On Wednesday, we hosted a Virtual Think IT Panel Event on the topic, Digital in This New Normal. A huge thank you to our panelists, Andrew Watts, CIO at Relativity, David Hoag, Senior Vice President and CIO at OCC, and Deepak Sevak, VP Program Management Office at Discover Financial Services for sharing their knowledge and future digital plans with us. Thank you to everyone who joined as well!
Below you will find an overview of the most popular questions from our members and a summary of what was discussed.
What was your Digital strategy heading into 2020? How has COVID affected that strategy?
A typical digital strategy for the panelists was to help drive a significant scale for their business. They were planning on deploying software, working around efficiency and automation, and relying on many different team members. COVID affected their strategies by having them take time to build out a system that would allow remote work. Businesses needed to make sure they had the internal hardware to support everyone working from home.
What is too important to take place online?
Businesses are seeing that work can be done even while working remotely. The panelists agreed that there weren’t too many things that were too important to be done online. They did mention that they put high importance on ensuring the online security is protected. The world is shifting customer experience, and many things are moving online to reach all parts of their business.
Have you seen “the business” adjust their views on the IT and Digital budget?
The IT community is very engaged in “the business.” They use a practical approach and a lot of collaboration to support the budget and business any way they can. Leaders are interacting with human resources more to ensure new security mechanisms which they weren’t always doing before.
How are you balancing building new digital features vs. digitizing/optimizing existing stack?
Businesses are always going to be investing in the future and investing in new strategies. They want their business to have a stable platform for the long term. The panelists agreed that there is an acceleration of spending in the digital world. There is a balance of having the right capital, and people see options that they didn’t see before. These options that people see now are going to make them want more of them in the future.
What is something that you have changed your mind while working remotely?
Some things that have changed the panelists’ mind about working remotely is that the employees who do well while working remotely are going to demand work from home options because they have shown that it works. Also, businesses are going to start looking at the person from not only a skills standpoint but also their emotional stability.
Companies may have had to change their digital strategy to adapt to any changes they have had during this time. The panelists agreed that one thing that hasn’t changed is the importance of their employees’ health and safety.