During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic,[1] firms were scrambling to spin up new customer and employee experiences at a time when the economic outlook was getting more and more unclear. For some firms, it felt like a race against the clock -- a race for survival. In fact, many firms didn't survive the pandemic, and Forrester projects[2] that as many as 20% of the Fortune 500 are not going to make it through 2021 whole.
When it came to technology strategy, most firms fell into one of two camps. For leaders, the pandemic just accelerated existing digital transformation plans and spending. They adapted their plan and made it happen in a matter of weeks. They digitized processes rapidly and pivoted business models using existing technology roadmaps. They did truly amazing things and put distance between themselves and their competitors.
For other firms, it was more of a scramble. They were caught off guard and put into a "survival mode" mentality, which drove rushed technology decisions. They implemented technology options that may not have been on their original technology strategy roadmaps. And, in many cases, they made choices in the moment that often deployed the best available option for customers' most immediate needs. They stitched together existing systems with APIs and didn't successfully provide their remote workers access to the tools they needed.
Today, as many businesses return to a "new normal," the question technology leaders should be asking themselves is, "Are the decisions we made a year ago still the right decisions for the business today and in the future, or do we have some digital regrets that we need to address?" Forrester's analysis shows that productivity from tech investments has been falling for the past 20 years. Imagine what happened during the pandemic