We’re discussing the four trends at the heart of the Future Friendly Enterprise. So far, I’ve taken you through the way employees are influencing the devices they use, how they are working from anywhere and why they need access to networks beyond the corporate firewall. The fourth and final trend comes at you from the outside.

Customer expectations are higher than they’ve ever been before. When people choose your products or services, they want more than the best financial value. If they have questions, they want to be able to reach someone via the touch point of their choice – phone, email, live Web chat or social media – and they often expect instant answers. When they place an order, they demand fast delivery. And if they have something to say, they’re going to say it to the world, not just to you.

Customers are also demanding an experience quality that is unequalled. The good news is that there are leading-edge applications available today that can help deliver an unparalleled customer experience, every time. For example, applications in the cloud can track customer information and deliver it to mobile employees. Wherever they are, your employees can get a complete customer profile and account history, telling them everything they need to know about the customers they’re working with, and provide them with the tools they need to manage every customer relationship.

Some of these applications also allow your employees to plug directly into social networks and engage with your customers there. This is proving to be an important arena, as customers talk to each other about their experiences with your organization. You need to know what they’re saying and you need to be able to respond to their comments, complaints and concerns. Of course, you can also leverage the information you gather there, using customer feedback to create real change and innovation. It puts a very public face on your efforts to serve your customers better than your competitors.

Another way to put your customers first is with your own presence in social media. Create a Facebook page, write blogs, Tweet. Provide your customers and prospects with information they can really use – not just sales talk, but solid, interesting information that helps them do what they do – and you will go a long way toward meeting expectations before they even arise.

You certainly won’t be alone. Budgets for company blogs and social media have doubled over the last two years, and Gartner predicts that they will double again by 2015.

So now you know a bit more about the four major trends that Future Friendly Enterprises are embracing as they strive to become more productive, efficient and successful. The world has certainly changed, and I think it’s more interesting and exciting than ever. Welcome to the Future Friendly Enterprise. Good luck!

Throughout this series we discussed the 4 trends at the heart of the Future Friendly Enterprise.  What trend do you feel is top of mind for your business?

Trend #1 - Bring your own device to work? How organizations can take advantage of this trend

Trend #2 - How your organization can benefit when employees don’t come to the office

Trend #3 - Beyond the firewall: Making sure your mobile employees can access the secure data they need, wherever it is.

Trend #4 - What do your customers expect? More than ever before, you have to deliver.

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www.telus.com/enterprise

This is the fifth and fnal blog in a series featuring Dr. Steven Shepard, Principal & Co-founder, Executive Crash Course.  Executive Crash Course offers comprehensive executive education, industry know-how and a “community” network to the telecom industry.

We’ve been discussing a world where the job gets done, even when employees are miles away from the traditional workplace and free to work outside typical business hours. So far, we’ve looked at the Consumerization of IT, the first of four trends affecting large businesses today. In this post, I’ll discuss the second trend and offer some insight into how you can expect Changing Workstyles to affect you.

As we saw with the Consumerization of IT, your employees are increasingly making decisions about the devices they want to use. But that’s not all. More and more of them are also making decisions about where, when and how they do their work. In fact, the average knowledge worker is away from his or her desk more than 60% of the time. And by 2020, we expect that 50% of all employees will work on virtual teams.

Workstyles are definitely changing. The good news is that when employers enable and support this trend, they benefit from more than employee satisfaction. The organization itself can expect a “triple bottom-line” return.

Return #1: Financial. If some of your workers spend most of their time away from their desks, perhaps they don’t need a desk of their own. You can introduce desk/office sharing, creating spaces where employees can work when they have to come into the office. As long as you provide the connectivity they need they can work anywhere on and off the premises. This means a reduction in real estate requirements. There’s also the fact that when you free them from their desks, your employees become more available to customers and more responsive, improving your levels of customer service.

Return #2: Societal. If you make it possible for your employees to work anywhere, anytime, you help them create a better work/life balance. They don’t have to commute which can save them 80 minutes (the average Toronto commute) every morning and afternoon. And if they have to travel, they can turn downtime into work time. Studies have shown that in return, they’ll be more productive, giving back to the company as much as 60% of the time they’ve saved.

