New software to spark remote working boom

Back in 1967, BBC TV’s sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy pro­gramme Tomorrow’s World hailed the arrival of Europe’s first home com­put­er, installed in indus­tri­al con­sul­tant Rex Malik’s Lon­don house so that he could work from home. Mr Malik looked for­ward to a “robot house­keep­er crossed with a pri­vate sec­re­tary” that could han­dle his diary, shop­ping list and accounts for a mere £30 a week. The reporter, Derek Coop­er, explained that, accord­ing to experts, all homes would be this way in just 20 years’ time. Forty eight years lat­er, that remote work­ing dream is final­ly being realised.

On Sep­tem­ber 28, Jere­my Smith, chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer at Jel­ly­fish Pic­tures, the BAFTA award-win­ning visu­al effects stu­dio behind Doc­tor Who and Line of Duty, tweet­ed a pic­ture of him­self work­ing on a com­plex ani­ma­tion in a plane at 30,000 feet. You don’t get more remote than that.

The huge tec­ton­ic shift in what’s pos­si­ble is data, cloud and engage­ment – the what, how and why of doing busi­ness

Using the cloud

It was a remark­able feat for a num­ber of rea­sons, explains Bar­ry Daniels, pres­i­dent strate­gic alliances at cloud and net­work­ing pio­neer Exponential‑e. “Visu­al effects files are huge, so work­ing on them over the inter­net is very dif­fi­cult – it takes so much time to send a file, it risks being dam­aged. The prob­lem for Jel­ly­fish was that their cen­tral Lon­don stu­dio was in some expen­sive real estate near Cross­rail. Rents were going up and pow­er demands on the grid meant they couldn’t increase their pow­er sup­ply. They were slow­ing down and their costs were going up.”

Exponential‑e cre­at­ed a small pri­vate cloud for Jel­ly­fish – high speed, huge band­width and easy to access – mean­ing its staff could pro­duce ani­ma­tion and motion graph­ics on any device from any loca­tion in the world, and expand glob­al­ly with­out the con­stant need for cap­i­tal invest­ment.

The huge tec­ton­ic shift in what’s pos­si­ble, argues Dan­ny Wilks, IBM’s busi­ness unit leader for social busi­ness and smarter work­force, is data, cloud and engage­ment, which he describes as the what, how and why of doing busi­ness.

“The ‘what’ is about the data, the new nat­ur­al resource and source of com­pet­i­tive advan­tage,” he explains. “The ‘how’ is how you deliv­er it, which means essen­tial­ly the cloud deliv­er­ing insight and growth, and the ‘why’ is about meet­ing the chang­ing expec­ta­tions of employ­ees, cus­tomers and con­sumers.”

Unified communication

IBM has recent­ly devel­oped Verse, an intel­li­gent mes­sag­ing sys­tem aimed at replac­ing e‑mails in a cloud based enter­prise. Using its Wat­son super­com­put­er, Verse pri­ori­tis­es mes­sages and avoids tedious reply-all or round-robin e‑mails. “There’s no point repli­cat­ing 20^th-cen­tu­ry client serv­er struc­tures,” Mr Wilks points out. “If you’re try­ing to organ­ise a meet­ing – everyone’s diaries are on the cloud, room avail­abil­i­ty is, so let Wat­son do it.”

There are prob­lems. “Speed and qual­i­ty are often sac­ri­ficed when we work from home,” accord­ing to Yahoo chief exec­u­tive Maris­sa May­er, who has banned Yahoo staff from remote work­ing to boost the inno­v­a­tive ideas buzzing around her Sil­i­con Val­ley HQ. Over at Sales­force, the cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment soft­ware ser­vice spe­cial­ists, they think they’ve hit on the solu­tion.

“The prob­lem with remote work­ing is how do you prop­a­gate a com­pa­ny cul­ture when most of your employ­ees are rarely in your office?” says Raj Mis­try, Sales­force senior vice pres­i­dent. “In a world of Face­book and LinkedIn, peo­ple are already used to feed-based social net­works which are a great way of build­ing a cul­ture.”

In spring 2012, Sales­force intro­duced Chat­ter, an inter­nal social net­work. Every­one is con­nect­ed and the most influ­en­tial employ­ees – judged not by the num­ber of posts, but how col­leagues respond – are invit­ed to chief exec­u­tive Marc Benioff’s quar­ter­ly off­site retreat with the company’s top exec­u­tives.

Over the past three years, Chat­ter has been rolled out to Sales­force clients and each roll-out has linked back to the moth­er­ship so hubs of col­lab­o­ra­tion evolve around indi­vid­ual clients with client and Sales­force staff “chat­ter­ing”. Not only can a sales team get expert tech help with­in min­utes, Sales­force client GE has extend­ed Chat­ter to cus­tomer Japan Air­lines to allow experts to mon­i­tor jet engine per­for­mance.

