It was a pleasure for ApPello to take part at the Financial and Corporate IT conference by Portfolio discussing the impacts of COVID-19 on the IT landscape.
As Tamás Laufer (#IVSZ) pointed out, in a modern economy 25% of the yearly gross income is coming from the IT sector and its share is about to grow as the digital transformation picks u speed. COVID-19 supported this tendency, putting business continuity, IT security and new communication channels into focus. Procrastinations and long philosophical discussions could come to a quick end as the situation needs fast reactions.
Roundtable attendees representing key players in the Hungarian market (Szabolcs Pintér, SAP Hungary Kft; Zsolt Rakoncza, Dell Magyarország; Viktor Szekeres, Gloster Infokommunikációs Nyrt; Dr. Balázs Vinnai, W.UP) agreed that the last two months have shown that alongside Education and Healthcare sector, the Financial industry could also master the challenges and develop IT solutions to adapt to the changes. As time was little and speed was of the essence, these solutions are not always perfect, but are definitely pointing into the right direction of digitalization with all its benefits. The Genie of Digitalisation is out of the bottle, broke the walls and many trust issues.
As a priority, banks and financial institutions needed to ensure business continuity, seamless internal collaboration and of course attract new customers / maintain the relations with existing customers via digital channels. Péter Fekete from 4iG expects IT projects outside these areas to slowdown, but it does not mean that they won’t happen – investments are foreseen in making the current processes frictionless and more convenient.
ApPello strongly agrees with presenters’ views as we have experienced that banks and financial institutes could handle the challenges of the first 2-3 month of the pandemic situation, both as business partners and employers. We are currently working on projects in various countries without any collaboration issuses as the capabilities of ApPello’s Digital Platform allows rapid and agile delivery. This makes us optimistic for the future and we are ready to seize the business opportunities arising from further digitalisation of the financial and corporate sectors.