Quoting John Lennon, Bill Kanarick describes the tectonic industry shifts brought on by the pandemic: “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” After months of hunkering down at home, consumers got used to online shopping, telehealth doctor’s appointments and contactless and curbside pickup, effectively doubling e-commerce sales in the last 18 months.

“So just in a one-year period, what you saw is the intensification of commitment to an investment in digital transformation driven by the pandemic in part,” says Kanarick, EY’s global chief transformation architect for consulting. “Because you had to have a distributed workforce, you had to better meet the customer where the customer needed to be met.”

These new consumerist practices are here to stay, Kanarick predicts—and that means businesses have to reinvent themselves. He discusses how companies are rising to the challenge of new consumer needs and differentiates businesses that will thrive from those that will struggle to survive.

“You have to choose to commit to pursue a different future,” says Kanarick. “There’s no transformation effort on the planet that doesn’t itself come with significant risks. So, you’ve got to also understand how you’re going to mitigate and manage that downside risk.”

But Kanarick is ultimately optimistic about the future, arguing that many companies are steadfast in their commitment to adapting to the evolving digital landscape and keeping pace with customers’ digital habits. 

“If you just simply look at the past year and a half and the rate of change, and frankly in many cases, against seemingly insurmountable odds, the amount of prosperity and reinvention we were able to generate is staggering.”