, business partners and technology.
  • Broader flexibility regarding cash management due to the shutdown and recession effects.
  • Have a detailed plan to return to normal business as soon as the COVID-19 situation becomes clear.
  • The next normal would not be the same for the IT companies, they need to work upon how their company should reinvent.
  • Reform the business strategies keeping in mind the regulatory and competitive environment.

Increased Investments for IT Companies

  • The IT companies and customers should be ready to invest significantly in the updated collaboration tools and new technologies such as 5G networks as remote and virtual working became the new reality.
  • The customers may speed up their journey for cloud and digital adoption to reduce the points of human touch and this will create a huge business opportunity for the IT companies.
  • To reduce the dependency on manual interventions, the customers may plan to invest heavily in automating their IT operations and back office works. IT companies can focus on undertaking new automation projects to negate the impact.
  • The IT companies will also invest in the opening of new local geography delivery centers. This is a new strategy for IT companies and they may need to quickly adapt it to preserve the current business and to ensure customers on business continuity.

To Conclude

The IT companies need to work closely with their clients to point out how much they can extract and at the same time, they need to keep the cost under control to get a positive growth in the current year. At the time of the global financial crisis in 2008, IT companies still had some growth because the recovery happened quickly. But this time, no one is certain about the recovery and unless we have a medicine or a suitable vaccine to fight the coronavirus, it may keep coming back. In such an uncertain environment, the IT companies can also opt for additional temporary staff in place of the permanent placements. The projects that have already commenced may get delayed if we move to the next stage of lockdown.