A new breed of enterprise emerges post-pandemic

New research commissioned by AWS looks into 10,000 senior IT and business decision-makers across EMEA (including the UK, which had 2,000 respondents) about how they managed to keep reinventing their business during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The impact of Covid-19 on businesses has been catastrophic, derailing the most detailed of organisational roadmaps. A recent report commissioned by AWS found that almost half (46%) of decision-makers declared that their organisations struggled to adapt to the changes.

AWS commissioned Coleman Parkes, a B2B research specialist, to conduct an online survey with 10,000 IT and business decision-makers from enterprises with more than 250 employees in France, Germany, Israel, Spain, and the UK. There were 2,000 respondents for each of the five markets. In April and May 2021, the survey gathered feedback from C-level, Heads of Departments and Directors operating across financial services, retail, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing and automotive, telecommunications, and media and entertainment. 

The goal was to understand how they managed to keep reinventing their businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic without a roadmap for what would happen next – and to get insights into how they expect their organisations to keep growing in a post-pandemic world.

A new breed of enterprise 

According to the report, the last year has seen the emergence of a new, agile type of business that leverages cloud capabilities to scale and experiment with innovation, allowing for a more flexible roadmap. This included companies that were not as agile before the pandemic. Over two-thirds of respondents report that their organisations have emerged more confident than beforehand, with 65% attributing success to the cloud. The same percentage tried new cloud services during this period, with a whopping 40% trying cloud solutions for the first time. 

In addition to this, the pandemic forced organisations to accelerate digital transformation strategies by almost two and a half years. Over half of the respondents have learned from this acceleration, with 58% understanding the importance of more agile working practices, 55% on the value of creating a closer relationship with customers, and 56% on using collaboration to solve issues. 

The power of reinvention 

The report demonstrates that flexibility is at the heart of organisational success both during and post-Covid. Companies that have reinvented themselves during the pandemic have reaped the dividends, and 69% of decision-makers say they have a clear strategy to seize opportunities, and 60% agree they will need to adjust their business model again once lockdown lifts. As lockdown lifts and companies look to modify roadmaps once more, cloud services are still at the core of this reinvention, with 64% of enterprises stating that they will adopt cloud computing post-pandemic and 54% saying that their business now depends on cloud solutions. 

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The future is not without its challenges. 50% of business decision-makers say their organisations still lack an understanding of how to link business problems to technical solutions, 47% say employees are resistant to change, and 42% say a lack of skills will hold them back. Yet as lockdown restrictions lift, only 50% of enterprises will continue to prioritise digital transformation. 

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Amber Donovan-Stevens

Amber is a Content Editor at Top Business Tech

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