Over the last two years (or more), I’ve spoken a lot about developing your hybrid workspace - providing opportunities to bring your digital and physical workspaces together. Within this article, and the three which will follow this, I’m going to talk about how you can ensure the best outcomes for your business.
It all comes down to data - getting the right data now will give you a clear foundation for decision making and development.
This research published in Technology magazine (UK businesses losing £2.1bn due to poor technology) confirms that, while UK businesses are embracing hybrid working, bad technology provision is giving employees a difficult and frustrating user experience while the companies themselves are losing out through poor productivity.
The Value of Your Data
Understanding Today
Whatever your current IT landscape, I’m going to suggest it’s changed a lot in the last two years. How much of this change was predicted will be different for every organisation, but even those who had planned a digital transformation are likely to have seen deviation from that path.
And, more than this, how much do you actually know about your IT landscape? That’s probably the question no CIO really wants to be asked.
How many of your employees are using their own devices for work? And how many teams have introduced apps and services to their business devices to fix a problem you didn’t know they had?
Understanding the reality of your technology infrastructure is where any future development needs to start. By digging deep - and looking wide - across your whole estate, you can extract data from which to make decisions; data which will strengthen your organisation.
Reducing risk by identifying and managing unsanctioned applications
Reviewing software licenses allowing for reassignment or elimination where they’re unused.
Lowering costs to the business with a clearer picture of software and hardware utilisation, as well as reducing support costs through improved insights .
Building Tomorrow
We can look ahead with a lot more clarity when we have the right information available to us.
Extracting and analysing your data today, gives you answers to questions which will help you build your business.
Identifying the questions which are affecting your business, and knowing you have the information available to answer those questions, gives you the opportunity to develop solutions which work.
How are your teams working? And is the hybrid workspace working for them?
Are you providing the right solutions? And, are they effective and efficient?
Are your workers engaged and supported? By your HR teams or managers?
Using data to understand your position in these areas, will give you some immediate fixes and developments to make your employee lives better.
Looking to the Future
Then, with continuous monitoring of your systems, you will be able to build a stronger, better organisation. This is now where you can optimise systems and processes, improve your user experience and increase productivity.
This ongoing visibility of your data allows you to make changes and understand their impact, ask questions and get accurate responses. So, how will you use this information?
By reviewing your processes you can remove friction and blockers to increase end-user productivity.
With a clearer picture of how existing services are used, you can accelerate the implementation of new microservices where needed.
Using digital adoption platforms will help you unlock the true value of enterprise applications.
Getting to the heart of your data
To build a stronger business, the path will be different for everyone. The starting point, however, will be the same.
There is no point in putting one foot in front of the other until you have determined the direction to follow (sorry, I’ll stop with the journey metaphors now).
Only by understanding your current standing will you know how to make the changes your business needs and, while finding the level of information I’ve outlined here may seem daunting, the fact is, there are tools available which make this possible.
We’ve worked with organisations of all shapes and sizes to understand their current situation and determine their capacity for growth.
About the Author
I'm Terry Chana. I am an innovation strategist that connects customer, employee and brand experiences. My passion lies in building ecosystems to solve business problems by combining creativity and technology.