Top 8 Takeaways from “Cracking the Competitiveness Code – Long term Survival through Automation”

On Thursday 16 ^th July 2020, I had a riveting interview with Emmet Ryan, Technology Editor at the Sunday Business Post and Niall Fitzmaurice, Microsoft about competitiveness in the new times that we live in.

According to Emmet, “the event addressed the reality of the situation, which is uncertainty. When it comes to low code readiness, a lot of the participants didn’t know how to gauge it but we broke it down in a way to make it easier for them.”

Here are the top 8 takeaways from this webinar, provided by OpenSky Data session:

The breakneck speed that our lives adjusted to working from home in March is no match for how we are reframing our businesses and careers looking forward. Some industries have seen Lenin’s famous quote “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen” play out. I quoted some specific examples in the recent McKinsey piece “The Great Acceleration”, including online delivery’s volume increase by the same amount in eight weeks as it had over the entire previous decade, as well as the fact thatTelemedicine experienced a tenfold growth in subscribers in just 15 days. 

This pandemic has given momentum to embryonic trends. Deliberate thought and speed to market must happen simultaneously, and with the right balance.

While many of us know the business landscape we once knew will never be the same again. Niall provided some statistics: according to a Gartner study, 98% of businesses are changing the way they do things. This can scare you, or can become an opportunity to revisit fundamental questions, such as how people interact with each other in your organisation, the technology that it uses to support functions, and the marketing channels used to connect with customers.

The workforce’s remote working global experiment has worked in the context of a quick reaction to a global pandemic and collectively, we’ve made it work with the expectation of an expiry date. We’ve all spent countless hours on Teams, Zoom and other such remote working platforms in the past few months. Oftentimes, we use these platforms with people that we had already met or knew in some way. 

Together, we have built up the social capital where we could simply migrate to an online discussion when much of the rapport had been built. Lots of people who have taken on new roles spoke about how difficult it was to navigate through the political landscape, find out who’s who and just get to grips with the culture in the absence of social interaction in the physical workplace. I shared my experiences this last year when taking on virtual interns at Hayes Culleton. 

Rather than take four months’ experience and extrapolate it into the permanent future, give some thought to how a potentially hybrid, flexible model can work for you.

The norm of going to work in a building with all our other colleagues is no longer the status quo. Many of us consider air travel not just out of bounds, but unthinkable for a series of meetings that can happen via video. Society critically assesses if public spaces are safe before using them. Therefore, we can now use our space much more strategically. To start – with considering the purpose of the space – is brainstorming together in-person, have impromptu meetings over coffee viable a necessity? In that case, having more time in a physically distant-safe office is important. However, if a workplace simply serves as a location different from home to separate life and work and meet with small groups from time to time, then leasing some co-working space in satellite locations could be just the right lower-cost option.

Since so many people are now working from home, they don’t have commute, and with the lack of interruption from working in a building with lots of people in the same building, employees are being more productive. I referred to the findings from a Forbes piece whereby a California-based company deduced that workers had an 47% increase in productivity. Their analysis sprung from 100 million data points across 30,000 users. Business News Daily published another report that stated: “remote employees work 1.4 more days per month than their office-based counterparts, resulting in more than three additional weeks of work per year.” 

From a personal point of view, I said that while I has loved travelling the world to build relationships for the business, I've been given back all that time spent in transit during these months. We don’t know what different phases of the future may look like, but it’s important to use any new freed up capacity in the best way for our business now rather than wistfully wait for things to change.

 Niall also encouraged us to look at ways to leverage what we do use. He spoke about the wide-ranging technology that Teams offers us through connected APIs and other such functionalities.

Before we commit to a project, we look at the time, resources and expertise needed. What about if you could walk a mile in that initiative’s shoes to get a real feel for its feasibility? That’s where low-code comes in. In simple terms, low code is where anybody can build a piece of technology using intuitive interfaces and templates. For example, I talked about any time we wanted to have a go at bringing an app to market, we used Bubble to test out initial reactions. This approach saved us an absolute fortune and it made us really think through what we wanted, why we wanted it and if it was worthwhile.

Niall shared with us that 65% of development will take place this year with low code so that the “hardcore” projects can be given to specialists. This makes a lot of sense and can enable millions of businesses to be more nimble and more competitive.

If you can document a process that a person can perform over and over again, could a piece of technology do it for you instead? In many cases, the answer is yes...but the question is whether we would want it to. I pointed out that we know the typical answers that people ask us about their Transition Year Savvy Teens programmes and a bot could effectively answer them, but instead we want to actually talk to people with enquiries. However, there are plenty of other things that an automated workflow can really work well in and we've put several of them in place so that we can put more time and attention into customer service. 

Niall also said that rather than looking at automation through a “oh cool, look what we could do!” lens (which can be tempting when you look at the tools that are out there!), comb your business processes and question if it could be done better, faster or more efficiently with a view to overall improvement.

In May, I summarised a webinar related to cybersecurity. One of the central themes was in more dispersed workforce, increased ready access to data and the proliferation of mobile device use means that businesses need to be critically aware of tech hygiene. 

Niall followed up with just how much Microsoft pours in to ensure their products and clients' tech experiences are safe. He also pointed out that sometimes the biggest cyber risk you can face is through people, so it’s important to work with suppliers you trust and technology that’s robust.

Find out more about OpenSky’s Low-Code Automation Solutions here. Book your FREE Consultation to assess your low-code readiness here. Alternatively,  you can email Emma at ehayes@openskydata.com or OpenSky at info@openskydata.com to arrange your consultation.