Recent research of KPMG has shown that the impact of CVI and related preventive measures is felt in all sectors of the economy. However, at the same time we see surge of interest of leading and ambitious companies in various technologies. Based on our latest experience in client communication and present projects we have selected the most important, from our point of view, investment opportunities, which one should not miss.
1. Cyber risk management
Organizations all over the world talk about the increased number of cyber-attacks since the beginning of quarantine regime from 26% to 80% depending on the type of attacks (DDoS, trojans and “cryptographers”, spam and phishing). Considering that more than half of CIS companies plan to allow 16%-30% their employees further to work from home, one must maintain increased attention on IT risks and information security: IT service interruption, disclosure of confidential and personal data.
Management of these risks starts, first of all, from full assessment of the security of IT-infrastructure, IT-applications and services, awareness of the personnel and third-party interaction risks. The next step is to develop the architecture of information security solutions and choose products that will best integrate to other IT-services.
2. Cloud migration
¾ of companies feel that global cloud services are more secure than their own IT-infrastructure both in terms of level of availability and data security. Under restriction on movement and supply chains, popularity of cloud services from videoconferencing to data lakes and analytics has increased repeatedly. Within a few months of quarantine regime companies have assessed the efficiency of cloud services and legally permitted migration opportunities.
88% of companies all over the world plan to migrate their data to cloud within the next two years. This means, at least experimenting with cloud services needs to be conducted now. However, one must also have in mind such matters as compliance, selection and assessment of cloud providers, integration with the services of various providers and in-house infrastructure.
3. Introduction of robotic process automation
Almost third of the companies (31%) say that they cannot constantly support remote mode of work. Among the reasons is the linkage to the workstations and terminals. Nowadays CIS companies introduce robotic process automation (RPA) extensively, primarily in banking and telecom, where 10 to 20 processes can be delegated to robots in a year. In industrial solutions robots still may seem to be a costly affair. However, along with increasing efficiency, robots reduce risks related to process availability and human factor in routine operations.
Idea of robotization is not new for market, and experiments with robots have been conducted for the last three years. It is important, after pilot projects, to conduct full search of processes for automation, reveal process re-engineering opportunities and develop programs for involving employees into the transfer to digital work.
4. Creating marketplace
Growing interest in e-commerce had started long before the quarantine regime was introduced, and self-isolation has proved expediency of this approach. 28% of the companies talk about the inevitability of the mix of online and offline sales channels both in product and service segments.
It is important to assess business model modernization opportunities correctly, determine the strategy of development of your own marketplace or integrating into existing ecosystems right from the start. E-commerce market as a rule is global and highly competitive. Thus, it is important to find balance between the legislation, regulatory requirements and convenience for the client, particularly in terms of payment.
And of course, as with the investment to any technology one should not forget the basics – data and analytical tools. In the process of mass migration to online the number of generated structured and unstructured data, which can be used for client segmentation, development of new products and risk management, increases. The main thing is to build the data architecture, including local or cloud storage and data lake in a timely manner.