There’s always an upside to everything. And while it’s hard to see the positive if your revenue stream has dried to a slow-moving trickle, the glimmer of hope is there.

“The COVID-19 virus has really kind of thrown everything into the muck … but at the same time, it’s really given companies an opportunity,” said Tim Crawford (pictured), CIO strategic advisor at AVOA LLC. “We have the lowest level of risk that our company will observe, probably over our career lifetimes.”

Crawford spoke with Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the Dell Technologies World Digital Experience event. They discussed how businesses need to transform and trial new strategies. (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following content has been condensed for clarity.]

Business strategy is very different today than when we talked at Dell Technologies World last year.  What are some of the biggest changes you’re seeing at the enterprise level?

Crawford: The way we engage with customers, the way we run our business, who our customers are, and the markets we go after, all of that is now up for grabs. All of that has changed. And so therefore technology and the underpinnings of how we use data has to change accordingly.

We don’t know what the new normal is going to look like. We don’t know how our customers are going to engage with us in the future. So, all the more reason why we need to be thinking very differently about how we operate our companies and how we remain flexible. If you can say that there’s a great thing that’s come out of it, it’s that [the pandemic] really accelerated the need to transform companies. And I’m talking about business transformation, not digital transformation.

A lot of the hurdles that companies were having to move to the cloud, to leverage data, to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning, have since dropped by the wayside, because companies are realizing that if they don’t start to adopt some of this new technology that’s available, they will die. It really is that dramatic for companies. If you’re a commercial airline, you have the lowest passenger loads right now. So, if you need to change core operational systems, now is the time to do it, not when you’re operating at peak.

This is playing out right now across all of the different industries, and that’s a huge opportunity.

How do enterprises shift budget rapidly enough to be able to implement the technology that can harness insights from data to drive a superior, differentiated customer experience?

Crawford: Budgets have changed. Technology has changed. And so we have to think about how we do things differently. We have to think about how our processes are different. All of these pieces kind of come together and cause us to rethink how we allocate our budgets within the IT organization.

At first there were a lot of productivity tools that were being purchased. There was a lot of preservation of cash that companies went into. But the smart ones started to look at the opportunities to accelerate their innovation programs, and those are the folks that are really doing well right now. [The question is] how do I start to use this opportunity — not trying to suggest that COVID-19 or the coronavirus is a great thing for us — but how do we start to leverage that in the best way possible and take advantage of it in such a way that it can benefit us on the long run?

This is where innovation and accelerating some of those changes really comes into play. Things like cloud, artificial intelligence, machine learning, leveraging data to understand your customers more intimately — being flexible to change your company, your business operations, how you engage with your customers. At the heart of it is data; and data is what ultimately will drive the decisions down the path.

Talk to me about the Dell Technologies landscape. How do you think it fits into addressing some of the challenges and complexities that are coming with 5G and edge computing? 

Crawford: Through the partnerships, through the ecosystem that Dell has, as well as their portfolio of hardware and software, I think Dell is positioned really well to be able to address both the customer experience as well as the business operations.

The key here is you have to think about edge to cloud, you have to think about data, you have to think about analytics. And then, how do we start to layer in the management and the algorithms on top to be able to manage that landscape? Dell is starting to come up with the software pieces that actually make the connection between those points on the continuum. And with the new announcements around Project Apex, I think that will shine really well for Dell.

But the place that I would actually watch most closely with Dell is what is that software layer? They already have a really good hardware platform to build on top of, but what is that software layer that connects or creates that connective tissue for them? I think that’s the big piece.

What’s your advice to businesses who are trying to become not just a survivor, but a winner of tomorrow from a cultural perspective? 

Crawford: You have to look at how you become less tech-centric and more business-centric. The move to being the transformational CIO or the transformational organization is really about shifting to be more business focused and using that as your North Star. Then, you start to understand how the different technology pieces fit into place.

So, for example, a traditional CIO would typically focus on business operations, the underlying technology, the backend systems; but the transformational CIO is going to be incredibly more customer focused. They’re going to be engaging firsthand with customers. Understanding firsthand what they’re dealing with; understanding what the business challenges are that they’re having. And then being able to translate that into “where does technology fit in, and where does technology not fit.” That’s really where this transformational bend comes from; shifting from just being back-office focused to moving toward understanding that front-office customer focus.

The real differentiator for companies here is when you can start to think about how technology plays that central role in changing your business. That’s gold, that’s absolute gold.

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE