| | OCTOBER 20228A recent McKinsey Global Survey of executives re-vealed that companies had accelerated their inter-nal and external digitalization by about 3-4 years over the last year. This is primarily due to the global shift online during the pandemic, when social distancing com-pelled businesses - large and small - to find new ways to transact while working from home. While many of these digital solutions were taken-up as temporary measures, evidence indicates that most of them - such as remote work and cloud migration - will be around for the long haul, and many companies have already allocated budgets towards more advanced technology and faster implementation pro-grams. Let's take a closer look at the foundations on which this was built.Factors that Enabled this TransformationDuring the pandemic, new systems were embraced, and pivotal shifts were made at an unprecedented speed. This was enabled not only by the immediate need to take things online, but also by several factors gaining sway over the last few years. For instance, in recent years, there has been a shift in focus from `product' to `platform.' From e-Commerce giants like Flipkart and Amazon to payment gateways like PayTM or Google Pay, online platforms have become a ubiquitous part of people's lives. To cater adequately to the population, companies also needed to be present on or transact via these platforms.There is also growing competition from new, digital-first startups. More and more startups have received extensive funding in the last several years, with India currently boasting 39 unicorns across multiple sectors. Even in 2020, India added the most number of unicorns out of any country in the world during the pandemic except the US. These startups are being born out of a need to serve large customer bases in an agile fashion - and to keep-up; big companies will have to display similar agility.Finally, with social distancing norms in place, relying on the traditional heavy server rooms to store IT infrastructure was no longer feasible. Businesses thus began the migration to the Cloud, which allows large WHY DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS SWEEPING THE WORLDBy Subodh Parulekar, CO-Founder & CEO, AFour Technologies Subodh Parulekar,CO-Founder & CEOINDUSTRY INSIGHTS
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