Before the pandemic, the most common discussions were about trends, business and how to make better use of the online environment and how technology will affect life. But the past year has shown that these elaborate predictions have exceeded expectations. Alin Niță, together with his guest Csaba Demeter, discussed why some businesses have managed to continue their businesses effectively despite the pandemic, while others have fared less well. They tried to find answers to all these questions and highlighted a number of solutions for harnessing business digitisation and taking advantage of its true potential.
Moderator Alin Niță: We will try to discuss as much as possible about this segment of digitization and the online environment because it has proved to be a winning card. There are some things that we have learned from experience and they have caught on because we went through them last year. It’s also good to look at what’s happened with certain businesses and how they’ve done. On the other hand, it’s good to keep looking at the trends that the market is offering and, as I said, to make better use of them.How have you seen from a life perspective, from a business perspective, how companies have done?
Csaba Demeter: I think it’s quite edgy to say that it’s been a challenging year, I think everyone already knows that. It has been an interesting year, and now at this moment I am reminded of a quote from an army general who said, “In the heat of battle we do not rise to the level of expectations, we fall to the level of readiness”. I think the past year has shown us what readiness means to a company that has managed to reinvent itself. The companies that succeeded during this period were prepared beforehand, they were connected to the market, they were aware of new trends and they were continuously adapting. So it’s no surprise to me that some companies actually managed to grow last year. Equally I think it was a year that accelerated a lot of things, I’m talking here about online marketing, about digitalisation, I think we skipped a year, two or maybe even three in many areas. I can only think of the statistics that will come out and will be better documented vis-a-vis e-commerce, it is even expected to see an increasing figure on this side. Romania is even the leader among the countries of south-eastern Europe in terms of ecommerce growth, and here are some very important steps towards digitisation. It has become absolutely normal for everything to be bought online. All this brings new opportunities and challenges alike.
Moderator Alin Niță: And we can see that even the GDP of a country is closely related to the spread of internet in that country, the way internet bandwidth is used, mobile phones, access to resources, etc. Important steps have been taken, people have started to invest more in having internet on various devices and the latter have evolved a bit faster than others.
Csaba Demeter: If one is to analyse the statistics of some websites about the types of devices that were used to access the internet, it is clear that certain models continued the upward trend. I think many people have been exposed to this new wave of digitisation and will continue to invest in more and more powerful devices. I think it is an important gain that Romanians have become more accustomed to shopping online, to consuming information online. Courses are absolutely normal to be online, a webinar is already commonplace, schools are online. I was talking to a friend of mine three years ago when I said that if we had said we were going online it would have been unthinkable. Lo and behold, this has happened and everything has become more interesting. I’m very optimistic for this year and it’s clear that the trends that were outlined last year will continue to evolve.
Moderator Alin Niță: From the perspective of digitization and the online environment, yes, there is certainly investment and people understand more what this power of technology means and the easier it is to find resources, specialists, knowledge, the more beneficial it is.
Csaba Demeter: And you’d be surprised, there happen to be a lot of companies that still have a lot of catching up to do and are at an early stage of their online presence. There are companies that are not doing well at the moment but the potential is huge. We talk about the fact, or we like to think, that Romania has the fastest internet speed in the world but the reality is that we are in 22nd place. However, we got to this place because we did not have internet and when we went directly to fibre optics, it resulted in a very high internet speed.
Moderator Alin Niță: The Internet can give you access to valuable resources and the possibility to move around more easily. There are some companies that lend themselves and others that don’t to being exposed online with their products, services or image. I’ve also come across and wanted to ask you, are there companies that have not put the emphasis for years on being online, on a well set up page, not to mention finding new ideas to sell. What do you feel these entrepreneurs who haven’t leveraged online are missing?
Csaba Demeter: The desire to grow. There is no dysfunctional company or dysfunctional organisation, but perfectly aligned to achieve the goals set in the past. If you as an online business are ok with today’s results, those are as a result of goals set in the past. Online offers the opportunity to grow the cheapest and really, not every company fits, it depends on the goals set. Some, indeed think that online is just for selling and for some companies it is not suitable to sell online but to promote yourself, to open dialogue, to capture the interest and attention of potential customers, partners, investors, you certainly can’t forget online because it offers huge potential. I don’t think there is anyone in Romania today who doesn’t see the value of online. Online marketing should not be an island, there is no such thing as online and offline because the marketer has to establish a communication bridge, provide valuable information about you, don’t spam just to get picked, you have to make sure that you provide value for them to buy from you.
Moderator Alin Niță: You were also talking about trends and the fact that there were certain trends that you predicted from the beginning. What do you think were the most important channels, actions taken online that mattered more than others, that have been maintained and that are still being emphasized in 2021?
Csaba Demeter: We had a discussion just before the state of emergency was triggered and we were discussing what we recommend to business people and it was one of those, let’s call it, evergreen things that can’t help but be valuable all the time but it’s precisely to have that value that we saw the usefulness of integrated, constant, valuable communication. It is, of course, valuable content from an authoritative and expert point of view. It is absolutely imperative to build a community around your business, your product, a community of people who interact and understand the value-add, who don’t just buy for the price and leave you the moment something cheaper comes along. Also then I think I was reminded of some recommendations in the book Chaotics, written somewhere around the time of another crisis in 2009, where Koetler and his co-author said that we are always in a crisis and it’s true now, if it’s not financial or health like it is now, it’s a move by the competition which is a status quo where you were doing well and you thought it was a steady state but either the government changes laws or new taxes are introduced and suddenly your goods or services become more expensive.
Moderator Alin Niță: Or are we talking about a Brexit.
Csaba Demeter: Yes, there is always a crisis and we have to understand one thing, we like the fact that in a millisecond we know everything that is happening on the other side of the globe. That is globalisation and interconnectivity. We are so interlinked that the variant where the US faces certain situations, Europe suffers too. We have also seen very well with the spread of the virus, Google, for example, gives us absolutely valuable information at this time of mobility. We can inform ourselves, view PDFs that we can put into a graph, see what the movement of the population is towards retail, are we more often at the store or less often at the store versus before the pandemic, sports, parks, pharmacies, markets, information that we need and we look for it online. Everything that happens in this world affects us and can reach us in seconds, minutes, days, it’s all just a matter of time. As such, what has long been said about marketing is the art of survival and adaptation. The only constant we have to get used to is change. And, we have to accept this.
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