The New Normal in IT. Gregory S. Smith
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Rates by Racial Group in the United States (2020–2021)
Notes: Black and Asian workers experienced their peak unemployment rate in May 2020. White workers' peak rate occurred in April 2020.
Source: U.S. Congressional Research Service, April 14, 2021.
Exhibit 1.4 IT Budget Impacts from Covid-19
Source: COVID-19 Poll, The Hackett Group, 2020.
Some Bright Spots During the Pandemic
Several companies in a variety of sectors did very well throughout the hardest hit portion of the Coronavirus pandemic between 2020 and 2021. With many indoor dining establishments closed due to state and local restrictions, food delivery services like Door Dash, Grub Hub, and Uber Eats, all gained a larger customer base during the pandemic.41 I personally witnessed fast-food restaurants doing well with car lines consistently high during meal times, especially for large chains like McDonalds, Chick-fil-A, Kentucky Fried Chicken/Yum brands, and others that operated through drive-through windows. Online retailers like Amazon and Walmart also did well during the pandemic as shoppers feared in-person store shopping during the height of the pandemic.42 Technology and online meeting vendors like Citrix, Microsoft, Cisco, and Zoom did especially well as organizations flocked to tools for online meetings and remote access solutions for corporate staff.43
Chipotle digital sales “jumped 134 percent as customers order ahead through ‘Chipotlanes' which allow customers to pickup orders through drive through lanes.”44 The company reported the following information:The chain opened 40 new locations in the recent quarter with more than 50 percent of the new locations offering drive-thru lanes to pick up digital orders.
Digital sales accounted for over half of the companies total $1.7 billion in revenue, a 24 percent increase compared to the same period a year ago.
Chipotle reported that it closed only five stores during the quarter, bringing the total number of locations to 2,803.
Chipotle anticipates opening about 200 new locations in 2021.45
Grocery stores and supermarkets did exceedingly well during the peak of the pandemic, with many large and small chains adapting their stores to delivery and pick-up aisle options for customers who didn't want to enter their brick and mortar stores.46 Hand sanitizer products and cleaning solutions like Clorox Wipes were hard to find commodities early into the Covid pandemic.47 I vividly remember stores rationing the number of products allowed per customer during the early days of fear when recently stocked shelves would become bare within minutes of announcing the product. My wife to this day still maintains a cache of these products, as she's anticipating recurring waves of Covid-19 as we enter the flu season in the fall.
Liquor, wine, and beer stores were an unlikely success to me, but it was validated recently when I spoke to a number of operators about their sales in the past year.48 They explained their rationale quite clearly to me. When patrons can no longer go to restaurants and bars to drink, people buy products to consume at home. It's just that simple. Also, these businesses were deemed “essential” due to the potential impact of a run on hospitals for people that abused alcohol in their daily lives. Hospitals didn't want a run on their businesses due to alcohol shortages as their primary focus was managing Covid-19 patients.
Lastly, streaming services such has Hulu, Disney+, Netflix, HBO Go, and so forth experienced a significant surge in customers and use through the peak period of the pandemic.49 Netflix alone added nearly 16 million new subscribers in the first quarter of 2020 and its growth numbers doubled what the company expected.50 The 2020 first quarter was Netflix's “largest three-month jump” in the company's 13-year history.51 As someone who doesn't like being cooped up in their home for over a year, Netflix and Hulu helped get me through this pandemic with some terrific programming options.
Technology companies did exceedingly well during the pandemic as organizations across the globe had to rapidly adapt to leveraging a variety of technologies (remote access, collaboration, online meetings, intranets, etc.) during the pandemic to keep knowledge workers staff productive while working remotely. Google's parent company, Alphabet, saw revenue jump 34 percent to $55.3 billion in the first quarter of 2021.52 Google also reported the following:
The company made close to $18 billion in profit.
The company announced a $50 billion stock buyback. Companies only do this when they think their shares are undervalued.
Google's cloud revenue increased 46 percent year over year to $4 billion.53
Companies that offer enterprise-class hosting Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, all benefited during the pandemic as organizations flocked to cloud services over on-premise solutions. Microsoft's revenue jumped 19 percent in the company's third quarter as “digital adoption accelerates.”54 Microsoft reported the following details surrounding the growth:
Growth was primarily led by commercial cloud products, generating $17.7 billion of the total revenue.
Revenue from Azure rose 50 percent
Microsoft's Intelligent Cloud segment (Azure, Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio, GitHub, Enterprise Services) reported $15.12 billion of the total revenue, up 23 percent.
The active users of Microsoft Teams, the collaboration and online meeting tool, grew from 115 million in the prior quarter to 145 million in the most recent quarter.55
Transportation companies like FedEx and UPS did quite well during the pandemic as consumers shifted to home delivery purchase options versus shopping in brick and mortar stores. Amazon.com was of course a large driver of shipped content via a variety of carriers. At the end of 2020, FedEx reported that it “more than doubled its profit in the latest quarter.56 FedEx reported that it earned $1.23 billion in the second quarter, up from $560 million a year ago in the same quarter.57 The transportation carrier also expects earnings to increase well into 2021 as demand continues for shipped products.58 The company reported that ground delivery services gained 38 percent in revenue, while air-express services saw a gain of 14 percent.