Digital Techno Bytes

WFH – Work From Home – The new age Digital Office spaces

WFH Work from home ..that’s the one word that has been most used these days. And rightly so what with the entire world grappling with the global pandemic due to Covid 19.

But how do business’s work effectively in these tough times. Earlier offices were needed for word collaboration between working teams. For team leaders to discuss and delegate work and to have meetings with clients to understand project requirements and let them know updated status of running projects.

Sales teams needed the office for preparing commercial offers , sending out marketing mails , fixing appointments and follow-up with clients and prospects alike. But things started changing with remote site support and client morning meetings especially in the Software & Services Industry .  With clients also approving remote support and even project implementation and executions. Remote Technical support centre’s became the new way of professional life.

But still the need for a dedicated office space for in house departments like HR , Finance, and SCM / Procurement to name a few was always there. These were last in the line to adopt technological enhancements. A few exceptions would be the roll out of Enterprise ERP systems like SAP / Oracle which was implemented more for its financial visibility & MIS reporting a much needed tool for the top management for decision making.

Most organisations are yet to put their Digital Strategy in place. In such a situation technical leaders within the organisations take decisions in bits and pieces . Sometimes even on hear say and other peoples views. They then start using different applications to cater to different  functional requirements. Typical requirements would be for a Video App for  team / client meetings . A mailing app for sending and receiving mails and replying to queries. Another application would be for SCM & Logistics for tracking Inventory and Finished goods in the Warehouse as also physical movement of goods in transit from factory warehouse to distributor depots. Finance department will require a separate application for Billing & invoicing and payroll management while HR would require an application for employee on boarding and training. This is your first response that is to find some quick technology fixes. You quickly adopt a messaging and video conferencing platform to replace your current conversations. Then you will keep approving more tools that come your way that seem to facilitate better collaboration.

But you are actually in the middle of a highly condensed version of what CIO’s of digital companies have been struggling with for the last 10 years. Transitioning to a digital culture doesn’t happen overnight and not by adopting a few tools. It require a complete strategy overhaul. The obvious solution isn’t always the right one. If you are new to digital work, your 1^st instinct is to pursue a new tool for each problem you are trying to solve. You follow a best of the breed model and use tools that are well known for certain functions. However this quickly causes an overload of applications and creates  even more confusion . Employees will spend their time jumping from one application to the next and constantly learning new interfaces. You will need t expand your IT team just to handle all the chaos and to build custom connections between different tools. In the end adding more digital solutions often results in increased costs not only in software but also in the number of people who need to manage it.

With the additional telecom bandwidth availability and improvement in remote connectivity the scenario has changes. In the current situation there is no option but to put all your organisational functions on Remote Operations. But it is easier said than done.

The strategy for every organisation small or big should be to have an Enterprise Digital Transformation template which has to be modular, scalable and flexible to the changing processes and requirements.

At the high level this Digital solutions should emanate from a single Digital platform with modular functionality that can be enabled as you move ahead in your business life cycle. And be such that it empowers you personnel rather than hinder their day to day operations.

Yes there will be reluctance but everyone has to fall in line as this is the new normal.

Some of the business challenges that every organization will face if a common platform is not implemented are –

1. No clear enterprise visibility
2. Lack of integration / co-ordination
3. Longer time for decision making
4. Reduces outputs
5. Reduced profitability.

Take for example a service support team using Zoom ( the new darling app ) for video meetings. A Microsoft outlook for mailing and Jira or Trello for task coordination. Though each in its individual capacity serves its purpose in reality it is increasing data creation in silos with no inter-reference. Tomorrow if a client complaints of slow or no response to its list of punch points the service team has to go through realms of mail and service reports to establish any sense of trail for support given.

Imagine if all this is available in a single Digital platform. Life would be much simpler and more efficient. But as technology improves all this is possible take for example the Google Cloud as your digital platform . It has a mail feature under Gmail , a team collaboration tool like Hangout , a video application Duo for video conferencing and the best part is all this can be analyzed with the best in class analytics tool – the Google analytics. Same is the case if you a Microsoft fan , you have the Azure as cloud platform , Office 365 for office functions like documentation – Word , spreadsheets – Excel , presentation tools – Powerpoint and many more . Collaborative tools like Microsoft Teams , Skype for business for meetings and video conferencing.

So all that is needed is a will to sideline the instinct to take the easy way and implement disjointed applications. Also in the long run cost of maintaining multiple & diverse applications is much higher than the expected cost benefits.

As some wise men have already said “Change is the only this that is constant in Life”. The more you accept this scenario easier it will be to survive and also surpass.

Here’s to WFH the New Normal….