DOWNTOWN QUARTERLY
WORDS BY KIM LEARY CEO, SQUIBBLE CHAIRPERSON, DOWNTOWN BIRMINGHAM IN BUSINESS
Do you remember, back in 2017, when the nation was entertained (or shocked) by Professor Robert Kelly whose child had ambushed his live interview? Who would have thought that a few years later it would be the norm for children to casually join our meetings? Zoom forward 4 years and it’s likely that the COVID-19 recovery will be digital. It has often been cited that in the first 8 weeks of the pandemic we accelerated consumer and business digital adoption by 5 years. This is huge and sets the precedent for what’s to come. For us, at Squibble, the switch to working from home was a fairly swift one and within 48 hours we’d replaced our typical face-to-face meetings with online delivery supported by a simple tech stack that enabled us to carry on with limited disruption. It would have been a bit of a worry if we couldn’t adopt new technologies, right? Working in a web design agency means that we’re a lover of all things tech and particularly in my role as Chair of the board for Birmingham Tech CIC. The challenge for most business owners and their employees was far greater though, particularly if you’re used to having an IT department on-hand. WFH presented an entirely new set of problems. How do large corporations or banks continue to support their customers without all the security protocols present at home? Especially if said employees did not consider themselves ‘techy’. There’s no denying the fact that it’s been a huge upheaval for businesses up and down the country, not to mention for the children and their missed schooling.
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But aside from the obvious tech boom with Software as a Service (SaaS) products like Zoom, Slack and Netflix there are already huge consumer shifts that are likely to stay. This means our budding relationship with tech is only set to grow. Ecommerce sales have also seen a huge surge with UK online sales growth hitting a 13-year high at +36.6% year-on-year for 2020. Even after the first lockdown ended these figures remained constant with a small 6% drop. If the numbers are to be believed, it’s fair to suggest that our short-lived adoption of digital could signal what the future holds. For businesses, this means we need to continue our quest with giving consumers access to our products and services online, and not only this we need to consider where the tech advances are taking us. So what are the fastest-growing tech industries worldwide? • • • • •
Virtual Reality Security Fintech Artificial Intelligence Biotechnology
According to Tech Nation, “Specialised tech roles are particularly in demand, like network security jobs for which salaries increased 69% on average this year to £85,894. Given the nationwide shift to remote work which relies on digital networks, specialised security professionals are more necessary for businesses than ever before.” They also state that “As the sector continues to grow it’s important to ensure that there are