COVID-19 has taken a terrible toll on people, communities and companies. Now that we have some experience dealing with it, however, what have we learned that can make tomorrow better?
As a COO and CFO, I glean insights by examining the numbers. On the downside, the economic disruption caused by the pandemic is projected to cost the global economy $26.8 trillion over five years. On the upside, telemedicine use increased 10-fold in 15 days, and e-commerce experienced a decade of growth in just three months. Why?
Because these services replace physical experiences with virtual ones.
As the numbers indicate, disruption simultaneously wreaks havoc and creates opportunity. And, like telemedicine and e-commerce, organizations that have the agility to adapt quickly can avoid the negative impacts of disruption while seizing opportunity. The key to this agility? Virtualization of experience, a transformation enabled by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
At Dassault Systèmes, we have almost four decades of experience helping clients successfully transform their businesses via virtualization. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform achieves this to an unprecedented degree, enabling: intelligent product virtualization that minimizes or eliminates waste and improves recyclability; cloud-based collaboration that allows people to work together without limits; virtual twin experiences of manufacturing facilities to reinvent the plant floor for changing needs; and supply chain and logistics capabilities to sense and adjust for looming disruptions.
Yet McKinsey estimates that each year, one company in 20 suffers a supply chain disruption costing it at least US$100 million. When the technology to prevent this exists, why do companies run the risk?
"Virtual experience enables business agility. And agile businesses take disruption in stride."
Often, inertia is the culprit. Virtualization requires both investment and strategic thinking, across every facet of a business. The press of meeting today’s orders – and investors’ short-term expectations – leads many companies to delay spending the time and the money, trusting that theirs will not be the 1 in 20 that loses US$100 million.
No longer. COVID has made the cost of continued inaction too high. Every business and every governmental organization that failed to prepare for disruption on a global scale has felt the one-two punch of financial setbacks and missed opportunities.
The good news, however, is that iteration between the real and the virtual via the 3DEXPERIENCE platform prepares an organization to take disruptions of all kinds in stride. Day in and day out, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform also drives businesses’ costs down and productivity up on hundreds of different measures. Best of all, it empowers them to envision and exploit never-before-possible new business models and opportunities.
Digitally transformed companies are more than twice as likely as their competitors to improve satisfaction, experience and customer loyalty, and 3.5 times more likely to increase revenues, profits and stock price. By virtualizing experience, not just digitalizing it, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform delivers even more.
The numbers speak for themselves. Virtual experience enables business agility. And agile businesses take disruption in stride.
