Then, a devastating pandemic hit the world and everyone鈥檚 soon-to-be least favorite word hit the air over and over again: unprecedented. It threw us all in a fix at first and, for a brief while, we waited for a return to normalcy. In time it became clear that all of those plans we had made would need to pivot and evolve 鈥� but now was not the time to pull back. As the impact of COVID-19 spread and the inequalities of our world served only to exacerbate its impact, our team challenged one another to think differently about how we were best served to support our ecosystem of partners and to execute our portfolio of programs.

Our response? Hold fast to our strategy and our mission, stay true, and renew our commitment to powering opportunity through digital inclusion. The COVID-19 crisis is multidimensional and discriminatory in many ways. It is also a very real and very deep education crisis, and with extreme poverty on the rise for the first time in two decades, it will continue to influence vulnerable populations for years to come.

The naivety of early 2020 gave way to necessity which, in time, gave way to enthusiastic transformation. Together with our partners, we quickly adapted program content and execution for virtual environments, , and expanded our view of how to best engage 麻豆原创鈥檚 employee base.

Our is a collection of spotlights and stories that we share with pride in celebration of the impact we were able to achieve in the year that was. It is our celebration of the 8.3 million lives impacted through our investments and the over 130,000 hours dedicated by more than 20,000 麻豆原创 employees.

It was mutual trust and shared conviction around social impact that enabled this journey, and we are exceedingly proud of our entire CSR community and the role they played. To all of our partners, volunteer leaders, and every employee who lent their time and talents as a volunteer or opened themselves up to learning during an October Month of Service virtual session: You were instrumental in helping us adapt our work and redefine success. Your continued dedication, perseverance, and passion inspired us.

Our is dedicated to you. Thank you for making our work possible.

With 2020 behind us, we are forging ahead into the new year and into our renewed commitment to power opportunity through digital inclusion. In the coming months, we hope to bring our ecosystem together through hosting virtual forums for our partners. Our goal is to bolster and strengthen the network of incredible change-makers and impact-drivers that we are lucky enough to work with around the world and sketch a path forward together.

Alexandra van der Ploeg is head of Corporate Social Responsibility at 麻豆原创.

This article first appeared on the 麻豆原创 Global News Center.

The post Renewing Our Commitment to Power Opportunity Through Digital Inclusion appeared first on 麻豆原创 Africa News Center.

Organizations have experienced immense disruption over the past year. Many have had to reinvent their operating models, their product or service offerings and, in some cases, even their entire business model. In the face of such disruption, there is no single solution for every businesses’ ills.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on organizations was immediate and in many respects irreversible. As lockdowns confined office workers to their homes, organizations suddenly needed the agility to enable remote work and reengineer processes to ensure the business could continue operating.

Catalyst for digital transformation

Organizations fortunate enough to be far along their digital transformation journeys could arguably adapt more easily to the disruption. For others, the pandemic has been a catalyst for accelerated digital transformation.

In a global survey conducted by McKinsey, executives said the pandemic had accelerated the digitization of their supply chain, customer interactions and internal operations

For most organizations, the initial impact of the pandemic forced the quick adoption of temporary solutions. Tellingly, the executives in the McKinsey survey said they expect most of these solutions to be long-lasting.

What does this tell us about how organizations should approach digital transformation in our still-evolving business environment?

For one, organizations are under pressure to adapt to immediate changes, but have to balance this with long-term priorities.

Meeting short-term pressures

Business conditions are challenging right now. Organizations need the immediate ability to leverage technology to improve productivity, drive innovation or unlock new revenue streams. There is great urgency in achieving certain business outcomes – enabling effective remote workforce management, or increased business productivity, for example – and technology plays a major role in achieving these outcomes.

There is also great pressure to achieve quick time-to-value for any investment into new digital technologies. Cloud-based projects provide opportunities to bring organizational capabilities more in line with modern customer demands, especially in terms of accessibility, cost-efficiency and other changes accelerated by the pandemic.

While every business may be unique, the challenges they face are often similar. Off-the-shelf technology solutions are often sufficient to meet business challenges and can further help contain the high cost and time investment of customization.

Building future competitiveness

But there is also the pressing need to build capabilities that will help the business succeed into the future. The arrival of 5G connectivity, the growing volume of sensors in IoT-based deployments, the power of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics: these are all accelerators toward a new world of innovation and competitiveness. Organizations cannot afford to focus only on short-term productivity gains and sacrifice their long-term innovation capabilities.

Instead, organizations need to identify immediate and long-term growth and innovation opportunities that are unique to them, and then bring in partners and technology providers that can help build capabilities to capitalize on those opportunities.

Toward intelligent enterprise capabilities

The ultimate aim of modern digital transformation is for organizations to become intelligent enterprises, which have the capability to seamlessly integrate emerging technologies with a powerful digital core to continuously turn data into insights.

Intelligent enterprises represent a step-change in the evolution of how technology is used to drive business outcomes and innovation, and can accelerate innovation, increase productivity and deliver outstanding customer and employee experiences. Becoming an intelligent enterprise is essentially an insurance policy against future disruption.

Organizations leading in the journey toward becoming intelligent enterprises have embarked on high-value short-term projects that help them deal with immediate challenges without losing sight of the transformation outcomes that will support their future growth. It is a careful balancing act but one that is essential: simply focusing on short-term solutions without some element of future-proof testing may result in sunk costs and missed opportunities.

The introduction of business-transformation-as-a-service with the launch of 鈥淩ISE with 麻豆原创鈥� this year is simplifying the journey that organizations need to take toward becoming intelligent enterprises. RISE helps organizations unlock the full value of their transformations sooner, helping build greater agility, no matter where organizations are on their digital transformation journeys.

Organizations have had a rocky time adapting to the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. For many, it was a catalyst toward greater adoption of digital technologies. But the disruptive environment of 2020 remains: organizations have to build capabilities that will enable them to continue adapting to further disruption. And now with new tools that make the journey toward becoming intelligent enterprises easier, organizations can leverage the latest technologies to ensure they remain successful no matter what comes their way.

This article was written by Isabel Papadakis, Africa industry value advisor at 麻豆原创 Africa

The post How to Navigate Digital Transformation in 2021 appeared first on 麻豆原创 Africa News Center.