68% of businesses reveal Covid has transformed operations long-term

68% of businesses have revealed that COVID-19 has changed how they will operate long-term, according to new industry research.

The research, carried out by Digital Space, surveyed nearly 1,000 senior representatives from businesses across eight key industry sectors on the impact of the pandemic on business. It revealed that a staggering 77.2% of respondents have introduced new technologies over the last 12 months.

Of these, 34.4% invested in cloud strategy and transformation, 58.9% invested in new technologies to aid smart working – providing their staff with the technology to fulfil their role from where and when they need – and 28.6% invested in unified communications to enable fast and efficient internal and external communication.

When questioned on increased investment in new digital infrastructure, 27.8% of respondents advised the pandemic accelerated their investment in technology by 50 – 74% and a further 26.1% of respondents advised it has accelerated their investment by 25 – 49%.

Other key take outs from the research includes:

• 1% of respondents advised they utilised COVID-19 as an opportunity to review and revise existing operational processes, whereas 34.4% of respondents were more concerned about business survival over business change.
• When questioned on investment in cloud solutions, 27.2% of businesses have opted for private, 24.2% public and 16.8% hybrid.
• Growth and Profitability [38.2%], Cashflow [32.2%] and Staff Output and Support [28.1%] were cited as the top business challenges faced by businesses over the last 12 months.
• Increased productivity [45.3%], reduced overheads [33.7%] and the ability to scale up or down in response to market demand via new tech infrastructure [24.3%] were cited as the top benefits of recent operational changes, such as remote working on mass.

This research comes as leading managed services provider, Timico, unveils its own strategic transformation into technology platform and cloud-first solutions provider, Digital Space, following significant investment in new and advancing technologies.

Born from the heritage of converged connectivity and IT managed services, Digital Space boasts a clear mission to enable change for its customers through its Connected, Productive and Secure solutions, all delivered via its very own Cloud-Management Platform.

CEO of Digital Space, Neil Muller said, “The COVID-19 pandemic has been incredibly challenging for businesses across multiple industry sectors – where adapting to remote working and investing in new technical infrastructure has been key to survival, as reinforced by our recent research.

Although Government restrictions have started to lift, businesses need to continue to adapt and find new ways of working, with technology and Cloud very much at the helm. To help our customers maintain competitive advantage whilst adhering to new, agile ways of working, we have acquired new capabilities, restructured our technology, and developed our own connected, productive, and secure spaces, which, when integrated via our Digital Space Management Platform, help organisations accelerate growth.

Therefore, whilst I am proud of everything we achieved as Timico, I am extremely excited about the future that lies ahead for Digital Space and our ability to enable effective and positive change for our customers.”