At the time I am writing this, more than a billion people worldwide are estimated to have been directly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the world suffering from both the disease itself and the social and economic consequences of our fight against it. Belgium, where Waylay is headquartered, has been in lockdown for four weeks and our whole team has been working remotely for over a month.

As a digital-native company that is selling software products, we are amongst the privileged for whom moving entirely to a work-from-home paradigm has come with zero disruption to core operations. As expected, social distancing rules meant moving business development work (the one area where we experienced a change) exclusively online, but we live in times where the most advanced collaboration and communication tools are available to us.

We continue working at full speed and with the same mindset: business-driven, customer-focused and working hard on cutting edge innovative solutions, whilst taking care of the wellbeing of our employees.

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Digital transformation of businesses is more important than ever

In a time of turbulence such as this, businesses are called on to ensure continuity, recover and prepare for the new normal.

Although COVID-19 will cause some disruption of business in the short term, I’m positive on the outlook. Digital transformation is inevitable and companies that have been proactive on that front had a headstart in this crisis. Others will undoubtedly try to catch up. IoT will have a big role to play in the aftermath of COVID-19 also beyond the medical domain.

In capital constrained markets, operational efficiency becomes even more important. At Waylay, we have proven once and again that some of the true value of IoT comes from improving business processes by taking advantage of the real-time insights IoT provides.

As capital investments in new machines and equipment may get postponed, maintenance of existing infrastructure, spare part management, remote and field support will gain importance. Again IoT and data processing have a key role to play via data analytics, root cause analysis, field service support integration etc. Waylay’s technology shines in this particular domain.

On the longer term, COVID-19 may prove to have been the tipping point for as-a-sevice business models for hardware manufacturers and OEMs. Equipment is no longer sold as a one off but sold as a service with an appropriate service level agreement. Remote monitoring and operational excellence will become very important.

Waylay is proud to support organisations in their digital transformation, now more than ever, as a reliable partner providing state-of-the-art IoT automation and analytics solutions.

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Keep safe and keep focused.

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The impact of COVID-19 on air quality and Belgian traffic

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