An unexpected COVID-19 pandemic drastically influenced our daily lives. Especially in terms of exploring digital tools, our reality changed entirely within just a few days. On the contrary to sectors that had to face economic crisis caused by consumers’ isolation, virtual businesses grew rapidly due to the sudden replacement of face-to-face services with remote supplies.
Let’s catch a glimpse of how COVID-19 influenced and transformed major industries.
COVID-19: Telemedicine awakening
As the popularity of telemedicine services was already increasing, it simply had to skyrocket in the era of COVID-19. The majority of companies decided to go with the flow and expanded their services to satisfy locked-down consumers with remote medical support. Following the example of MDLive (https://www.mdlive.com/), one of the most popular telemedicine providers across the US, they introduced a special coronavirus risk assessment available on their website and provided additional informational materials to support their patients in self-diagnosis. However, digital transformation influenced not only private healthcare providers, but also improved the access to public services in a number of countries across the globe. Due to concern over spreading COVID-19 infections at hospitals and clinics and the limitation of face-to-face meetings, patients could finally see the doctor and get their prescriptions without physical attendance.
COVID-19: Not only healthcare
However, digital transformation influenced not only the healthcare sector but also public services, including education and administration. Stay-home requests drove a revolution also in a number of fields that were never deemed to exist without consumers’ physical attendance, and which are now successfully held online. As traveling and even daily shopping got severely limited, e-commerce and internet-based sales started to bloom. Due to the lockdown also live streams on social media were on the rise, and students started to attend virtual classes. Then, most of the educational sector, formerly strict about physical attendance, also fully moved to online reality.
COVID-19: Business transformation
The digital services segment has been already growing for the last two decades. However, confronted with the pandemic, many companies were forced to radically change their business models regardless of the branch. Social distancing stimulated them to search for new online solutions and pushed even non-standard activities to be held online. One of the recently started off digital services is psychotherapy, frequently sought by people staying in isolation. Although such support already existed, with Talkspace (https://www.talkspace.com/) as the example, in the era of COVID-19 it became not only a startup idea but the common solution. Digital transformation reached also conferences in various branches, sports training, and fitness services.
COVID-19: Who does grow with the flow?
Considering all the above, it’s not surprising at all that the winners of the pandemic era are online meetings platforms providers. Their products are commonly used within a number of activities including private, public, and business initiatives. Zoom (https://zoom.us/), the iconic platform of a kind, grew with more than 2 million monthly users within the first two months of 2020 and reached the growth of 380% till March*. The COVID-19 phenomenon intensified also the competition between digital services providers. By the end of March Microsoft Teams (https://teamsdemo.office.com/) exceeded 44 million daily active users**. Their competitor, Slack (https://slack.com/intl/en-pl/), also noticed a spike in demand and reported a noticeable increase in actions taken in their app. Also, the shares of the IT companies offering video conference platforms started to rise, sometimes doubling their value within just a few weeks.
COVID-19: The aftermath of the pandemic
Pandemic significantly influenced our daily lives with the probability that some of the changes will stay with us permanently. A number of organizations that had never worked remotely before suddenly started to benefit from increased productivity and improved work-life balance of employees working from home. They also noticed a chance to employ or retain qualified professionals from remote locations, as the distance is simply no longer an obstacle. COVID-19-generated digital transformation means also a big step forward in the public sector. Good news - the bureaucracy got limited and getting stuck in the queues in public offices is no longer mandatory. We also realized that education, always strict about physical attendance and now held online, in fact, does not necessarily need students’ presence in the classroom. This groundbreaking possibility to connect via video conferences unexpectedly enhanced and transformed a number of sectors, and is expected to bring even more revolutionary changes in the upcoming months.
If you’re searching for some ideas to digitize your business or are in need of a trustworthy tech partner to develop your projects, this is the time! Feel free to contact us and go with the flow of the progressing digitalization.
https://vulcanpost.com/696170/zoom-founder-eric-yuan-net-worth-us7-8b/
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/26/21195092/slack-new-user-records-coronavirus-pandemic-remote-working-growth-concurrent-users
