From my perspective, the thing that slows down transformation is poor alignment. If you don’t take the time to properly align with the rest of the business that’s going to be impacted, it becomes a tech purchase and a tech initiative. The other parts of the business aren’t brought in until the planning and designing has been done.
It always comes down to misalignment – sales, HR and marketing, everybody else feels they’re being dragged into this change, without being part of the decision-making process at the start of the design process. You need to make sure that all parts of the business understand what is changing. Enabling acceleration is all about making sure everyone is aligned and removing those roadblocks early.
Enabling acceleration is all about making sure everyone is aligned and removing those roadblocks early.
How have these changes impacted employees and how do you advise clients to support them?
Prior to the pandemic, a lot of relationships between organisations were built face to face at events run by people like Cisco and Google. It was an opportunity for customers, partners, and suppliers all to meet at the same place to break bread. That’s now changed massively.
We were already having Zoom calls and WebEx, but it became apparent that we were all doing it, and everyone was very bad at it. One of those things people had to be more agile about was using that type of technology.
With resilience, we live in an always-on culture now, where people expect an instant response, because you’re not traveling or going to meetings anymore. It’s shortened people’s expectations, and people are working harder as a result, without realising it.
People need additional support for this. Not only in terms of taking breaks – it might be a welfare day. One of our clients has a welfare day on the last Friday of each month. The whole department shuts, nobody is expected to have any output. Effectively, it's 12 extra days of holiday.
People need additional support for this. Not only in terms of taking breaks – it might be a welfare day.
With resilience, we live in an always-on culture now, where people expect an instant response. It’s shortened people’s expectations, and people are working harder as a result, without realising it.
How has the pandemic influenced the way you as a consultancy, are delivering your transformation services?
Our approach to customer engagement has changed to virtual rather than face-to-face. There are benefits because you’re no longer spending time travelling to the US and the UK and you can now combine both of those into one virtual event with everyone in the same virtual room together.
We went from, say, 80% face-to-face and 20% virtual to being 100% virtual. I see that blending, and I think face-to-face interactions will rise again because people like to break bread with others. Some customers only want face-to-face training or workshops, especially for alignment meetings.
PAUL O’DONNELL
Head of Commercial Operations, Enable
Engage ESM
Engage ESM is an ATOS-owned consultancy that provides design, implementation and support services to customers worldwide. The company provides consultancy across IT, operations and customer service to organisations worldwide.