As the Singapore government gears toward establishing the world’s first Smart Nation, local organisations must also evolve and embrace a digital workplace to maintain a competitive advantage and stay relevant in their market. Historically, technology has been seen solely as an enabling tool and distinctly separate from the business. However, in recent years, there has been a shift from technology and business operating as silos, to technology moving to the heart of the business.
According to IDC’s IT Services Predictions for 2016 report, digital transformation is becoming a competitive requirement and the source of a massive wave of new investments in services to support changes to business operations and customer experiences. IDC also predicts that by 2016, 65 per cent of Asia Pacific organisations will include digital transformation as a significant component in their enterprise strategies. To keep a competitive edge, organisations seeking to improve productivity and increase agility will need to embark on a digital transformation from the inside. What does this mean for Singaporean organisations? They need to move beyond basic employee collaboration tools like email, and instead create a digital workplace that senses and responds to the information needs of individual employees – anytime, anywhere, and on any device. This requires the combination of smart technologies, social, mobile, analytics and cloud computing in an intelligent context tailored to the role and responsibilities of employees. This new digital workplace will enable the emerging augmented workforce – a dream team of humans, data and smart technologies working together.
The augmented workforce
The shift towards an augmented workforce will automate many of the manual, transactional processes that humans perform today. Increasingly, smart technologies will have the capability to imitate human thinking and decision-making. However, humans are, and always will be, critical to a digital workforce. Imagine, for instance, in a retail setting where store associates are equipped with machine learning solutions that can effectively predict customer volume, sentiment, behaviour, and desires to personalise that first greeting. A human associate can then more rapidly extract insights from this machine learning to deliver the personalised customer experience in a responsive way.
Some local organisations are already adopting automated solutions and starting to generate benefits. For example, the Jurong Town Council Corporation (JTC), Singapore’s lead agency in spearheading the planning, promotion and development of a dynamic industrial landscape, saved approximately 1,500 man hours a year by adopting smart technologies. Avanade worked with JTC to develop the Mobile Inspection App, to simplify the process of data collection for property inspectors doing their rounds. These hours saved translate to more time for the inspectors to attend to other cases and duties. This is an indicator of how the new augmented workforce will free people to concentrate on critical business issues and innovation, and focus on high-value tasks like emotionally connected customer service.
How can organisations embrace an augmented workforce?
The demand for digitisation is evident in all facets of enterprise business. Organisations that don’t adapt will lose market relevance and be overtaken by more agile, responsive, and data-driven digital businesses. Moreover, demand for digital skills is outpacing supply, and the best talent wants to work in a digital workplace.
Avanade has three tips for organisations embarking on a digital transformation journey:
- Focus on the business outcome and the vision, rather than the technology
- Design your digital workplace around talent, not technology
- Invest in helping your talent understand how digital enables them to do more with less
To remain relevant and compete in the future, organisations must focus now on transforming their business models to deliver digitally enabled experiences to both customers and employees.
Kevin Wo is Senior Vice President and General Manager ASEAN, Avanade