By David Beatty, Business Development Lead for Workplace Solutions at eir evo.
Despite the challenges that lie ahead, it’s impossible to read the Department for the Economy’s 10x strategy and not feel energised by the areas of strength and the possibilities within our reach. It is time to embrace far-reaching innovation and build upon what sets us apart. No one can argue against the vision to deliver improved outcomes for all, including a more flexible work environment as a key pillar to 10x, but many businesses may be intimidated by the pressure to technically evolve, seeing it as a journey filled with insurmountable challenges.
But that evolution of the workplace is more than possible - it’s nearly inevitable once business leaders grasp that the enabling tools are here, they are mature, and they deliver huge competitive advantages in exactly the areas that keep their management awake at night. That includes everything from the Great Resignation to the spectre of cyber attack.
Let’s look at some of the challenges businesses face, and how companies can better position themselves to win competitive advantage - starting with their working environment.
“How can we improve job satisfaction and productivity?”
Companies of all sizes are figuring out how to move forward in the hybrid work world. According to a recent Hays NI survey, 85% of NI employers are expecting to recruit this year but, with the Great Resignation, power has shifted firmly away from employers. More and more, employees are looking for workplace wellbeing that facilitates good work-life balance. Some may expect to work up to three days a week at home, and many are leaving jobs if their wishes aren’t respected.
Companies can meet this challenge by ensuring they have the right cloud services that allow genuine productivity regardless of employee location, all the while protecting their people and assets. Does your organisation still store most data on site, with security measures that were built for office-based working? If so, your pandemic-era workarounds probably weren’t ideal, with employees using fragmented, and insecure methods to access and share information.
It’s time to implement fit-for-purpose systems that offer genuine flexibility, ultimately increasing productivity and improving job satisfaction. Cloud platforms such as Digital Planet, (eir evo’s own private cloud platform), Microsoft Azure and Office 365 with links back to all major SAAS and PAAS providers will allow your people being able to work from anywhere and collaborate using solutions such as unified communications (UC) or Microsoft Teams without introducing security risks. Everyone wins – and business growth will follow.
It’s worth mentioning here that, although Microsoft Teams has millions of users globally, few businesses have exploited its full capabilities. If you’re already using it, having a partner to help you navigate its potential can be invaluable.
“It feels like we have too much technology already – how can we rationalise?”
Think of technology overload on employees as digital friction. It’s tiring and frustrating to log into multiple systems and go through fragmented processes just to find and use information. During Covid, there was a huge proliferation in systems and apps, increasing this friction, and many companies have a sprawling and fragmented IT estate as a result.
It may be time to clean your house. If your people use different tools to make phone calls, send chat messages, video-call or collaborate on documents, your organisation could be ripe for migration to an environment which brings all these together in one application. Solutions like eir Collaborate UC and Microsoft Teams means there’s no need for office desk phones or mobile phones when these collaboration tools can handle calling, chat, and meetings in a single app and are encrypted for security. Familiar applications like Microsoft Word and Excel can also live in the same environment, with Office 365.
It’s the digital equivalent of walking into a single superstore: everything you need is inside, without going back out the door each time you want to do something different. How much time would your people save if they didn’t need to dip in and out of various systems - each with its own login and password - multiple times every day?
“How can we overcome employee reluctance to automation?”
The nature of workplace transformation is fundamental change, and processes that are manual, paper-based or repetitive become ripe for evolution. But these may be some of the longest standing, best understood systems and processes among employees. It’s no surprise that people may be concerned if there’s talk about digitisation. What if people’s jobs are lost in the march towards modernisation?
These fears are understandable. But in our experience, automation doesn’t take people’s jobs. When you digitise manual tasks, you improve job satisfaction for everyone, including frontline and factory floor staff. Instead of paper forms (which they or a colleague later must manually transcribe into electronic format), they can use one app on a phone or tablet. They’re inputting essential information directly, so it can be used for business intelligence right away, across the organisation.
Remember that automation is never about taking jobs: it’s about giving your people more time to focus on satisfying aspects of their work, not on time-consuming tasks that are better done by machine.
“If we use more technology, are we more vulnerable to cyber attack?”
No organisation sets out to become a victim of cyber attack, but the unpleasant truth is that cyber criminals are innovating. They’re finding new ways to exploit our human and digital vulnerabilities, and they prey on fragmentation. If your business uses a variety of applications to collaborate and process information, that’s a larger attack surface to target.
Conducting your essential business inside one digital workspace means it’s easier to secure and manage than a fragmented IT estate. Data security is paramount, and our teams of highly trained security experts will ensure all of your security needs are met. It’s based around the understanding that there is no longer any physical or digital perimeter to the office – the data itself must be secured. Establishing the identity of all users is essential: is that person who’s trying to login really who he says he is? That’s where innovations like passwordless security such as facial recognition come into play.
We work with businesses to implement safeguards like multi factor authentication, and we help make sure that regulations, policies and compliance are all correct. We also work through our 24x7x365 managed Security Operations Centre, where we can monitor everything in your environment from apps to file access to network activity. This lets us identify usage patterns of concern, which can be the first hint that someone is attempting an attack. Every organisation who handles information will become the target of cyber criminals at some point. The secret is to have the best defence and the earliest warning so that attackers don’t succeed.
Partnering for success is central to the 10x economy
The way we live and work in Northern Ireland is ripe for transformation. At this moment, we stand at an inflection point that’s just as critical as the development of the steam engine, or the transition from horse and cart to motorcar. Making that transition boldly and with confidence is essential to survival.
The reason that information technologies are so central to the 10x vision is that companies who transform the workplace really do have a competitive advantage. They can get closer to customers, and do it faster, than businesses who are stuck using yesterday’s systems and approaches.
At eir evo, we’re qualified and experienced in helping companies make the transition to a truly digital workplace. We have the largest Microsoft practice on the island of Ireland, we can help you to get the most from these solutions, optimise your cloud migration, improve your cyber security, examine opportunities for automation, and enhance your critical communications so that you’re set up to compete and win without introducing new risk.
