As we shift to more permanent hybrid workforces and lifestyles, companies have had to adapt to change at a rapid pace. The upside of this is an outpouring of innovation, causing everyone to rethink what is possible. VMware’s Global Industries Group has curated expertise in a variety of sectors, including financial services, healthcare, and retail. This has given us a unique perspective on how organizations have adapted to three macro trends that have been bubbling up across industries.
Customers Are Interacting with Businesses in New Ways
As employees shifted to remote work and customers began needing new services online, companies scrambled to update their digital offerings. A digital transformation plan that might have had a 5-year implementation window had to be condensed down into 5 months—in some cases, just 5 weeks. And even as in-person engagement becomes more feasible again, digital usage is likely to remain a preferred channel moving forward.
Consumer Expectations for Digital Experiences Are Higher
As more of life moves online, consumers are looking for tech and services that just work. They want simple interfaces, a personalized experience, and solutions that offer them convenience – and they are increasingly willing to try out new brands to satisfy these needs. This means that companies don’t just have to build better digital experiences than their competition—they have to match the best-in-class experiences consumers have gotten used to from the Amazons and Apples of the world.
Navigating the Complexity of Technology Is … Complex
In the face of new customer demands and rising consumer expectations, companies have to outpace the competition while contending with a number of competing agendas. Their focus needs to be on:
- Keeping the pace of delivery high while managing change effectively.
- Modernizing everything while still maintaining existing platforms.
- Remaining compliant with evolving regulatory landscape.
- Combating increasingly aggressive cyber criminals.
And all of the above need to be done while maintaining or reducing expense budgets and upskilling/reskilling talent.
Having spent much of my career in technology, I was sure I knew the value that VMware could provide when I first joined the company. Just to pressure test my understanding, I sat down and mapped out the business outcomes and challenges that I and my peers were tackling. I thought about every problem or pain point in the digital space that I’d experienced during my time in financial services or that I had seen in the wider industry. Then I dug deep into the features and capabilities of all of VMware’s products and services. The results were revelatory.
These are not simple problems that are being solved. Right now, companies are looking at competing priorities of complex systems.
For every business outcome or challenge, I saw a clear path on how VMware could deliver value. However, there was a gap between what I knew of VMware, and the industry outcomes we actually contribute to. These are not simple problems that are being solved. Right now, companies are looking at competing priorities of complex systems. How do you build new modern cloud native apps while maintaining the estate of existing apps? Deliver at a rapid pace while demonstrating control? Enable innovation while being compliant with regulation and defending against cybercriminals? Underpinning all of these problems are the constraints of creating a digital/technology driven culture and attracting the key skills needed into the business while driving employee retention.
Bridging this divide is the value proposition of what we’re now doing in the Global Industries Group. We’re combining our expertise on VMware’s products with a deep knowledge and understanding of individual industries. This unique perspective enables us to deliver solutions to help our customers achieve the business outcomes they have set forth for their digital agendas. Our goal is to show up as a thought partner, guided only by our desire to help our customers achieve their transformation goals.
VMware meets customers wherever they are on the journey – it helps them manage all of this duality. We can show you how to build modern apps while maintaining the fleet, manage the existing data centers while moving to the cloud, protect and defend from cybercrime, enable a workforce both in and out of the office, and leverage our tools to reskill the workforce at the same time.
In a post-pandemic world driven by increased digital engagement, higher consumer expectations, and constrained resources, VMware is focused on providing solutions that solve the unique challenges of every industry. We aren’t just looking at the pressing issues of today, but we have our finger on the pulse of emerging trends of tomorrow. We are going to differentiate ourselves by being the partner that simplifies the complexity of IT and provides the digital foundation for innovation of the future.