Recovery Bolsters Business Transformations, New S&P Survey Shows

Businesses are increasingly optimistic as the economy continues to recover from the pandemic, according to a survey published by S&P Global Market Intelligence this week. This optimism is despite the varying levels of transformation several companies have undergone due to COVID-19.

According to the survey, 90% of businesses noted some degree of optimism about their performance in 2021. Of the respondents surveyed, 76% said their companies had undergone moderate to significant transformation in ways of working since early 2020.

The more negative impacts a company faced, the more fundamental changes a company was likely to adopt.

Many organizations reported fundamental and permanent changes in response to the disruptions caused by COVID-19. More than half (52%) of the survey respondents changed IT business operations. Another 47% of businesses surveyed reported changes to revenue-generating activities.

"Enterprises that experienced major disruption during 2020 were much more likely than average to have undergone significant transformation with respect to ways of working (62% compared to 42%), IT business operations (30% vs 18%) and revenue-generating activities (40% vs 16%)," according to the survey.

Some of those changes to business operations are expected to stay. Three-quarters of the companies continue to rely on remote work, 69% remain reliant on technology for internal collaboration and 40% expect a significant reduction to office spaces.

Due to the increased dependency on technology, a significant number of companies reported an increase in IT spending.

However, despite these changes companies were forced to undertake, the majority remain optimistic about the future

--Annacaroline Caruso, editorial associate--