The year 2020 will be forever known as the year the first (and hopefully only) world wide pandemic of the 21st century hit. This crisis has forced the population to change the way even the most mundane of tasks, like going for a walk or eating at restaurant, are perceived and executed. From whole countries shutting down to incidents arising from people falling to wear masks, change can be seen everywhere.

In the next few pages, we will discuss some changes I have observed over the last few months and explain how those learnings can be applied to enhance the operations of any IT organization.

At the beginning of the pandemic, when it was clear that the population would have to stay at home to slow the spread of COVID-19, popular wisdom indicated that food and water could quickly become scarce. However, no one could have foreseen that toilet paper would become the hardest item to find in stores.

In the same way, IT failures usually come from unexpected sources. IT organizations have contingency plans to ensure smooth operations, but no amount of planning can prevent the unexpected. For example, I remember one time when a company's network went down because someone had added additional equipment to the enclosure that held the network switches (including the redundancies). The added heat caused the switches to start failing in mass.

As the pandemic hit, our family saw many of our favorite brands disappear from stores. This forced us to experiment with new, unfamiliar products. For example, I was forced to try new yogurt alternatives when our favorite brand vanished. While I found my share of duds, in the end, I found a couple yogurt brands that could not only work as suitable substitutes but that were superior to my original brand.

As IT organizations grow, it is easy and comfortable to stick with a few well known tools. Unfortunately, this means that IT departments can potentially miss out on the significant advances in software applications. Recently, I witnessed a company passing on an AI based solution that could simplify a large number of their operations. The reason to pass on the software? The application did not export results to Lotus Notes. Trying to add features to a software over 25 years after most companies abandoned it, seems like a classic example of an IT department operating by inertia . Most times companies do not realize the hidden costs of legacy applications because many of these costs, while very real, are not always easy to quantify.

A few months ago, my 9 year old nephew, who lives abroad, realized that with the pandemic he could not spend half as much time with his friends as he normally would. So, he called me and convinced me to download his favorite game. He taught me how to play the game and now (5 game downloads later) we have weekly game sessions on our tablets. It took us five minutes to establish simultaneous visual, voice and game communication over thousands of miles. This was achieved by a well motivated 9 year old kid with access to the right technology.

Throughout my career I have seen a number of exciting and ground breaking initiatives die on the notepad because people think they are too hard to implement or that people would never used them. However, the pandemic has shown us that things are not always as they seem. Technology is moving at such a high pace that what used to be far fetched just a couple of year ago is now a reality. Companies that fail to constantly adapt and implement new technologies are finding themselves chasing the competition..

Before the pandemic hit, I used to think we had a fairly good handle on monthly household expenses However, COVID-19 arrived and changed the world along with our expenses. For example, restaurant and take out expenses were reduced drastically while supermarket costs increased. This shift to home cooking lead to unexpected savings..

An interesting fact coming out of the pandemic is that people are saving more than ever. The Commerce department estimates that pre-pandemic, the average American savings rate was in average 7.5%. By April of 2020, the rate had sky rocketed to 33.5% and by June it seemed to have settled around 19%. And while it is not known where that rate will settle once things come back to normal, it is clear that with the correct adjustments the average person can save more that he/she traditionally does in a typical month. 

On a regular month before the pandemic, our family's credit card bill contained a healthy mix of online and physical vendors. But in the last couple of months the list has been reduced almost exclusively to online retailers and our local supermarket. And we are not alone...

The move to online sales has been increasing for years, but the pandemic has accelerated it. According to the U.S. Census Bureau estimated quarterly E-commerce retail sales, online retails sales growth rate for Q2 2020 is three times higher than that of previous quarters. Take Amazon for example, the online giant reported net sales were up by 40% in Q2 compared to same period last year.