Explore other lessons

1: Real-time customer insights
2: Communication agility
3: Human connection
4: New ways of working
5: Reexamining strategy
6: Digital adoption

Changing times call for changing

strategies

Few things have disrupted our lives — or businesses — like COVID-19.

Huge changes in demand have caused organisations everywhere to take a hard look at their operations and strategies. They’re figuring out how to handle late-stage pipeline gaps or large surges in demand. How to adjust to new fulfilment models. How to find new revenue sources. And how to empower their people to do business remotely.

“We all have to look at how we’re set up as an organisation. No business should expect to go back to their old ways of working.”

Marissa Dacay
Senior Director, Global Enterprise Marketing, Adobe

Meeting the demand for digital

Even though Adobe solutions are digital, we still had to shift our strategy to meet customers’ most urgent needs. Our field team kept in touch to our accounts to learn how the virus had affected them and what they needed most. And we did a customer survey that has provided valuable information for planning and creating actionable plans to guide our customers as they navigate new challenges.

With remote business now a huge priority, we discovered that digital forms and e-signatures were in much higher demand. Also, with schools closing down, we realised students needed access to their digital tools. So, we started offering free, personal, in-home access to Creative Cloud in place of classroom licences. And with businesses adjusting to working from home, we extended the duration of our free trials for e-signatures and free PDF services.

With many banks suspending in-person visits during lockdown, financial institutions have been forced to rethink how they support customers through digital channels. For TSB Bank in the UK, the coronavirus pandemic accelerated its vision of serving its personal and business banking customers online. As part of TSB Bank’s 2022 strategic plan, it released 18 forms online and managed over 80,000 customers interactions in just eight weeks, using Adobe Sign. This would have otherwise equated to as many as 15,000 in-branch, face-to-face visits. They’ve shown thousands of customers how easy it is to access services digitally, giving them peace of mind, whilst staying safe at home.

ADDITIONAL READING

Explore today’s trends with our Digital Economy Index

New challenges, new solutions

Many businesses have had to re-examine their go-to-market models, to find new sources of revenue or to rethink in-store shopping. Before the pandemic, a Digital Commerce 360 report shows Q4 2019 online sales accounted for just 17.8 per cent of all retail sales. But new data from Adobe’s Digital Economy Index shows US e-commerce jumped 49 per cent in April 2020, compared to the baseline period in early March before shelter-in-place restrictions went into effect.

In order to stay relevant, businesses large and small have to consider moving online or bridging the gap between physical and online strategies, like shifting their primary model to online ordering, curbside pickup and home delivery. (The Adobe Digital Economy index showed a 208 per cent year-over-year surge in buy-online, pickup-in-store orders in April.) Some boutique owners are even creating their own shopping channels on Facebook Live or offering personalised virtual shopping via Facebook or Skype.

Here is a screenshot of this unidentified element