Episode Summary

After COVID-19 hit, we ran a webinar about how companies could accelerate digital transformation. Now we’ve seen a ton of companies do just that. From small retailers hopping online to everyone moving to the cloud – digital is here to stay and here to reign. How can your business stay abreast of these changes and adapt to digital even more? Well, that’s what this podcast covers. Tune in and let us know what you think has been the most incredible digital transformation that you’ve seen.

Visit cityinnovationlabs.com/ask-an-innovator for some helpful links and the full transcript.

Helpful Reading on Digital Transformation

Our Webinar at the Beginning of COVID-19
Digital Transformation Is Not About Technology
Why is Digital Transformation Important?

Timestamps

Digital Transformation in the World – 00:40
Digital Adaptation & Acceleration – 01:53
Obviously we have to throw Amazon into the convo – 05:50
Death of Commercial Real Estate – 07:04
Adding a Human Element to Digital – 08:59
The Cloud and Chatbots – 10:56
Let’s talk about specific industries – 12:00
Making a case for analytics – 15:20
But, what about security? – 18:01
How can we help? – 19:57

Full Transcript

Erin Srebinski: [00:00:00 ] Hi everyone. We’re back. We’re here to talk about digital transformation. We did a webinar back in April about innovating in uncertain times back when COVID-19 was just at the beginning. And so now we’re into it. We’re six months in, we’ve seen companies pivot, we’ve seen companies change, we’ve seen them break through a bunch of different challenges. There’s been a bunch of weird and interesting things coming out of this. So Josh take it away.  What do you think has been interesting that’s come out of this? What have you seen in the marketplace and what changes have you seen? And what still needs to change? Let’s go through all of that.

Digital Transformation in the World

Josh Barker: [00:00:35 ] Yeah. Hate to say it, I don’t remember what I said in the webinar.  I don’t know if I’m gonna cover similar ground. I always go with this, I’ve read this book from a great consultant of like talking about times of crisis going through the 2008 recession.

And he was saying, think of your business like a house, right? You go in your backyard and revenue is the river stream that flows and when the stream or the river dries up in your backyard and you go,  where did the water go?  The revenue go?  You have two options. One, you can go stay and kind of gather up all the stream trickles,  and say, Hey, I’m going to save all these and, you know, ration them out.

Rivers don’t just dry up they actually just defer course. You can go find where the river diverted course. And so If we’re talking in terms of digital transformation, I think that might be a good frame door conversation of like, what are people doing from a technology digital sense in this landscape?

And what have we seen, like you said, the last six months. One thing I can say we haven’t seen, is we haven’t seen companies reduce the amount of money they’re devoting to digital transformation and digital efforts. We’ve actually just seen an increase.  Which is obvious, right? We’re all remote. Like you and I are socially distanced, across long lands.

Erin Srebinski: [00:01:53 ] We should be wearing out masks.

Digital Transformation, Adaptation & Acceleration

Josh Barker: [00:01:53 ] We should be wearing our masks, yeah, exactly. So, we’re not seeing a decrease. we’re really seeing two things. One is what I would call digital adaptation or digital acceleration.  the way I would define each of these is like digital  adaptation is more of like a small pivot.  versus digital acceleration, an example might be a moon shoot of an opportunity. We wanted to be here in 10 years, and now we’re kind of in a corner where we really need to accelerate all of our efforts. So what’s amazing is I think  talking about digital acceleration for a minute is there are so many instances you can look around and say, how long is your digital transformation strategy?

They’re like, 10 years. Well, people are accomplishing things that had 10 year timelines in literally, like we’re talking months, right?  Because they have to. Do or die.

Erin Srebinski: [00:02:44 ] Yep. No choice.

Josh Barker: [00:02:45 ] Exactly. So it’s interesting to see. That’s what I would call digital acceleration. It’s also interesting to see digital adaptation and  giving you some simple examples, I think you’ve seen these too, Erin,  I’m all about efficiency. I don’t know about you. My wife knows this about me is, I go to a restaurant, I go through a drive-through I’m like the most impatient person known to mankind, like in some contexts.

What I love seeing an increase in efficiency in a lot of these areas. So taking restaurants, for example, my wife and I, we ended up traveling to Alabama and we were, being very careful using our masks and six feet of distance.

And when we did that, one of the things we found is we went to her restaurant in the airport and it was great to see, I’ve always envisioned, I’ve told my wife was tired of me telling these envisions of the future of sitting at a table and seeing it QR code to be like, scan this and just order your food right from the table.

And we’ll just bring it out to you. So yeah.

Genius.

Genius, Right? And a lot of restaurants saw that future like five, 10 years from now, but like to see it now, that wasn’t there just months ago. And now it’s like, that’s where we’re at is QR code scanning delivery services, obviously significant delivery services now.

Right. Everything’s being delivered. So, Uber eats. I talked to an Uber driver. I Ubered as well. And I know it sounds risky, but masks again, the six feet, if I don’t know how you do six feet of distance at a car, but flash shields my backpack in front of them. But,  talking to the Uber driver, I was like, how has this affected you?

And what interesting their response was? It actually hasn’t affected me very much because I just switched over to Uber eats and I just became an Uber delivery driver.  which was interesting to hear, you know?  It’s like delivering food rather than delivering people.  I don’t know if you’ve watched any movies during this time of like, COVID-19 like, like you would normally go to the movies?

Erin Srebinski: [00:04:44 ] Yeah, we bought the Trolls movie, cause kids. And so we got the Trolls and then we have this huge thing on our calendar because Mulan is going to be releasing on Disney plus on like September 4th. We have plans to buy that and watch it at home.

Josh Barker: [00:05:01 ] See that’s where it’s at. And it’s funny, we did the Trolls thing too. You can tell we both have children, right?

Erin Srebinski: [00:05:07 ] I know it’s so not exciting.

Josh Barker: [00:05:12 ] But I mean, that’s an innovation. You think about the decrease in amount of people because of all the closures of the movie theaters. Well, they just pivoted very quickly and just said, we’re gonna offer live streaming of all these different movies in the comfort of your own home.

That’s definitely some what I would call a digital adaptation of okay, we’re going to allow it kind of digitally streaming. They already have the avenues Disney plus, you know, with Mulan, they already had the ability to do that. They just kind of pivoted slightly. So, the other thing that I’m seeing is when you look at Amazon, you know, obviously tons of people ordering food online.

Amazon orders were behind.  I don’t know if you tried ordering Amazon. I mean, it was like a week or two to get stuff.

Talking about Amazon

Erin Srebinski: [00:05:50 ] Amazon was behind. And Whole Foods, which is obviously owned by Amazon was like completely out of stock at  grocery stores and everything , they were