Engineering The New Normal: A Manifesto
“The current crisis has accelerated the mature adoption of enabling technologies. Many organizations, including ours, were able to remain fully operational thanks to these technologies. People were able to stay in touch with the outside world, thereby completely changing the way they work and live. When the emergency is over, returning to our old working practices will be unconceivable. Digital investments and cultural change are needed to seize the new opportunities that will arise from the ashes of this pandemic. It may seem too early to tell, but it is for certain that there will be no turning back with regards to digitalization. The acceleration we have witnessed will continue, enabling our societies and economies to take a giant leap forward.” – Paolo Pandozy, Chief Executive Officer, Engineering Group
A Manifesto from Engineering Group
Let’s face it. The world has changed and so have we. It has changed in ways that we cannot even fully comprehend yet. We do not know what the new world will look like after this crisis, but we certainly know that it will never be the same as before. Emergencies such as this one not only show the world clearly as it is, but also highlight its biggest cracks and weaknesses. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a massive stress test for society. And like all good stress tests, it has both showcased what is solid and resilient and exposed what was weak and broken. They say crises shape history. Disruptions can have a positive impact, driving innovation to identify alternatives to the status quo, and giving new light and weight to opportunities of uncovering resilience. The challenge is not only to fix what is broken, but to reimagine what the "New Normal" should look like. We are all going to be called upon to rebuild our world. We have a chance to build it better.
The Role of Digital Transformation
Technology has been the main enabler throughout this crisis: from keeping organizations in full operating mode, think smart working and virtual collaboration tools, to handling the medical emergency, think advanced data platforms to help institutions act as decisively as possible. The crisis has demonstrated that digital transformation is no longer a nice concept or something on your long-term to-do list: it is of vital importance for the survival of your business. In most fields, the more digitalized the processes, the less disruption they have suffered. This crisis has also uncovered certain truths and answers that could help us as we redefine how to build what will be called our “New Normal,” helping us identify what core values should guide us as our societies and businesses adapt and evolve moving forward.
Practically in all nations around the world, when it came to choose between safeguarding the economy or human lives, the latter was chosen. We chose what was best for humanity. Factories, offices, whole cities and nations were shut down to preserve human lives. This could change everything from here onwards. When the world will resume its normal operations, values such as sustainability and social responsibility will be central in defining strategies, and technology will be a strong enabler to achieving this.
This leads us to another answer this crisis has given us, one that is linked to our capability to change: to what extent and how quickly could modern societies change their living patterns? The crisis has shown how many organizations were able to change work and delivery patterns nearly overnight. Schools, healthcare institutions, businesses. Those that had or were able to rapidly digitalize their core processes were able to keep pushing on despite the surrounding difficulties. Some had already been doing this for some time, and some had to expand their capabilities within a matter of weeks. Others were caught unprepared and are currently suffering the consequences. Change was probably ripe, but some didn’t see it. This crisis will continue to speed up change. Investments will grow to expand or to kickstart Digital Transformation activities.
In the following months, we will all be called upon to start again, start anew, to repair and rebuild. To develop a new today. In the wake of this crisis, we have the chance to forge a new path and not retrace old beaten roads. We are at the dawn of a new age: a data-driven, connected era that could well be a new Renaissance. Now is the time to think differently, to try new ideas, to accelerate the Digital Transformation of our core processes and the way we do business.
Building the “New Normal” Together
In this manifesto, we share our experiences, how we have reacted as a global organization and how we are helping our partners and customers to:
- Restart Operations, maximizing resource utilization, both human and/or financial, and leveraging all existing enabling technologies, such as Cloud, RPA, AI, etc.
- Leverage COVID-19-Specific Solutions developed by Engineering to help mitigate and manage the crisis from outbreak to pandemic and moving forward, as we physically resume certain activities.
- Build a New Normal, framing all activities as part of a larger transformation journey, from maturity assessments to process redesign, keeping in mind that our customers’ core values may be changing too.
