Companies are in constant need of evaluating the use of new technologies to improve business and increase efficiency. This need is more visible now more than never in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic.

Despite the negative impact of COVID-19 on corporate budgets, enterprises need to move toward digital transformation in response to the crisis, according to Elizabeth Sisco (pictured), global head of IBM go to market at Wipro Ltd.

“What we’re seeing right now is businesses who have adopted digital technology and by extension adopted cloud as the backbone to that digital technology have been able to move faster in this environment,” Sisco said. “They’re able to do things like work from home. They’re able to ensure security is in place. They’re able to give their employees and their customers access to information in a faster and more cost-effective way.”

Sisco spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the IBM Think Digital Event Experience. They discussed how digital transformation can help companies face the pandemic, as well as the development of the partnership between IBM and Wipro. (* Disclosure below.)

Supply chain and e-commerce are priorities

Some of the areas that first felt the need for digital investment are supply chain management and e-commerce. As more and more countries order people to stay at home to prevent the spread of the virus, multinationals face a supply shock with a shortage of essential supplies for their products.

Companies that have automated some of the supply chain management are finding it easier, for example, to onboard new suppliers and to know where their shipments are, Sisco explained.

“If you haven’t done those things, even though your IT budgets might be being slashed, there are things that you have to do right now,” she said. “And doing some of those things using supply chain automation on the cloud, it’s the right way for companies to go right now that find themselves in a predicament and maybe are not as prepared as they’d like to be.”

E-commerce has seen a boom in demand as people are buying online amid stay-at-home orders during the pandemic. “If you didn’t have a loyal customer base, now is the time to really get used to interacting with your customers in that way,” Sisco highlighted. “Everything can be pretty much bought online these days or consumed in a digital format.”

Leveraging the use of the cloud is another way to improve business, Sisco pointed out. As most companies have multicloud, the challenge is to get the best out of all platofmrs and simplify the journey in this landscape.

“Seventy-three percent of our clients see the ability to move between these clouds as a high priority, and we are addressing that with two main solutions that we’ve built out at Wipro,” Sisco concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the IBM Think Digital Event Experience. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the IBM Think Digital Event Experience. Neither IBM Corp., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE