It's safe to say that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenge for all of us — especially for organizations that were in the process of undergoing their own digital transformations as the lock downs started in March 2020. The need to use technology to support a fast-paced and agile workplace was always paramount — but somehow, it's become even more so in an era where most of your employees are going to be working from home for the foreseeable future.

It’s truly difficult to put into numbers just how enormous the change represented by COVID-19 has been to us all. Seemingly overnight, the ongoing pandemic (that we’re still firmly in the middle of) changed the way we work, the way we communicate, the way we collaborate and so much more.

Thanks to the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic, more and more businesses find themselves in urgent need of a digital transformation to stay afloat. This includes both organizations who were previously interested in the idea but who didn’t think it would happen quite so quickly, along with those who never really gave it much thought at all.

One of the most important things to understand about a digital transformation is that ultimately, you’re talking about exactly that: a transformation from where you are today to where you hope to be tomorrow. In order to get to that point, companies have to be willing to change. Not just for the sake of it, but because it makes the most sense at this particular moment given everything that you’ve set yourself up to accomplish.

The second time I speak with Colleen Berube, CIO and SVP of Operations at Zendesk, she greets me over Zoom from her backyard in San Mateo, California. The scene looks idyllic, though the reality is that wildfires are raging all over the state, the air is tinged with smoke, and we all remain hunkered down at home as Covid wears on.

While it’s absolutely true that no two digital transformations are created equally, maybe the most important factor for digital transformation at scale is that it begins and ends as true company-wide efforts. Without a clear understanding of the importance of the project — along with buy-in from any and all key stakeholders along the way — your efforts will be doomed to failure before they’ve even had a chance to really get going.

At its core, a digital transformation is all about taking the business you have today and helping it evolve into the organization you WANT to be running tomorrow through a newer and more innovative approach to technology. It’s a way to modernize your infrastructure, improve user experience, and create a bold new company culture — all at the exact same time. It is possible to get this all wrong, however, and the results could be disastrous if you’re not careful.

So, it’s official. We are in a recession. But some experts say investment in digital transformation during a recession should remain steady. The National Bureau of Economic Research declared on June 8 that the recession began in February. It’s an unusual recession, by all standards — one not caused by macroeconomic financial mechanisms as in 2008 with the housing market collapse or in 1981 on the heels of tight monetary policy and an energy crisis.