How do we perceive the passing year in TTMS? Looking at the macro scale, the IT sector was strengthening and stabilizing even before the pandemic. After a difficult 2016, when the market value fell by more than 5%, the following years brought regular growth. In 2019, there was a clear upward trend in working in dispersed teams – as if the market was preparing for a pandemic. Everyone knows the past 12 months. Although it can be said, that the IT sector coped with the crisis (we wrote about it here), most of us have had enough of this year and have been counting down the days to its end for many weeks. At TTMS, we’ve talked a bit about it – here’s what 2020 looked like from our perspective.
Humility and adaptation
The past year has taught us, that nothing is certain, and the great value of an organization is its ability to adapt quickly. It confirmed, that it is possible to provide a job in a 100% remote form, and two aspects are becoming vital: fast and proper communication and immediate addressing of customer needs (the validity period of business offers has shortened even more).
The phenomena, that happened to us in 2020, were difficult to predict, but it was possible to adapt to them. In many cases, it was necessary to diversify the services and customer portfolio. The key to success turned out to be e.g. directing the offer to companies / industries resistant to the economic closure.
It was imperative to stay cool and focus on a long-term plan to recover from the pandemic’s oppression.
In particular, acceptance and humility turned out to be of key importance – recognition, that man, despite high civilization development and advanced technologies, does not have an influence on everything. With this assumption, it is easier to “do your own thing”, adapting to the realities of the “higher power” and maintaining relative peace of mind in these troubled times.
Self-discipline
In TTMS, 2020 was a year of high self-discipline. We have shown, that even working 100% of the time remotely, we are able – thanks to the use of technology – to operate effectively. Changing the procedures of some accounting and HR issues was a big challenge, which of course we dealt with by implementing the assumed actions. The changing conditions did not cause downtime or delays in the tasks, we carried out for internal and external clients.
Remote work
The phrase “remote work” was – next to the words “coronavirus”, “pandemic”, “lockdown” or “restrictions” – one of the most popular in 2020. The massive transition of companies to this formula of operation, with the support of the rapid development of cloud solutions, did not cause a decrease in the quality of work performed. Practically overnight we realized that teleconference systems have become the most important tool for us, but also that in certain circumstances office space is an unnecessary burden.
Work humanization, relations, normality
After just a few weeks of being locked in four walls, we began to ask ourselves: how to maintain healthy relationships in such unprecedented circumstances: with the environment, with work, and finally with ourselves / ourselves?
After creating appropriate solutions for remote work, we started looking for ways to “humanize” it. Some of them came intuitively – it’s hard not to notice that in a pandemic, teleconferences are less “formal” in nature and the longing for another person has an impact on our “calls”. After all, such connections imitate our work in the office, and there – in addition to desks and conference rooms – there are also corridors …
Even software vendors began to notice this longing, which we wrote about here.
The year 2020 has shown us how important contact with other people is and how important interpersonal relations are in private and professional life. It’s hard to keep them at the same level as last year, but on the other hand, to help someone, sometimes you really need little. Let us remember how big an emotional challenge this year is for all of us and how differently we deal with it.
Market phenomena
Let us list the phenomena, that we have noticed during the last 12 months.
- There has been a broadly understood virtualization of classic on-site services – e.g. transfer of large conferences to the Internet, remote learning on a large scale.
- Digitization has accelerated in many sectors of the economy.
- For many companies, the need to operate online has become a springboard for multiplying revenues.
- The uncertainty of the situation on the market, caused by the pandemic, contributed to the deregulation of payment terms of foreign contractors, but at the same time influenced the greater punctuality of Polish customers. Compared to previous years, our Polish contractors complied with payment deadlines much more often, which was a nice gesture for the sake of continuing activities in our industry.
- The companies experienced problems due to the lack of a secured order backlog.
- There is a clear trend of employing specialists in cybersecurity, AI and blockchain outside.
- Interest in outsourcing and nearshoring has increased.
- In industries with low technological awareness, the importance of IT solutions has increased.
- There has been an even greater focus on cloud services, web security, e-commerce, data sourcing and commercial use. It’s hard not to notice the huge share of the IT industry in adapting other economic sectors to remote work.
- A lot of investments in companies have been pulled back or frozen regardless. whether the industry has been more or less affected by the pandemic. Everyone was affected by anxiety and uncertainty about how the Polish and world economy will cope with the crisis.
- Industries that grew during the pandemic, along with strengthening their position, tried to show their responsibility by engaging in social and charity campaigns (wholesalers donated food to hospital employees, organizations donated laptops to children, etc.).
- Companies have remodeled sales and distribution models, and the importance of e-commerce and e-learning platforms has increased (increased interest in courses on online platforms).
Why do albatrosses fly excellently?
We live in the age of the Internet, and the hardships of our everyday life are saved by the Google search engine – Gallus Anonymous of our time. Among the most popular entered queries in 2020 were, among others “What is hybrid teaching” or “how to sew a mask”, there were also issues bothering us, like “why do albatrosses fly excellently?” Let it be at least a modest harbinger of normality in 2021.
Marcin Kapuściński – Transition Technologies Managed Services