2020 was a rough year for the global economy. With the emergence and persistent rise in global COVID-19 cases from early 2020, many important sectors, including retail, tourism, transportation and hospitality were at a standstill for many months.

To ensure business survival, many organizations had to digital transformation almost over night.

“Our roles have become not only to create a digital customer experience and engage with our customers in different ways, but also to transform the company operations from inside out to be able to give that digital experience from beginning to end of the customer engagement going forward,” said Rashmi Kumar (pictured), senior vice president and chief information officer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. “We have also become responsible for switching our strategies around the companies as the COVID wave hit in different parts of the world at different times and how companies structured their operations to go from one region to another.”

Kumar spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the HPE Discover event. They discussed the urgency driving the current digital transformation landscape from an enterprise perspective. (* Disclosure below.)

The problem in detail

A recurring theme of year’s Discover event includes companies restructuring their entire end-to-end operational approach — from logistics to customer engagement — in order to fill in the gaps created by the pandemic. HPE has, itself, been forced to rethink many of its underlying processes.

“A global company like HPE had to look into its supply chain differently, had to look into strategies to mitigate the risk that was created because of the supply chain disruptions,” Kumar said.

Taking care of employees was also top of mind over the past year and a half.

“How do you create this digital collaboration experience where teams can still come together and make the work happen for our end customers?” Kumar asked.

Companies must also embrace growth and service delivery strategies centered around technology, irrespective of the industry or niche in which they are operating, she added.

A shift in focus

Kumar also took the time to break down HPE’s recent pivot toward becoming a services company and highlighted the different elements necessary for the change in direction.

“We were very used to selling a product and coming back three years later at the time of refresh of infrastructure or hardware. That’s no more true for us now that we are becoming a service or a subscription company. IT played a major role to enable that quote-to-cash experience, which is very different than the traditional experience around how we stay connected with our customers, how we proactively understand their behaviors,” she explained.

On the other side of the coin, the pair rounded up their discussion by addressing the various cybersecurity concerns that have emerged as a result of the drastic move to virtual by most global enterprises. From purpose-built, self-forming malware to mass data breaches, Kumar stated that these and many similar threats be addressed collectively with the same urgency as other humanitarian crises.

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE