Five technology product features in the Post COVID world
COVID-19 is changing the way people are approaching & thinking things. I was in a discussion with an SVP of a major bank based in India.
He said
Some of the work which banks never thought can be done from outside office is done from Home.
Such is the evolution. TCS is planning to have 25% of workforce work from home by 2022. Current expectations may be shortlived, but one thing is for sure
It has changed the thinking of each & every individual across the industries
I am in Technology (i.e., Information Technology) industry for the last 14 years & seen evolving after every event, whether it was 2008 of financial crisis & 2012–13 when open source started coming into prominence.
I am sharing some key features which will come in demand to post this.
Excellent Product Experience at Low Bandwidth
India is evolving & growing, but still, India faces the less penetration of Wifi. Mobile got the penetration & faces the challenge of bandwidth. In such kind of scenario, if people have to be enabled remotely, then the application needs to provide a great experience at low bandwidth also. In technology, the product is designed to manage the experience. For example, Images & Videos are rendered through CDN networks for the experience.
My personal view is that though the people with deep pockets can spend on high-quality apps,
but frameworks like PWA (Progressive Web Applications) will attain prominence. PWA’s are cheap as well as an enjoyable experience.
They may not be able to harness the native features completely but great for the startup & MVP ecosystem.
Offline Feature
Though a lot of products have an offline feature today, but in the changing world of remote working, Offline for the B2B will also get the prominence.
Offline function not only enables working remotely during no connection but also provides the continuity experience.
Simplistic User Interfaces
If people have to work remotely, then training becomes tough. If the time comes where people will be on board & work remotely, then training is tougher.
The only solution or alternative is to build products that are Simple & Intuitive. B2C apps are moving towards the simplistic approach, but B2B still a long way away.
Many of the B2B products needs to move to simpler UIs to improve the usage. For example, HRMS products doesn’t have the best of the experiences.
Cheaper ways of Digital Payments
In the last 21 days of lockdown, I have interacted with at least 10–12 cofounders/CTOs. There is one common problem which everyone is trying to solve i.e.
How to execute payments most reasonably.
All the payment systems have started charging a good amount of money for their services. As per my conversations, the nature of a centralized account acts as a significant barrier. People in India want the direct transfer to their account. That is the reason Google Pay has 60% of the market.
Challenge is to solve the payment problem in cheaper ways. It will improve the acceptance across the society.
Integrated Video Conferencing
During this COVID-19, Zoom made the fortunes. Not only Zoom, but all the products enabling video conferencing & collaboration are also doing well.
During my conversations, one thing comes across.
i.e., Moving from one application to zoom to discuss is like a barrier. It creates a break in the user experience.
People are asking for solutions that can be integrated with their current applications. So, if someone has a query while working in a product, the user should be able to do a video conference. To say, people no longer want chat but video conference.
As everyone is predicting some change in consumer behavior post-COVID, it is not known how big or small the difference will be. But as per my conversations with clients, all the above five things will gain prominence in the post COVID world.
