Understanding the New Normal
Published on : Sunday 03-05-2020
New Normal is redefining business models – What will be the impact and how to manage, asks Amit Saluja, and provides a few clues.
There has been a sudden shift in the way we live today. 2020 is redefining everything for us, right from how we communicate, work, study, what we eat, wear, our hobbies and lifestyle. Isn’t it a different world now as we have entered into a new era of ‘New Normal’. This is just a start with all guess work on where we will end up but one thing is sure, old normal will never be back. We have been talking of digital transformation since few years but the real shift will happen now with major acceleration from physical to digital. People are getting used to virtual communications instead of talking in-person.
Imagine what the impact will be, less commute so reduced demand of oil and vehicles, bigger residential houses and smaller commercial space, more internet bandwidth and phone calls, more B2C and less B2B customers, more online shopping and food delivery, more online and less hospital visits, more indoor games and many more changes. In a nutshell there is resurgence of new business models coming from what customers will need and how they prefer to be served.
Impact of this massive change on businesses will also be massive irrespective of their size. Lot of companies will flourish while many who doesn’t adopt to change will find tough to survive. We know online operations is very common in IT and Banking but now other industries will also get the ‘remote’ tag added to their functions like remote diagnostic and consultation in Healthcare, remote inspection in manufacturing, remote live classes in education, remote services of appliances and gadgets. Isn’t it a lot of impact? This will need deep thinking and brainstorming in every boardroom to come up future strategies and action plan. Investments will need rebalancing with pulling of money from one basket and putting in other.
What seems certain in this era of ‘New-Normal’ is that digital will rule the world. Enterprises who took lead and moved forward with digital journey will give pat on their back for their wise decisions and investments, but for others who were sitting on fence this should be a wakeup call. Hope all the questions on the RoI of digital initiatives got answered now and every organisation, large or MSME should use this time as an opportunity to accelerate adoption of AI, IoT and Analytics to integrate customers, employees and vendors through digital platforms. Technology companies also need to prepare themselves for the upcoming opportunities. They have few weeks in hand to plan what products and solutions will be relevant for this new market.
My sincere request for every organisation, weather user company or technology provider is to look for design thinking as an approach to define the future digital adoption or digital solution roadmap. With such a big impact, it will not be easy to layout plans without following a structured approach. Design thinking is a proven methodology under these kind of scenarios and the tools under it needs to be leveraged as much as possible Best Wishes everyone as we all work together to prepare for this “New Normal”. Stay safe, calm and focused. Cheers!!!
Amit Saluja is Senior Director and Head of NASSCOM Centre of Excellence, Gandhinagar. He has 20+ years of leadership experience performing diverse roles with Business and Technology teams primarily in Strategic Marketing & Sales, Business Strategy, IT solutions design and development, Process Development and Program Management.
