Keeping connected in the age of hybrid work

The Covid-19 pan­dem­ic has trans­formed work­place mod­els. A ‘black swan’ event in the truest sense, the dras­tic changes in the way peo­ple work has forced organ­i­sa­tions to shift from tra­di­tion­al­ly incre­men­tal approach­es to employ­ee engage­ment, to rethink­ing this vital sub­ject from the ground up and look­ing at it in a total­ly fresh and, cru­cial­ly, end-to-end way.

While few organ­i­sa­tions can dis­pute that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty has, by and large, been main­tained through the move to remote work­ing, the pan­dem­ic has also undoubt­ed­ly illu­mi­nat­ed the val­ue of face-to-face inter­ac­tions that many busi­ness­es and employ­ees are now miss­ing. As a result, most com­pa­nies are now prepar­ing to tran­si­tion to a hybrid work­ing mod­el for the post-pan­dem­ic age, where­by employ­ees decide where is the best place to ful­fil cer­tain tasks.

Of course, it’s not only employ­ee engage­ment that is affect­ed by hybrid work­ing, but cus­tomer engage­ment too. Soft­ware com­pa­ny Unit4 is one of many organ­i­sa­tions that pre­vi­ous­ly met reg­u­lar­ly in per­son with cus­tomers to review progress, but has had to adapt to vir­tu­al meet­ings dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. In the hybrid mod­el, it fore­sees max­i­mum val­ue from bal­anc­ing meet­ing in-per­son while also tak­ing advan­tage of tech­nol­o­gy that enables vir­tu­al meet­ings of all shapes and sizes, deliv­er­ing val­ue and fuelling rela­tion­ships. This is just one of many exam­ples where Unit4 is using tech­nol­o­gy to boost cus­tomer engage­ment.

“The accel­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion has brought to the fore­front the areas we need to empha­sise to ensure our cus­tomers are sup­port­ed,” says Michelle Mac­Carthy, glob­al head of cus­tomer suc­cess at Unit4, a leader in enter­prise cloud appli­ca­tions. “They include pro­vid­ing strong onboard­ing, edu­ca­tion, enable­ment and train­ing so we can enhance their abil­i­ty to dri­ve bet­ter adop­tion, achieve val­ue and bring that back into their busi­ness, espe­cial­ly in these times where costs are tight and peo­ple are still adapt­ing to the change. We part­ner close­ly with cus­tomers to ensure they are in the best posi­tion to realise val­ue.”

Sup­port­ing the opti­mum hybrid mod­el for both employ­ees and cus­tomers requires a savvy adop­tion of tech­nol­o­gy that goes beyond col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­forms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, which have become the lifeblood of organ­i­sa­tions. Cloud is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant, enabling com­pa­nies to con­sis­tent­ly take advan­tage of the lat­est and great­est inno­va­tion through the con­tin­u­ous releas­es typ­i­cal in cloud-based appli­ca­tions. This is espe­cial­ly valu­able for back-end appli­ca­tions like enter­prise resource plan­ning (ERP) which tra­di­tion­al­ly weren’t very cloud-ori­ent­ed.

All of this sup­ports the need for real-time data and flex­i­bil­i­ty, which has grown expo­nen­tial­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Though hybrid mod­els will see a par­tial return to office work­ing, for most com­pa­nies it will be less fre­quent than before the pan­dem­ic. With less sense of what’s going on around the organ­i­sa­tion, it’s cru­cial that employ­ees and cus­tomers can source this infor­ma­tion through the dig­i­tal tools at their dis­pos­al. Achiev­ing a sin­gle source of truth will rely on real-time, point-to-point inte­gra­tion between tools and appli­ca­tions, while flex­i­bil­i­ty can be gained through microser­vices which can be altered with­out affect­ing oth­er ser­vices.

Unit4 recent­ly launched ERPx, its next-gen­er­a­tion intel­li­gent ERP solu­tion which com­bines these inno­va­tions, bring­ing togeth­er the capa­bil­i­ties of mul­ti­ple depart­ments onto a uni­fied cloud plat­form that shares real-time infor­ma­tion in a pow­er­ful, peo­ple-cen­tric approach. With bet­ter insights, employ­ees become more effec­tive and increas­ing­ly moti­vat­ed. The free­dom to con­nect and extend indus­try-spe­cif­ic online data ser­vices and solu­tions quick­ly and eas­i­ly helps com­pa­nies achieve a dig­i­tal foun­da­tion where peo­ple feel includ­ed wher­ev­er they are.

“ERPx puts our cus­tomers right at the fore­front of the lat­est func­tion­al­i­ty as soon as it becomes avail­able, ensur­ing they’re always inno­vat­ing, plan­ning and stay­ing ahead,” says Shiv­ku­mar Gopalan, CIO at Unit4. “It uses API tech­nol­o­gy with microser­vices that inter­act with each oth­er and pro­vide quick inte­gra­tion, both with­in the tool and out­side. It also utilis­es arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to improve the user expe­ri­ence for end users by draw­ing insights from their behav­iours, such as repet­i­tive pieces of work, to inform what to include in the next releas­es. These inno­va­tions will be essen­tial to keep­ing staff and cus­tomers con­nect­ed.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it unit4.com

Pro­mot­ed by

Unit4