At Dell EMC they’ve known for a long time what we only recently discovered – that the contemporary global economy is rapidly becoming digital and that, accordingly, information technology is no longer a specific sector of the economy, but rather the foundation of a new and innovative economic system
Even the most traditional consumers have finally realised that it is possible to buy “from an armchair”. Now we are already witnessing a large number of online shopping platforms. It is now necessary to seriously raise the quality of services and the way E-commerce operates, in order to retain customers who are ready to buy online.
Thanks to the pandemic, our country has had five years’ worth of accelerated development of E-commerce in just a year. Will this bring new platforms and will they compete for both E-consumers and traditional consumers? Is the golden age of e-commerce starting?
No previous campaign to date has impacted on the development of E-commerce in Serbia like COVID-19. In April last year, at the very beginning of the pandemic, it was already more than clear that the golden age of E-commerce had arrived. This has benefitted entrepreneurs who do business in the online world, i.e. who own E-commerce sites, as well as those who are turning their operations towards the internet.
A high percentage of traditional shoppers have switched to online purchasing. And just as entrepreneurs “on the ground” deployed various methods in the fight to attract customers, these same methods and new ones will be copied online. However, some entrepreneurs express fear that the growth of E-commerce is only temporary. They are scared that things will return to normal when the pandemic ends, but the problem with such thinking is that we don’t know what normal now looks like. “The genie is out of the bottle, and it doesn’t seem like it will go back anytime soon.”
Is the process of digitalising the economy and society one of the key challenges for our country? How does digitalisation impact on cooperation between companies and the state, the public sector and public enterprises?
If we look at the age structure of our society and the number of digitally literate people, we will realise that we’re confronted by a great challenge in advancing the literacy of society, which is also reflected in the economy. The state has digitalised and accelerated a large number of processes during the previous period, thereby raising cooperation between private companies and the public sector to a higher level compared to the same period before. It is evident that the public sector and public enterprises are addressing this challenge intensively, and if that continues it can be expected that digitalisation will impact successfully on cooperation and provide the state and the economy with successful growth in every segment.
Many areas of our lives, such as education, the healthcare system and jobs that are conducted through E-government, have shifted to the online world. What kind of impact does this have on the ICT sector and citizens?
Prior to the pandemic, the government launched the digitalisation process and the trend really looks impressive. A large number of services that were once conducted over counters, where crowds were created, have now relocated to the online world, with which these processes have been accelerated significantly.
And the economy has greatly accelerated operations via E-government, which in turn speeds up the entire economy. The ICT sector is recording noticeable annual growth, while Serbia is also recording notable IT successes. Current events provide hope that the development of the ICT sector will move forward with great strides. Some of the latest occurrences in the field of ICT application show that the successes achieved so far were not accidental, and that the ambitious development of IT activities is upcoming, and as an example of that we see the success of E-government in terms of services, where Serbia ranks 15th in Europe.