From healthcare to finance to education, the Covid-19 pandemic forced every industry to leverage new technologies to reimagine nearly every facet of their operations, it was the need of the hour.
The Covid-19 crisis was definitely a catalyst of change, it sped up digital transformation measures. In the wake of this pandemic, the appointments with your doctor, to workouts to schooling, everything went online. There is still uncertainty when it comes to bringing things back to some semblance of normal, but what is certain is how this pandemic has transformed several industries. The way people have moved to a complete digital set-up of work and life, it is difficult to imagine how they would move to their usual brick and mortar former selves in the near future.
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A few changing trends across various industries as a result of Covid-19
1. Healthcare
Digital transformation using data, VR, wearables to offer better access to health facilities.
Healthcare services and patients rapidly adopted telehealth services along with remote health monitoring to deal with strained health institutions and also to reduce the risk of infection.
For instance, 48% of the US physicians said that they treated their patients virtually with the help of latest technologies like LifeSignals, a remote health monitoring technology.
2. Finance
Digital transformation using contactless payment technologies.
Digital transitions in finance is nothing new, but the pandemic definitely boosted the growth of Fintech. There were considerable Fintech innovations in the areas of mobile financial services, contactless payments, loans and insurtech.
While Apple, Google and Samsung had introduced their mobile wallets prior to the pandemic, plenty of other companies like Amazon moved towards implementing contactless payment processes. Besides contactless payments, branchless banking prior to Covid-19 had also become a feature. The emergence and growth of neo banks and fintech start-ups like Chime, Simple, Revolut etc., aimed at simplifying banking.
3. Security
Digital transformation paved the way for personal surveillance technology and distributed cybersecurity.
While big data and artificial intelligence came to the fore, it became more critical to safeguard sensitive information and so personal surveillance technology turned out to be an important tool. The global surveillance market which was $50 billion in 2020 is expected to rise to $75 billion by 2025.
Another area to be discussed is – distributed cybersecurity. The industry thrived with remote learning and work. As of now the industry is no less than $250 billion enterprise. Cyberattacks were quite common during the pandemic.
Plenty of cybersecurity tools like Netstumbler, Wireshark and so on came to the fore to offer help.
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4. Entertainment
A Thrust to virtual events and virtual reality shows.
From the on demand entertainment options like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney Plus to live events such as gaming leagues, food festivals and such others remained popular throughout.
5. Manufacturing
Digital disruption through 3D and automation technology.
The aim of digital transformation in manufacturing was to bring more agility and flexibility into operations. The pandemic posed a real threat to the manufacturing units because of shortage of human labor. Covid-19 turned out to be worse than the financial crisis of 2008 for them.
Experts suggested the use of 3D printing and automation to reduce the industry dependency on human labor.
3D printing tech had an opportunity to put its foot ahead and offer flexible solutions. The most prominent example was set in healthcare equipment manufacturing.
Stratasys, owner of leading 3D printer brand MakerBot came up with an idea of printable ventilators. Other companies like UNYQ and Origin also joined the bandwagon by offering 3D printed medical equipment directly to healthcare providers.
The manufacturing industry moved rather slow from an enterprise and ecosystem wide digital transformation perspective. The driving forces to digital transformation in manufacturing industry was more or less the same as that in the other industries, but the industry faced some serious challenges to keep itself on the right track due to:
- Economic, geo-political and consumption uncertainties.
- Cut-throat competition and the disruptive impact of those units which had already transformed at the core.
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