In the Business Beyond Covid series, CEOs and other business leaders and experts in their sectors look to the future after Covid-19. What effect has the pandemic and resulting lockdown had on their industries and the SA economy as a whole? Which parts will bounce back first and which will never be the same again? Most importantly, they try to answer the question: where to from here?
In February 2020, the presidential commission on the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) finalised its recommendations. As it did so an unexpected and unwelcome tsunami was gathering on the horizon. On March 26 the country went into a national lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is still far too early to understand the ramifications of the pandemic on SA, our economy and institutions. However, one immediate and obvious consequence has been the rapid adoption of digital technology. This is driven by necessity as the world has been catapulted into the 4IR era.
In recent years, many digital transformation initiatives have failed, both in SA and internationally. In an article in Forbes magazine on September 30 2019, Blake Morgan wrote that 70% of digital transformations fail.
While each failed transformation initiative can be attributed to specific reasons, a common theme is a lack of buy-in. Either executive support for the proposed initiative is not sufficient or change management is unsuccessful. People have a natural propensity to resist change, and digital transformation usually involves profound and significant change in how people are expected, or required, to behave.
In SA, the challenge of creating a new digital world is compounded by other inhibitors to digital transformation such as poor connectivity, lack of digital literacy, and a low level of access to suitable technology, such as smartphones.
Detailed case studies of how specific organisations and sectors in SA are responding to the pandemic are still to be written. We have, however, been collecting some of our own observations and those of others. We have used these to inform the comments that follow.
The sudden decision by government to impose a general lockdown gave companies and institutions only three days to move to a work-from-home (WFH) policy. Different sectors dealt with this enormous challenge in different ways, some coping better than others:
- The health sector: perhaps the most important example of digital adoption in the health sector has been the rapid adoption of basic telemedicine methods. Health practitioners, including GPs, psychologists, bio-kineticists and pharmacists have started using tools such as WhatsApp, Zoom and various apps to engage with patients and clients. There has also been innovative use of data visualisation tools such as Google’s Data Studio to aggregate and present Covid-19 data in the form of dashboards.
- Education: though the issue of e-learning and distance education has been discussed in SA for decades, the sudden arrival of the lockdown caught most institutions completely unprepared. It is in this sector that the deep chasm of the digital divide has become most visible. Issues of connectivity (both the cost and availability of network connection), access to technology and computer literacy have become critical factors. We have, however, seen rapid adoption of e-learning and distance education tools and methods.
- Justice: who would have imagined a few months ago that advocates would be arguing cases on Zoom to judges while they all sat in their studies at home? This is now happening in “virtual courtrooms” around SA. One of the professions most reluctant to embrace digital transformation before the lockdown has been transformed in the space of a few weeks.
We could list other sectors. Driven by necessity, individuals and institutions are willingly adopting digital technology to survive and continue operations. And — most importantly — the technology adopted has been existing applications that are readily available. This digital transformation has been achieved at a very low cost using technology that is free, some of it open source, and all of it easy to use.
We have no way of knowing what will happen beyond the current Covid-19 emergency. One thing that seems to be certain, however, is that we will never completely return to the pre-coronavirus status quo. It is also very important that this change to society brings about massive transformation in societal norms that will not leave the poorer members of society behind again.
It is our belief that the pandemic has removed some of the significant inhibitors to digital transformation in SA. These are:
- Executive buy-in: with the arrival of Covid-19, executives who, in the past, were lukewarm about digital adoption now have evidence that digital technology actually works within the context of their organisation, and that it supports effective and better ways of working.
- Policies and regulation: both the government and business are having to rewrite a variety of policies and regulations to accommodate the need for rapid adaptation to cope with the changes we are experiencing.
- Buy-in from staff and other stakeholders: before the pandemic many people working within organisations and people interacting with organisations might have been resistant to using digital technology. The pandemic has blown away many of these doubts and opened up people’s minds to different ways of working and interacting.
- Concerns about cost and new technologies: a common preconception has been that digital transformation is expensive and requires the development of new, customised digital solutions with a large pricetag. Many organisations have made effective use of available, low-cost (or free) solutions, most of it in the cloud.
- Concerns about skills: another preconception is that digital transformation requires lengthy and expensive training of existing staff, or recruitment of new staff. During the Covid-19 crisis many people have rapidly and easily taken to working in a digital world.
- Connectivity and access: while some short-term solutions have been found during the lockdown, a great deal will need to be done in the future to remove the digital divide. The government, companies and other institutions have all come to realise the importance of having the entire population well-connected.
- While SA’s presidential commission on 4IR submitted its recommendations to government early this year, these will need to be revisited and rewritten in the light of Covid-19.
One of the key principles at the heart of the presidential commission and much of the discussion that has taken place around 4IR is “technological determinism”, that is, technology drives change. The response to the Covid-19 pandemic implies that, rather than technological determinism, we are seeing the opposite driver for change, namely “social determinism”.
It would be a useful exercise for the presidential commission to examine this opposite causal relationship in developing a strategy for 4IR in the post Covid-19 SA.
• Dwolatzky, an emeritus professor at Wits University, is director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering; Harris is CEO of Altron Nexus.
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