At that time there were many who were of the opinion that internet use would be residual and was not necessary to carry out their business. Some still thought this 10 years later and published articles in the international press. Twenty-five years later, and according to UNCTAD, the global digital economy as a whole represents around 22.6% of global GDP and global e-commerce reached 26.7 trillion dollars.
In the same way, there are still executives today who wonder whether digitalisation is an enabler for their business or whether it is not necessary or whether it hinders the way they run their business. According to the latest Eurostat data, 38.5% of Spanish companies do not reach a basic level of digitalisation, and in SMEs this percentage is 39.5%.
There is a ‘digital paradox’ in which sometimes the expected benefits are not obtained in the short term. Digital transformation projects can change the core of business operations, triggering systemic changes that affect business resilience and require risk management decisions.
This same dilemma has been analysed by consultants and researchers such as Cheng Li and Yewen Wang, who recently published a paper in PLOS ONE on the relationship between digital transformation and business resilience. They reach a conclusion in which they directly relate the digitisation of the business with the way to take advantage of opportunities for growth, to adapt to unexpected changes, to maintain a positive attitude in difficult times or to facilitate innovation.
Relationship between digitisation and business resilience
Digitalisation is a useful tool to manage and overcome risks based on information theory. A conclusion reached after analysing the impact of digitalisation on the supply chain and resilience in the ecosystem of digital platforms. On the other hand, the disruptive consequences of digital transformation can lead to situations of uncertainty, making it essential to have profiles within organisations that manage organisational vulnerability and work on the digitalisation capabilities of all resources.
This work also demonstrates the positive impact of digital transformation on three aspects of business resilience: agency costs, information transparency and access to finance.
The role of corporate governance and digitalempowerment
The role of corporate governance and digital empowerment are essential to facilitate the response to changes in the environment and disruptive risks, and, on the other hand, to generate resilient capabilities of the firm’s resources.
Based on the theory of digital empowerment, the authority and capabilities provided to resources through reskilling are positive levers for overcoming possible crises, allowing them to respond more quickly to any change during a crisis and increasing the acquisition of knowledge to overcome it.
Conclusion
Experience and academic work such as the one cited in this article demonstrate the positive relationship between digitisation and business resilience, and further progress is needed to reduce the percentage of SMEs that do not reach a basic level of digitisation.
Any digitisation process requires quality services and companies usually offer a catalogue of differential services in communications and information technologies with the best access network, the best availability and highly qualified professionals.
Aware that the empowerment of the resources of companies undertaking digitalisation processes requires not only quality services but also a service model from the service providers that is efficient and understands the needs of the companies, improvements are constantly being implemented in company service centres to:
- Anticipate the needs of customers and accompany them in those incidents that cause incommunication and are particularly relevant to their business.
- Remotely resolve any possible incident or customer request and offer tools so that they can self-manage reconfigurations or customisations.
- Speeding up technician visits so that an incident affecting their services is solved in less than 24 hours.
