Over the last few years the UK economy has been profoundly shaken and reshaped. The Covid-19 pandemic, a new trading relationship with the EU and a soaring cost of living has seen the UK’s GDP shrink by nearly 15 percent. With recovery far from assured, the only certainty is that Britain’s economy and society will be completely transformed.
The route to recovery and growth will be different for every business and sector. The timing of this economic rebound is inherently tied to the acceleration of digitisation and a shift to permanent hybrid remote working. Smart companies will embrace the new habits of both customers and employees to strengthen long-term competitiveness, whilst ramping up innovation and engagement.
Up until now, technology adoption has tended to be fairly narrow, involving remote collaboration tools (such as video conferencing), online customer interactions, investment in cyber-security and an attempted shift to cloud-based applications or hosted apps. The pandemic has changed this, accelerating technology adoption across all sectors and all technologies. This is key to shaping the speed and trajectory of post-pandemic recovery. With organisations who have streamlined processes and have taken advantage of IT innovations able to launch new products and services faster. This speed to market allows them to react to changing customer demands quickly and will bolster their resilience in line with recovery.
As a country we are also embracing the emerging trend for remote or hybrid working, with employers having to rethink working policies in line with office worker expectation. However, embracing this can be a risk, with a recent survey of UK businesses showing that only nine percent thought remote work had improved productivity, while 33 percent stated it had decreased. Balancing the benefits against this risk is also key for future success.
As the UK faces a new era, it will be the businesses with well defined, forward-looking strategies and agile operating models underpinned by resilient and cost-effective IT platforms that are poised to prosper.
At SCC, we never stand still and want to continually see our customers succeed in their chosen marketplace through the powerful use of technology that we provide. That passion is the ethos on which SCC was built and it continues to drive us forward.