Going digital key for businesses to stay competitive

The digital transformation is crucial for businesses to maintain competitiveness, especially after the coronavirus outbreak when more and more enterprises stepped up their digital push, experts and business leaders agreed.

"For businesses, digitalization is no longer a differentiation advantage, but has become a prerequisite for development," said Zhu Wei, chairman of Accenture Greater China.

"While the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the pace of going digital among businesses, it has also widened the digital gap between them," he told Accenture Innovation Forum held in Shenzhen earlier this week.

According to a Accenture report published in February, the revenue growth of enterprises with leading digital capabilities is now five times those with weaker capabilities, as the former can adapt to market needs and make innovations at a fast speed. Between 2015 and 2018, the gap between the two saw a twofold expansion.

Zhu also said the global economic uncertainty has not stopped businesses from being innovative. Instead, many of them are increasing investment in an effort to make disruptive innovations, hoping to recover quickly from the COVID-19 pandemic and achieve long-term development.

Meng Bing, head of the Tech Lab at Airbus China Innovation Center, believes new technologies including internet of things, 5G and artificial intelligence are at the core of the intelligent era, and only by integrating their own technologies with advanced technologies can businesses in traditional industries retain their competitiveness.

Airbus is now actively embracing the trend by making efforts to digitalize all parts related to aircraft production, including logistics, supply chain and production management, he said.

Guo Jiang, senior IT director of Chinese fast-fashion chain Urban Revivo, said the biggest challenge posed to the company because of the coronavirus pandemic is to deal with changing consumer behaviors.

"In 2020, consumer behaviors changed passively due to the pandemic. But this year, new consumption habits have become the new normal," he said.

As more people turn to online shopping, the company has stepped up its digital drive by focusing more on e-commerce. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, offline sales accounted for 80 percent of the total.

"We expect sales from e-commerce platforms to reach 50 million yuan ($7.7 million) this year," he said.