Your VPN crashed right before you saved a file. Customer data may have been exposed through an insecure application. You spent half the meeting trying to get attendees from inside and outside the organization to log into the enterprise communication platform successfully.

Those were some of the pressing issues in a rapidly transforming workplace in October and November 2019 when Infosys conducted its survey for the Workplace Transformation Research Report. At that time, a majority of respondents ranked digital innovations as having the most impact on workplace transformation. Since then, moving work into the digital world has shifted from a prudent choice to an urgent measure necessary for organizations' survival.

If those aforementioned scenarios describe your work life when you were still in the office, those issues are now mission critical given that most knowledge workers are working remotely. Now that digital transformation is here to stay, how should organizations be prepared? According to the report, respondents identified three factors.

Data security should be the most pressing concern. It's not enough to shift work to the digital sphere and plug security holes as you find them. Build in data security from day one.

Digital transformation takes commitment from everyone. Preparing for a digital workplace isn't a task for IT alone. Buy-in has to go all the way up to the CEO, because this is more than a systems change—it's a culture change.

External partners are more important than ever. You can't build every digital solution you need, and off-the-shelf products aren't robust enough for large, complex workplaces that are entirely remote. Partnering with enterprise suppliers to craft customized technology solutions is key in transforming the workplace.

Less than a year ago, generational differences were seen as a main driver of workplace transformation, as millennials moved up the ladder and brought with them new expectations for work and life. No one could have predicted that a global pandemic would propel the workplace into the future this rapidly, but the good news is the changes coming are what you've been preparing for all along. Now is the time to step up and change the workplace for better productivity and engagement with digital solutions that don't just patch existing problems but build a foundation for success in a transformed world.