Learnings from 2020: Digitization Spurs Growth to Counter COVID-19 Challenges

Adept at sensing upcoming trends and treading uncharted territories, Ram has spearheaded the company’s growth from a startup to being one of the top providers in the industry.

Charles Dickens’ novel ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ begins with the line ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ The description would fit the year 2020 perfectly as it has been the most challenging and the most exciting year. Every quarter has been different. In February and March, IT service providers were being asked to ramp up and budgets for digitization efforts were being finalized. By April, May, when the COVID-19 pandemic peaked, we had to go slow. But after June, the demand has picked up again. By October, customers across segments started releasing budgets again and continue on our growth trajectory.

Below are the five key areas that grew at a breakneck pace, despite the pandemic. In fact, lockdowns around the world possibly accelerated the potential for each of the technologies mentioned below.

Big Data Engineering and Data Management Services – COVID-19 has resulted in unprecedented market shifts, requiring data and analytics leaders to enable faster data analysis at scale to speed up innovation and forge new paths. Some of the key areas where data engineering teams have been active even during the times of the pandemic include Big Data implementation, data engineering and data management. The key to garnering insights from big data is to process this data with efficiency and ease. IT service providers play a pivotal role in helping enterprises take advantage of access to big data.

Text Analytics: Text analytics has been gaining importance to enable businesses to improve their decision making by accessing and garnering insights from a variety of text sources such as emails, social media chatter, blogs, product reviews, tweets, and so on. Such insights help with sentiment analysis, fraud prevention, risk management, and predictive analytics to improve several aspects of business operations across industries such as retail, manufacturing, finance, and

others. Text analytics tools have found much demand from customers across different industry segments because of the value it provides in understanding what customers need and how operations can be improved.

Cloud Migration: The low upfront costs, scalability, and flexibility have spurred the rapid adoption of cloud computing solutions, with the market expected to grow by $7.1 billion in the period between 2020-2024. The pandemic has shrunk the deployment times from five to three years. The variety of options available in the market today has enabled businesses to choose the cloud platform ideal for specific business needs. Earlier, companies used to go with the solution they were used to, but today options are aplenty.

Such insights help with sentiment analysis, fraud prevention, risk management, and predictive analytics to improve several aspects of business operations across industries such as retail, manufacturing, finance, and others

Low Code: Time to market, customization, visualization, and scalability are everything today. A dearth of technical skills is also compelling IT businesses to seek solutions such as Mendix to enable low code development, the market for which is expected to grow by 22.7 percent CAGR by 2027.

Gaming: Deloitte’s 2020 digital media trends survey reveals that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a third of the consumers used a cloud gaming service, subscribed to a video gaming service, or watched esports or a virtual sporting event for the first time due to the long hours spent at home. Nintendo sold nearly half of its games digitally, registering profits of 41 percent in the first quarter while Tencent’s gaming division grew year-on-year sales revenue by 31 percent according to a Newzoo research report quoted in this World Economic Forum feature. While sales of games increased by 63 percent across 50 key markets, games released during the pandemic too performed well.

There is a clear acceleration in the shift to digital. Enterprises are embracing data and digital transformation to increase workforce productivity, enhance operational efficiency, make better decisions with data. Digital transformation, automation, and data are the three pillars of swift decision making, especially in a rapidly changing world.