COVID–19 is accelerating the technology takeover

– Shanil Fernando, Co-founder & Managing Director, Sysco LABS

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a great deal of vulnerabilities, and technology has proved to be an invaluable tool. Be it e-education, work from home tools, or essential services, our reliance on technology has deepened during the pandemic.

The Four Stages of Pandemic Behavior

The patterns of altered behavio

chools closed, work from home (WFH) and maintain social distancing. Then, we adapt to the virus, and return to more normal lives having developed a deeper understanding of how to live with the virus. Finally, after a vaccine is discovered, scaled and distributed, our behavior can return to how it was.

r can be divided into four stages. The Danger Zone is the period when the country goes into lockdown to try to contain the virus and flatten the curve. What follows is the New Normal; when countries try to open up a little while continuing to keep s

We have seen the reactions of different companies, and can predict certain trends: (Diagram 1)

The first group of companies are completely unable to operate in the danger zone, such as companies in the travel, hospitality and ride sharing industries. These companies have suffered predominantly because they rely on direct services to people.

Companies with low long-term stickiness prop themselves up during the pandemic by creating a simple business that addresses new needs. They take advantage large companies’ struggle to react effectively. Ultimately, these companies lose market share due to a lack of customer experience. Larger players also catch up eventually.

Businesses with high stickiness see increased patronage during lockdown, and only a small drop afterwards. Ultimately, the momentum gained through new customers may allow them to continue to grow their customer base, even after the lockdown ends.

The biggest successes though are the new outliers whose business is based on changing consumer behaviors. Once behavior has been changed, they feel comfortable continuing to operate that way post-lockdown.

Two Sri Lankan companies that succeeded in this environment are PickMe Delivery and oDoc. oDoc, a company that provides telemedicine software, saw a 374% increase in new customer registrations during the lockdown period in March growing at 10% per day. They became the official telemedicine provider for the government of Sri Lanka and released an online COVID-19 symptoms checker. The adoption of video-based consultations has increased, and some patients may now prefer this convenience.