New Research Shows Where Canadian Businesses Stand On Tech Spending And Reskilling

Even if you’re not sure you can win a race, you at least want to make it to the finish line. But what if you’re not sure where the finish line is, or which route is most likely to take you there?

That image is a good analogy to what’s happened to businesses in Canada, and around the world, since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

While a lot of companies had to pick up the pace considerably on their digital transformation plans, the long-term changes to the way they’ll need to serve customers — and treat their employees — is still to be determined.

This month, market research firm IDC Canada published a report produced in partnership with Salesforce Canada based on a survey of more than 300 Canadian businesses. The idea was to shed light on what kind of race companies here are running now, and how they should “train” in order to make the best possible progress.

To take the race analogy a little further, IDC analysts broke down responses to the survey into segments that showed some common behaviours among the companies represented.

Those taking an ad-hoc approach to digital transformation, for example, are described as “Walkers” in the report. This compares to “Joggers” who have a more tactical digital strategy, and “Sprinters,” whose use of technology was the most advanced or mature.

As you review this high-level look at the key takeaways, we’ll correlate them with Canadian data from another study Salesforce conducted on a global level, which looked at common expectations and needs around the Future of Work.

Trend No 1: 32% of Canadian firms accelerated their technology adoption plans

Michael Marks, AVP Digital Transformation at Honda Canada, said it best in a quote from the IDC report: “Rather than having long time horizons in place, it’s become about what we need to accomplish in the next 30-45 days, and what are the needed tactics to move forward.”

He’s not alone: When asked about their response to COVID-19, a total of 46 per cent said they were grappling with changes to the way customers engage with them, most of which involved some kind of change in technology. This could include everything from the need to offer more products and services online to safety-conscious fulfillment processes such as curbside pickup and delivery.

The IDC report noted, however, that 40 per cent of Sprinters were at the forefront of meeting these new customer expectations, while Walkers were spending more of their time looking at internal processes. This might include a shift to remote work, which was new for a lot of businesses before the pandemic began.

This becomes even clearer when you look at the Salesforce Future of Work study, which showed 79 per cent of those surveyed believed remote work was only available to a select few, even though 64 per cent said they won’t take public transportation to work anytime soon.

To be fair, the need to enable remote work happened without a lot of warning. Hopefully more of those Walkers will soon become Joggers and eventually catch up with the Sprinters who have adapted their purchasing and service processes.

Trend No 2: 40% of Canadian firms see employee retraining as a key priority

Companies now need to do more of their marketing through digital channels, sell through e-commerce and offer support online. That’s not how many firms originally conceived of their workforce, much less how they recruited and hired their teams.

Many Canadian businesses won’t want to replace those people, even if they could. After all, their existing employees often have institutional or industry knowledge that is difficult to come by. That’s why more than a quarter, or 27 per cent, said they had made major investments in retraining.

Closing the skills gap can’t come soon enough, based on the Salesforce Future of Work findings. In fact, 81 per cent said access to job opportunities is not improving, and 56 per cent said they don’t believe they have the in-demand skills employers want.

There’s no doubt a big part of training and development will centre around the use of new tools. Already, 40 per cent of Sprinters have invested in technologies that affect how customers interact with employees, compared to 15 per cent of Joggers and only eight per cent of Walkers.

Companies that win see retraining as having a long-term payoff. Take it from Rohan Verma, EVP, CIO & CTO at Citron Hygiene, who said: “I don’t think there’s any ‘assembly line’ we’ve put together that we’re going to depreciate once COVID’s gone.”

Trend No. 3: Canadian businesses see the cloud as the top investment over the next two years

Cloud computing takes several forms, and the IDC report confirms that fast-moving companies are most interested in the technologies related to infrastructure and platforms.

Fifty-eight per cent of Sprinters were focused on those kinds of cloud tools, compared with 51 per cent of Joggers. Deploying infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service offerings will make those firms better able to manage remote teams and customer-focused processes that can happen online.

For Walkers, the most significant area of cloud-related investment was software-as-a-service (SaaS), which was cited by 52 per cent. Examples here could be moving to a SaaS-based CRM to transform sales.

It’s important to recognize, of course, that cloud-based tools will inform how many people do their job, which brings us back to learning. In the Salesforce Future Of Work study, 97 per cent said adaptability will be the most important skill set for at least the next six months, followed closely by more technical know-how such as data analysis, which was cited by 90 per cent.

Overall, though, Canadian business leaders have come to the conclusion that the way they invest in technology and their employees has to be more customer-oriented than ever before. Steve Obenski, Chief Strategy Officer at Kira Systems, confirmed this in the IDC report.

“We needed to be empathetic to the struggles that each of our customers were going through,” he reflected. “There was this need to listen and understand that we are different companies — different than our customers in their transition — and determine how we can best help them.”

For a lot more data on the impact of COVID, technology spending forecasts and the state of remote work in Canada, read the full IDC report, Unlocking Business Resilience and Growth with Digital Technology.