As the cities around the world go into lockdown, global share markets plunge, and a global recession looms larger, it is safe to say now that Covid-19 (or Coronavirus) outbreak has disrupted all of our lives. Most of the pundits around the world are worried about the negative social and economic impact that this immense disruption is going to have. However, I am a bit optimistic about the opportunities that this crisis is going to unleash.

I would draw a parallel between what is happening now and the Indian Government’s exercise of ‘Demonetization’. Many corporations had to shut down due to demonetization. But India’s digital payment industry got a massive boost, and so did companies like ‘PayTm’, ‘PhonePe’, and ‘Google Pay’.

Similarly, more and more companies today are forced to ask employees to work from home. What happens when the Covid-19 restrictions are lifted? What if companies like the status quo? What if companies figure that making employees work from home is not only saving them huge costs of maintaining office spaces but also is increasing the employees’ productivity. Here are some benefits for employees: no more traffic-hour rush, more time with family, no mental drain due to daily travel and so on. This spells doom for companies like ‘WeWork’, as their services would no longer be needed. Similarly, what if University students and parents start liking remote learning? They may wonder why to spend thousands of dollars on in-person University education if remote learning is equally efficient (or better). Would the Universities shutdown?

For now, let’s come back to the employees and companies. This brings tremendous opportunities for cloud-computing companies like ServiceNow, Salesforce, and SAP to create a robust digital enterprise architecture to support this ‘new way of working’. It would be interesting to see how these companies make it work and ensure employees don’t just ‘mail it in’.