From tech-savvy companies to oyster farms in central Chiayi County, local firms are speeding up their digitalization process to boost business, as the domestic COVID-19 outbreak has disrupted most commercial activities. As face-to-face contact is limited, digitalization has become crucial not only for businesses, but schools, too.
Businesses are facing a make-or-break moment, as it is uncertain how the outbreak will play out.
The recent speedy adoption of digital technology by local businesses would have been unthinkable more than a year ago. At the time, Taiwan had been successful in keeping COVID-19 at bay. Local corporations were prudent about revamping older information technology infrastructure to keep up with the global digitalization trend, but most office employees still worked in front of desktop computers at their workstations.
Taiwan’s small businesses were slow to transform digitally, giving the nation a lower ranking in the “digital observer” category than Singapore, Japan, South Korea and China, according to the Small Business Digitalization and COVID-19 Survey released by Cisco and International Data Corp (IDC) in June last year. Most countries fell in the “digital observer” category, the second of the survey’s four categories. Asia-Pacific small businesses mostly lagged behind those from the US and Europe.
Taiwanese firms sped up their digital transformation to improve work flow and efficiency in the second half of last year, due to the looming COVID-19 pandemic.
Commercial laptop shipments in Taiwan last year grew 15.4 percent annually as local companies invested in hardware, taking a cue from their US and European peers in preparation for potentially requiring staff to work from home, an IDC tally released in March showed.
Before last year, the PC market was long considered to have reached its plateau.
Corporate operators were expected to buy more hardware in the first quarter of this year, up about 2 percent from a year earlier, IDC said.
As streets in urban areas are left almost empty after the government issued a level 3 COVID-19 alert, shopping malls, restaurants and even oyster farmers are using social media to offer online purchases. Hypermarket operator Carrefour has seen online shopping surge to more than 10,000 deals per day since the alert was issued, compared with 7,000 to 8,000 before.
As restaurants closed, reducing demand for oysters, a beef noodle restaurant operator surnamed Chen (陳) came up with the idea of helping his friends sell oysters by livestreaming the process of collecting oysters via YouTube, a Formosa TV report said.
As for schools, most students had occasionally taken virtual classes, using remote education platforms as a supplementary tool rather than a requirement. Some teachers found it difficult to switch to the online education model after schools shut due to COVID-19. CooC Cloud, a remote schooling system supported by the Taipei City government, crashed as soon as thousands of students came online on the first day that school was closed. Now most students use Google Meet. Apparently, Taiwan’s education system is not yet ready for remote schooling. There is room to improve.
The pandemic has changed people’s lifestyles and business models. Digitalization is no longer an option, it is a necessity. Taiwan’s government agencies and private businesses should keep progressing.
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