Actions that will Boost Frontline Engagement and Retention

Like a knight gearing up for battle, the enterprise company has been adding layers of technological armor and weapons for decades. Since the very introduction of enterprise resource planning by SAP, and the subsequent boom in large-scale software infrastructure and platforms that have developed since, companies have been supplanting manual processes with digital systems. According to Statista, global IT spending in 2021 sits above 4 trillion dollars and has been on a consistent rise over the past few decades. The digital arms race is on.

Unfortunately, this spending doesn’t always translate to operational improvements. Although it’s logical for one to think that the availability of software systems would improve individual, team, and department-level productivity and efficiency, the reality is much different. While many companies are in fact deploying these technologies with care to develop an overall digital structure, they are often doing so without first enacting an overarching strategy. Coordinating the outputs and metadata of tens, sometimes hundreds, of distinct applications is difficult, to say the least.

Clearly, the structure of enterprise companies is very different than it was just a few decades ago, with many businesses translating their physical and manual operations into technical analogs. To understand how companies can most efficiently use this tech, we first need to understand the process of integrating all these systems into a cohesive structure.

The article will guide you to look at some of the significant developments that affected the staffing industry's evolution yesterday, today, and in the future.

Digital Transformation and Enterprise Performance

A comprehensive discussion of enterprise tech use can’t begin without understanding one of the most overused terms in the industry: “Digital Transformation.” At its core, this process is really about shifting existing enterprise structures into a virtual format where they can become more secure and efficient. Data silos, communication pipelines, customer and employee portals, and even servers are all shifted to a cloud-based environment that offers flexibility and extensibility.

This is even true for companies that deliver physical goods and services. Think about old-school manufacturing processes like making a product in an assembly line. Every worker follows the exact same steps each time they make a car. Just like mechanical systems are replacing assembly line workers, enterprise software systems, platforms, and infrastructure all remove redundancies and make it possible to create (and automate) repeatable processes.

Modern-day digital companies are also better positioned to collect one of the most important commodities of the tech era in data. By collecting, treating, and analyzing data, companies create new insights and form decisions based on those insights. This is one of the main reasons why CIOs and CTOs are using a digital system to make more informed decisions instead of relying on experiential systems based on personal experience and intuition. Precise data and informed decision-making are the new models.

The challenge with these digital systems is that they can make it difficult to adapt and pivot when the market changes rapidly. This is somewhat counterintuitive for many people as they believe that digital systems are more flexible and adaptive. Although this is true in part and digital systems do require less physical resources to manage (i.e., server systems), overindulgence on software at the enterprise level can quickly create unwieldy organizations.

The Hindrance of Overindulging in Tech

Despite the broader tech market having a massive global market capitalization, these tools aren't necessarily translating into operational success at the company level. Companies like General Electric, Ford, and Procter & Gamble have all experienced major technical hiccups during the evolution of their corporate structure. These blunders not only incur a large cost, but they are also the product of overindulging in tech.

In fact, many executives report large concerns about the overuse of digital tools in the business environment. Here are some of the top stumbling blocks highlighted by the CIOs of global enterprises that overextend their reliance on different software services:

• Too much technology, too little attention
• Data overload
• A major lack of privacy control
• Difficulty keeping up with the speed of change
• Augmenting ineffective APIs with additional systems

According to experts, many companies experience digital overload, not because they have too much data, but because they don't have the proper processes for managing it. It's more about improving their policies and management capabilities than investing in technology. The key then becomes breaking down silos and leveraging all available resources for the benefit of the organization as a whole, not just the constituent pieces that make up each individual department.

Optimal Performance Through Systems Integration

Instead of transforming the enterprise into a streamlined machine, it's better to think of them as an organism that can selectively adapt to the environment through the use of digital systems. This is evident in the way that companies that work within a specific industry tend to have similar or even identical structures. In fact, this is not a coincidence at all because there are very distinct ways of strategizing and creating an optimal experience for consumers utilizing the digital structure. In other words, it's important to have a reverse-engineered approach.

To ensure that technical systems aren't becoming a hindrance to the day-to-day operations of different enterprise departments, companies need to adopt implementation and ongoing management strategies that allow them to take advantage of technical infrastructure while keeping cognitive and information overload at a minimum.

The challenge faced by many businesses today is that the growth in the number of digital technologies used to process transactions and provide value-added services has made it increasingly difficult for companies to keep up with all the changes, new systems, and updates. A majority of organizations deal with this problem by allowing their new digital technologies to take priority over existing systems, which, as we know, can lead to issues in the future

As technology evolves and organizations add new digital components such as cloud computing and mobile solutions, they need to find a way to incorporate them into old legacy architecture without disrupting operations. For more information about how you can adopt a streamlined operational structure in the tech era, reach out to the experts at Aviskaran today!

Written By:
Aviskaran team
Content Writer, Aviskaran Technologies