Return #3: Environmental. When you reduce the number of cars on the road, you decrease both congestion and emissions. One company that specializes in helping organizations adapt to changing Workstyles has shown that a successful program can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 3,000 kilograms per employee.

Technologically, the solution is relatively straight-forward. It means providing employees with broadband wireless access and devices that can take advantage of it, anywhere, anytime; it means ensuring that the connection between the employee and the information resource they require is secure; and it means supporting them so that they can get the job done, regardless of where they do it. All of this is crucial – yet technologically not difficult.

In summary, the changing nature of work is great for employees because they achieve greater work-life balance, they’re not bound to desks they don’t need, and they can work when and where they want. For the employer, the benefits are just as impressive with more satisfied employees, more productivity, happier customers and lower costs.

Next time, we’ll look at how the Future Friendly Enterprise goes Beyond the Firewall.

Think about this, though: how much time do your employees spend on either side of the firewall (private vs. public information resources) to get the job done? What are your thoughts?

The Future Friendly Enterprise and the four key market trends that are impacting large businesses today

This is the third blog in a series featuring Dr. Steven Shepard, Principal & Co-founder, Executive Crash Course.  Executive Crash Course offers comprehensive executive education, industry know-how and a “community” network to the telecom industry.

Blog #1 - How to Leverage the 4 Trends at the Heart of the Future Friendly Enterprise

Blog #2 - Bring your own device to work? How organizations can take advantage of this trend

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where distance and geographical location have little impact on the ability to get the job done?  Where transactions - mobile or otherwise - are completely secure, and where employees come to work with the device of their choice, supported seamlessly by IT departments and policies? Imagine how productive and effective that world would be.

This world is no fantasy: It’s here now. It’s where many large organizations strive to be, and it’s a world I understand. In the next few months, I will share with you the trends that are affecting businesses today and how they will most likely affect your strategy on becoming a Future Friendly Enterprise. 

This series will provide a deeper look at the following four trends:

1. The Consumerization of IT: Influenced by technology decisions that are being driven by forces other than IT policies, including the demand for support of personal devices that are allowed to connect to the corporate network, regardless of brand or operating system. The implications for IT are significant as they must now support multiple devices and operating systems, as well as individual usage models. But the rewards are even greater in terms of employee satisfaction, lower cost and improved productivity.
   
2. Changing workstyles: The desire of employees to work from anywhere, at any time, and on any device. Tied into the desire by corporations to boost productivity and support workers regardless of their geographical location, while at the same time decreasing real estate costs and having a greener organizational footprint, this trend has both staying power and a long success cycle.
   
3. Beyond the firewall: The need to access data that is both behind and beyond the firewall. Face it: the information that employees need to do their jobs effectively is not found exclusively within the safe harbour created by the Enterprise firewall. Much of it lies beyond that firewall in the cloud, on the public Internet and within customer networks. It is crucial to provide access to those resources while at the same time protecting corporate data assets.
   
4. Increasing customer expectations: The demand for a service experience unlike anything that has ever existed before. There was a time when the voice-centric contact centre was adequate for customer interactions – no longer. Today, customers still want voice contact, but increasingly they want to be able to stay in touch using other modalities such as e-mail, texting and various social media platforms. This is a challenge for many corporations, but is an unavoidable one.
   

These four trends lie at the heart of the Future Friendly Enterprise, and in the weeks that follow, I’ll share more about them, including some ways that you can take best advantage of them. In the meantime, think about these questions. Does your organization recognize the need to be a Future Friendly Enterprise?  What does Future Friendly Enterprise mean to you?

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This is the first in a series featuring Dr. Steven Shepard, Principal & Co-founder, Executive Crash Course.  Executive Crash Course offers comprehensive executive education, industry know-how and a “community” network to the telecom industry.

Steven Shepard
Principal & Co-ounder

Mr. Shepard founded the Shepard Communications Group in Williston, Vermont. A professional author and educator with more than 30 years of varied experience in the telecommunications industry, he has written more than 50 books and numerous industry magazine articles and white papers. Mr. Shepard has participated in and produced webinars, podcasts and training videos. He is an internationally sought after speaker and consultant with clients in more than 70 countries.