What next? Post Covid
Has COVID-19 really accelerated the adoption of digital technologies, maybe by a few years? Will these changes remain long term? Companies in many sectors have changed the way they do business. Digitisation has been on the fast track ever since Covid struck. Be it, the internal operations or customer relations or supply-chain interactions, they all have gone online. A report of the McKinsey Global Survey of executives estimates that this change would have taken at least four years to occur during normal times.
Companies that are resilient in their approach have withstood the disruption much better than those that were less organised. They all brought up temporary solutions to meet many of the new demands, much more quickly than they had thought possible before the crisis. Many of them invested intellectual capital and substantial amounts of money in adopting the change. The questions now will be, will it increase the number of customers? Will it increase sales and profits? It, however, remains to be seen, what and how of what it would take to cover the return on investments (ROI) made.
As the COVID-19 Pandemic surge seems to be ebbing, work from home (WFH) is slowly changing to work from an office (WFO). Will it be back to the same grind or the changes will be more permanent? How must a balance be struck so that the gains accrued online are not frittered away? Companies that made products were slower to adopt changes than the B2B or B2C sectors. Even healthcare and pharma, financial services, and professional services saw the adoption of a massive digital culture. Many start-ups have provided fast online support for local Kirana shops, pharmacies, vegetable vendors, and individual businesses during Covid. AgriBazaar, a full-stack Agritech company replicated the physical mandi with an e-mandi aggregator model on which we all have placed orders even as farmers registered and uploaded their produce. The pandemic even saw the entry of new competitors in the company's “market/value chain" and "exit of major competitors from the same market/value chain". It will be interesting to see if initiatives taken during Covid continue to prosper.
Even as the industry has been surging ahead with the adoption of technology, the education sector’s response has only been a knee jerk. Whereas a little more than 950 universities and 45000 colleges suddenly went online, not all of them adopted digital technology nor invested in it to reach their students. This resulted in many students, being sometimes in and sometimes out of the learning curve. The leadership of these institutions will have to carry the blame at least in part. One of the reasons for a sluggish adoption could be the fear of student and faculty resistance to changes, the other being institutional silos impeding quick adoption.
The biggest changes are the most likely to work in the long term. Admittedly, reaching education to everyone was a challenge. It was also not practicable that all those thousands of colleges and universities would have individually subscribed either to the components that administer a university or to the content that is needed for teaching. Cost to students would have been prohibitive apart from the redundancy. Surely, all applications like the ERP/CRM, LMS, exam management and digital records could have been aggregated on a multi-tenant architecture and each instance white labelled so that every institution or university could have used them in a collaborative mode.
Good third-party content also could have been aggregated over the above platform to reach everyone. This was a great opportunity to teach and interact with students remotely. Adequate investments in data security and migration to the cloud have untold possibilities for the future. For maximum throughput and minimal interference required for the conduct of nationwide teaching or conducting examinations, the government could have enabled channels 1, 6, and 11 in the 2.4 GHz ISM Band. Further, DTH Channels and Cable TV Networks would have proved useful. UGC could have promoted massively online education through enabling provisions.
The digital divide could have been bridged by both the government and the private sector. That it was not done is an opportunity lost and the nation will have to bear its cost. It is necessary for success that experimentation and acting early are promoted. Universities cannot only preach. They must adopt and drive change if they want to see a change in society.
The pandemic provided multiple opportunities for businesses to function. However, technology was at a centre stage not just for cost efficiency but also for operational ease. Speed in experimenting and innovating was at its peak. The education sector should have led the way by reimagining the delivery models and rethinking education structures alongside aligning with technology.
Tipping points have manifested in various ways in the past. Technology adoption or digital disruption isn’t new. COVID-19 crisis certainly is a tipping point of monumental proportions. Further changes will happen as the situation eases and the human situation evolves. The pandemic has taught us that we must learn both tactically, in the process of making specific changes to the way we conduct education and organizationally to how we manage our institutions/universities. The pace of change may not slow down. That said, have our institutions been up to it? How will they fare in the post covid times?
Many have just seamlessly, gone back to business as usual or cosied to the way they were conducting education before the pandemic. The classes have started functioning with some restrictions still in place. The students have started attending classes and happy they are, for they can now come out of their homes. The technology challenged faculty or those who would not want to exert their grey matter are happy that their misery may be over. The technology-enabled faculty were using it anyway. The managements are happy that the worst may be over and that the admissions would happen again. The government is happy that the institutions are functioning, classes have begun after almost one and half years without having to make much of investment, or change to new thought processes or face politically loaded brickbats.
Parents in this country would sell everything that they have for educating their children. National Education Policy (NEP) speaks of a large-scale technology infusion in our institutions, adoption of value-added courses and personalised learning. Personalised learning, multiple entry and exits and credit accumulation cannot be realised without the use of focussed technology. More than anything else the 50 GER critically depends on technology and the virtualisation of education.
Every crisis provides an opportunity. Covid provided one. Even as some businesses adopted and prospered, the education sector only did it in bits and pieces. The opportunity cost of an unlived dream is not only that dream but also the dreams the dream was meant to inspire. Dreams can come true if only we did our bit.
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