According to the non-governmental and non-profit organization Digital Serbia (Digitalna Srbija), more than 35% of Serbian companies expedited the implementation of their digital transformation projects during the pandemic.
“Although activities in many sectors slowed down, more than 55% of non-IT companies, which we surveyed during this period did not give up their ongoing digital transformation processes, while one in three companies even accelerated their digital projects,” Digitalna Srbija reported.
This was the most evident in online commerce and teleworking, both worldwide and in Serbia.
According to Petar Jovanović from Digitalna Serbia, “many companies saw digital solutions as the only salvation and the crisis during the pandemic demonstrated that solutions introduced practically overnight in order to ensure business continuity will remain in the long term”.
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He also noted that 80% of survey respondents believe that digital technologies are changing their industry.
At the same time, 70% of traditional companies plan to introduce new digital transformation projects, mainly through the development of new digital products, cooperation with startups and other innovative companies, improving the user experience or existing digital products.
The impact of digital transformation, which is attracting more and more companies into the digital economy, is evident from the fact that traditional companies are hiring an increasing number of IT workers and the number of job ads in the IT sector is increasing.
More than half of traditional companies have estimated that the pandemic has had a negative impact on the sale of products and services.
On the other hand, 90% of employers in the IT sector do not plan to lay off workers, while 25% of start-ups and 40% of digital companies have considered reducing salaries.
At the same time, more than half of the freelancers expect their income to fall and 85% expect to look for other sources of income.
The research has shown that two-thirds of startups had a drop in sales of more than 60% and half of digital companies and freelancers had a drop in revenue of more than 30%.
So far, more than 400 representatives of the national digital economy have participated in the research.
(Danas, 20.05.2020)
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