Our global delivery teams are ready and equipped to deliver the solutions our customers need to digitalize core processes and get back to business as soon as possible. All of our researchers continue to work on frontier technologies, some of which have already generated COVID-19-specific solutions to address the most pressing common needs and experiences across all markets. We hope these may be useful to you as you reimagine your own organization’s future. Now is the time to review and rethink many of our mental and societal barriers. Now is the moment to step up and change.
Engineering's Reaction to COVID-19
Right from the beginning of this complex crisis, we immediately focused on how to best support our clients, healthcare systems and governments, as they prepared to ramp up their digital capabilities. To achieve this, however, we had to first ensure the safety of our own employees, and we had to act fast. We immediately switched over to remote working practices, successfully transitioning from 2k employees working remotely to more than 11k in, quite literally, a matter of days.
We scaled our existing Digital Workplace infrastructure and processes quickly and securely to include all our locations and teams across the globe. How were we able to do so? First, thanks to our continued investment and experience in this field for our customers; over the years, we have set up and managed over 250,000 client digital workplaces. Second, because we deployed our own Digital Workplace solution across the entire Engineering Group a few years back, so we only had to scale to include all our offices and business units worldwide. This also proved crucial in ensuring that there were no disruptions in service delivery. Furthermore, our delivery model, based on remote development centers that dynamically distribute workload, adapted perfectly to this emergency, enabling the complete switchover to be executed without compromising service levels or activities.
Next, our proprietary infrastructure and our unique Hybrid Multi-Cloud setup proved crucial in enabling our team to handle all the peaks. Thanks to the flexibility and reliability of this offering, we have been able to ensure business continuity by design and throughout the entire crisis, managing the added workload and utilization peaks without issue.
Finally, the operation of all our proprietary Data Centers has continued without interruption. These operations are guaranteed by regular supervision of the Network Operations Center (NOC) and Security Operations Center (SOC) service, active 24/7, monitored and managed continuously through both remote and onsite activities. The operational procedures required to manage client infrastructure and protect client data continue to run seamlessly and can be fully managed remotely. Our Data Centers are equipped with backup power generators and refrigeration equipment, as well as continuity systems guaranteeing data integrity automatically, in case of any event. Critical IT infrastructure processes are being continuously monitored.
Each crisis is different, and it is certainly too early to tell the full effects or consequences right now, but as our Q1 2020 results confirm, the outlook remains positive. Taking history as an example, Engineering's track record through similar crises, such as September 11th in 2001, SARS in 2003 and the Lehman Brothers Crash from 2008 to 2010, we have always displayed solidity and resilience across the board, demonstrating that our organizational and delivery model adapts well even to the most critical situations. This also shows that we operate within core and non-deferrable service areas. Times are hard, but core processes across most markets will need to continue functioning and will need to be transformed. They cannot be stopped. For over 40 years, we have built our business around the core processes of our customers. And now more than ever, we believe that the main focus of our activities must be to help transform and protect them in the coming months. Learn more about the Engineering Group.
Our View of the Global Market
We work and partner with stakeholders across all markets. Some of these industries have been hit harder than others, like Manufacturing, Transportation, Travel & Hospitality, as well as some parts of Retail (e-Commerce being the exception). Other industries, like Telecommunication, Media, Healthcare and the public sector have shown signs of growth. The extent of the impact of this crisis on Finance, Energy and Utilities has yet to be verified, since the timing of their recovery is not yet clear. However, in general, we, along with experts around the world, believe that all markets should observe an initial recovery phase by/in 2021. Overall, many are saying that it is too early to call, and that forecasting in the midst of the current situation has more to do with gut feeling than mathematical models. Initial signs from China seem encouraging.
What we do know, from talking to all our customers and partners, is that Digital Transformation is no longer a bullet point on the agenda, rather the main item at the TOP of the list. In most industries, organizations that were digitalized on a very small scale (or not at all) are the ones currently at a standstill. It must be said, though, that many core processes, from payroll to the actual running of IT systems, cannot be halted. Non-essential spending will suffer and IT spending will be refocused on digitalizing and upgrading core capabilities.
For 40 years, Engineering has focused on bringing to the market both the latest and most needed technologies aimed to improve, augment and redesign the core processes of banks, factories, hospitals, governments, utilities and so on. Our mission continues.
