The companies that did best in the market during the crisis caused by the pandemic are the ones that decided to digitalize.
In addition to the IT industry, which was not greatly affected by the physical absence of contact, there are also companies that have decided to sell their goods and services online, and delivery has experienced a special “boom”.
Delivery began as food delivery, and as the crisis lengthened and deepened, it expanded to delivery, not only from restaurants, but also products from pharmacies, shopping centers, small shops to large retail chains, the secretary of the Association for Electronic Communications and Information Society of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce (SCC), Marjan Stojanovic, told Tanjug.
– The more time passes, we notice that it spreads to consumer goods as well. This type of trade and delivery is something that is gaining momentum and is becoming our everyday life – Stojanovic points out.
As in times of crisis, there is a “spillover” of labor from one sector to another, says Stojanovic, so in Belgrade, a large number of young people who worked in restaurants found employment in delivery.
– With the increase of contracts signed between suppliers and companies, the number of people who were employed increased, and that is the number that increases tenfold in relation to the period before the crisis – says Stojanovic.
However, the sector that coped best in this crisis, he adds, is IT in all areas, and states that those companies managed to continue the projects they started, but also got new projects.
– Our IT companies in all areas are very active and make new products, conquer new markets, sign new contracts. That is an area we are proud of – says Stojanovic.
When it comes to adapting other branches of the economy, he adds, the situation is “colorful” and depends on the extent to which companies switched to online trade and whether they could offer that form of sale.
Stojanovic adds that the demand of the economy is for online trade to become a systemic way of buying and selling even after the crisis.
That is why, he says, PKS, in cooperation with the PE “Post of Serbia” and the Customs Administration, is working on guides that will help businessmen who want to start doing online shopping.
According to Stojanovic, it was noticed that large companies did better on the market in the conditions of the crisis, because they already had electronic sales in their offer, but he added that there were also those who failed to fulfill customer requirements, due to a large amount of orders.
He adds that entrepreneurs and small companies only started switching to online sales during the Covid crisis, which, says Stojanovic, helped them maintain their business.
He points out that even smaller pharmacies have started opening online stores on their websites and selling cosmetics and non-prescription products, Srbija Danas reports.