There is a wave of new tech­nol­o­gy that will help solve a lot of the prob­lems which made things dif­fi­cult

Analysing data

And it’s exper­tise that’s key. “The only prob­lem with all this data is that no one real­ly knows what to do with it,” warns Jim Steele, chief cus­tomer offi­cer at InsideSales.com. “Com­pa­nies have been gath­er­ing truck­loads of the stuff, but only real­ly analysing around 3 per cent of it. Col­lab­o­ra­tion relies on good data ana­lyt­ics.”

Last month, Insid­eSales launched its pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics soft­ware that trawls through clients’ data and sug­gests its best response. “You can be sit­ting on a beach in Bali and the soft­ware can tell you which is the best num­ber to call to get the best response on a new lead,” Mr Steele explains. “It’s about mak­ing every­one an expert.”

Of course, the Tomorrow’s World sto­ry was all about tech improve­ments which, accord­ing to Kevin Wen, pres­i­dent of net­work­ing equip­ment giant D‑Link Europe, have not been improv­ing as quick­ly as fore­cast either in 1967 or even as recent­ly as ten years ago.

“Slow tech means some com­pa­nies who had tried pio­neer­ing flex­i­ble work­ing then retreat­ed from it,” he says. “But there is a wave of new tech­nol­o­gy that will help solve a lot of the prob­lems which made things dif­fi­cult. When it comes to mobile work­ing, 3G is slow, con­gest­ed and over­loaded; 4G allows for data-shar­ing, but 5G, arriv­ing in the next few years, allows for real col­lab­o­ra­tive work­ing, video con­fer­enc­ing.”

Making remote working easier

Mr Wen also point to tech­nol­o­gy improve­ments around, for instance, the smart home, which will make it eas­i­er for com­pa­nies and employ­ees to oper­ate remote work­ing. Smart elec­tric­i­ty meters, for exam­ple, will help employ­ees and com­pa­nies under­stand the time an employ­ee has spent work­ing, but also help the employ­ee have the com­pa­ny cov­er their home-work­ing costs with bill­able hours of elec­tric­i­ty use.

Employ­ees are get­ting ready for this change. Har­ry Camp­bell is an aero­space engi­neer in Los Ange­les, who works from home for Boe­ing. He also dri­ves for Uber and Lyft. “The future is port­fo­lio jobs – peo­ple hav­ing mul­ti­ple income streams,” he says.

“Remote work­ing real­ly means com­pa­nies staff up or down accord­ing to demand. It’s impor­tant for employ­ees to be able to deal with that. Uber’s remote work­ing is sim­ple – you switch the app on, you’re ready to work. The minute you want to stop, you switch it off. I can work when I need more mon­ey and stop when I’m tired.”

As an Uber-Lyft dri­ver, he does have one tip – fol­low the alco­hol. “If you want a guar­an­teed time to earn mon­ey, switch the app on when the bars close,” he explains, prov­ing that no mat­ter how high tech we get, some things will nev­er change.

TIPS FOR REMOTE WORKING

1. Keep it sim­ple – no com­plex log-ins or VPN keys. Peo­ple are busy. Make it as easy as sit­ting at your desk and turn­ing on your com­put­er.

2. Get the right secure tech­nol­o­gy in place. Will your sys­tem work at the right speed with half the work­force access­ing remote­ly?

3. Estab­lish a gold­en hour, either dai­ly or week­ly, where you can get hold of every­one all at once if nec­es­sary.

4. Don’t use tra­di­tion­al e‑mail – inbox hell will slow you down. You need some sort of smart mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tion that can help staff pri­ori­tise.

5. It’s bet­ter to talk too much than too lit­tle. Keep­ing employ­ees engaged with clear­ly defined goals helps stop peo­ple drift­ing away.

6. Don’t pro­cras­ti­nate. In an office, you can bump into some­one at the water cool­er or go to their desk if they’re not get­ting back to you; remote­ly, not so much. And that can be frus­trat­ing. Reply to requests quick­ly.

7. Use social media, either inter­nal or exist­ing plat­forms, to build com­mu­ni­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty. Incen­tivise peo­ple to take part with rewards or gam­i­fi­ca­tion.

8. Keep it all in one place – mobile phone users spend most of their time on three apps. Mobile work­ers should only have a sin­gle app for the office.

9. Make the most of video con­fer­enc­ing. People’s faces reveal an awful lot, so try and see them as often as pos­si­ble.

10. But always have dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions and meet­ings face to face. There are cer­tain things that should nev­er be dis­cussed remote­ly.