Page 8 - REALCOMM EDGE-Fall 2017-FINAL

Business SOLUTIONS

Designing Technology Solutions for the

Perpetually Evolving Workplace

Revital Gilad
COO & CBDO
Bear River Associates

s organizations everywhere are challenged to keep pace in a (2) The Performance Management (PM) Revolution
more complex business environment, they are seeking new The PM revolution is in full flight. Across all industries and
Aways to heighten innovation and support the ever-chang- geographies, companies are re-evaluating every aspect of their
ing needs of their customers and workforce. Rising from the blurred PM programs—from goal setting and evaluation to incentives
boundaries and perpetual change that make up today’s workplace and rewards. Organizations are aligning these changes to both
are new mandates for technology that business strategy and the ongoing
is fluid enough to adapt to constantly transformation of work. For
fluctuating teams, projects, and loca- example, the traditional end-of-
tions—and smart enough to stay one year employee appraisal, which was
step ahead of rising workplace trends. designed in the 1970s, is currently
We have witnessed a tremendous no longer effective. Nor are static
change in the way people every- quarterly financial reports. Today,
where use technology to complete companies operate as a network
their daily tasks in their personal of teams, and shift the way they
lives, but workplace technology can get feedback. Organizations now
sometimes have a harder time keep- want reporting in real-time, and
ing up. Entrenched business pro- teams and executives need regular,
cesses, legacy systems, siloed data, consistent feedback. As the PM
complex workflow, inflexible IT systems—and quite simply—the revolution gathers speed, the final chapter has yet to be written.
sheer speed of change that is the new normal in business and Most businesses today are looking for permission to reinvent,
in the environments in which we work—can keep workplace experiment and innovate with PM systems. Just a few years ago,
technology lagging behind. this was not true. As the workplace changes, PM technologies
must keep pace.
Here are six rapidly changing trends that are driving
workplace technology to keep pace: (3) The Customer (and Employee!) Journey
(1) The Agile, Integrated Enterprise Growing numbers of companies are coming to recognize the
Why can’t established companies move as quickly as their benefits of customer-centric strategies: higher revenues, lower
Internet-born competitors? In part, it is because they are limited costs, and stronger employee and customer loyalty. In the
by their enterprise architecture, which is the underlying design effort to transform customer journeys and improve customer
and management of the technology platforms and capabilities service, however, many companies overlook the need to engage
that support a company’s business strategies. Consider that until the whole organization, including its support functions, in a
this decade, mobile devices, the IoT, and big data and analytics customer-centric transformation. Companies have typically
platforms weren’t crucial for competing in the marketplace. designed their business operations using technologies and
Companies did not have an acute need to continually infuse methodologies with an eye toward simplifying internal processes.
new IT-enabled business capabilities into their operations. They may build systems that automate internal transactions
They do now. To compete against digital-born companies, such as ‘request to delivery’ and ‘service inquiry to resolution’
traditional companies need to adopt a much different for instance, and only update those systems incrementally. In
approach to designing and managing enterprise architecture the most basic sense, however, people have been the missing
in the workplace. Ease of integration, agility, scalability, and variable in the digital transformation equation. In a workplace
configuration are the new normal, and IT architecture must that is constantly changing, business operations and technology
expand—rather than constrict—innovation. Workplace, continued on page 8

6 Realcomm