In the first presentation “A New Way of Working”, Amit Singh, President of Google for Work, stressed the importance of business leaders grasping the need for change so that others would follow.
“Managing work and talent in today’s dynamic, distributed mobile economy is incredibly challenging, and the need for business leaders to be the shepherds of this change is of paramount importance,” Singh said. “It’s for this reason that a few things have jumped into the consciousness of business leaders as quickly as digital business, and increasingly they’re understanding that they must succeed in creating transformation through technology or they’ll face disruption at the hands of those who do.”
Singh explains that the way work is managed is evolving tremendously, and SME business leaders must be the ones to head their companies in embracing change through technology, or fall behind others.
With such digital growth seen in businesses, SMEs need to keep up with the demands of growing in the digital age and change the way they conduct business, not just operationally, but in terms of mindset.
Take Uber as an example. The transport service was founded just over five years ago and is now available in 52 countries. “They’ve changed the technology itself. From a phone, I can get a car, I can pay for it, I can rate my driver and I can get cars of different kinds. This is fundamentally transforming not just personal travel, but the logistics industry as well.”
There's also Snapchat, founded a few years ago at Stanford University as an image-sharing app for students. Today, Snapchat has more than 100 million monthly active users and has evolved to include new offerings such as Snapcash – a tool to send money to friends.
“They are valued at more than $10 billion, have fewer than 50 engineers and are built entirely on Google. What’s fascinating about both of these examples isn’t just a new digital business model, but the speed at which they are executed.”
Singh emphasised again how businesses are quickly evolving in the digital age. “Firstly, they leverage the web and technology to engage customers and partners at scale. They make it incredibly easy for current and prospective customers to find, understand, like, try and buy their products and services online.”
SMEs can learn from these two examples. Not only does embracing technology and implementing it at work matter, but making it easy is crucial for customers all the tools they need and make it simple for them, from the start of the sales process to knowing where to look if there are problems after purchasing a product or service.
In his presentation “The Collaborative Economy”, Frank Farrall, APAC lead partner at Deloitte Digital, highlighted the importance of collaboration in the workplace. The term ‘collaboration’ here refers to “a value-added activity, not just randomly working with individuals inside a business unit or a team”.
“Collaboration is employees communicating and working together, building on each other’s ideas to produce something new or to do something differently,” Farrall said. “Invest in the right technology and invest in bringing that capability in so that you’re able to enable your organisation and the people to then pursue that strategic business topic. Change the culture and change the way people work inside the organisation.”
SMEs looking to expand their organisations at some point should look at talent as an extremely important focus point. Hiring someone to do the job is not enough. To grow the company, it is important to hire talent that contributes ideas actively and works well with others.
“If you want to progress in the organisation, you’ve got to enable somebody else to take your role. Identify those leaders and let them role-model in your organisation. Identify champions, people who understand the technology or are passionate about it and will share their time helping others to learn it.”
The session on “The New Work: Work the Way You Live” focused on Google Apps for Work, particularly Google Drive and how it has helped organisations in making their overall business more efficient and productive.
Jeremiah Dillon, Head of Google Apps Product Marketing, explained: “Google Drive is intended to store all of your work. You can take any or all of your content from any device, store it on Google Drive and instantly make it available on any of those devices that then unlocks access from anywhere, wherever you happen to be.”
“Google Drive also lets you work with the apps that you already use, without ever having to worry about capacity, performance or security. All of that is handled by Google”.
For SMEs that are looking for a more streamlined way of managing the business operationally, Google Drive is a good platform to look towards because it allows businesses to centralise everything in one place and have it available to anyone, anywhere.
Some companies shared their experience with Google Drive and how it has benefited their businesses. Stanley Toh, Head of Global IT at Avago Technologies, said: “In this age, especially the last few years, mobility has exploded. Getting access to not only your email but also your collaboration documents is extremely important”
Frequent business travellers will find Google Drive for Work extremely useful. Without needing to save down files and documents for use when shared networks can’t be accessed out of the office, Google Drive makes it a breeze to work on-the-go whilst ensuring productivity levels don’t drop.
Henry R Aguda, CIO of Globe Telecom in the Philippines, explained how simple it was for Globe Telecom to start using Google Drive for Work. He said: “We noticed that a lot of our young workforce had been using Google (Apps for Business) before we even introduced the idea. Adoption was very very easy and quite seamless, because they were already used to Google Apps and its solutions, having used it on their own.”
Deon Ludick, Program Director of IT for Woolworths Australia, revealed that the company decided to go the Google Apps route and move into using cloud technology because they believe that the product suite will unlock innovation and productivity for their staff.
Ludick said: “The thing that stood out from moving into the cloud is, technically, it’s not hard. Based on the fact that it’s not technically hard, you get a lot more time to get your change management right. So my advice would be, use that free brain space and make the best of the change management because the better people find that experience going onto the new platform, the quicker you’ll get the benefit and the quicker the organisation will get that transformation feeling and that innovative experience.”
While many SMEs find it easier to stick to existing business practices, it’s worthwhile to take some time out to learn from what large corporations have done with available technology, such as Google Drive for Work, and perhaps keep that in mind for future implementation – particularly if budget constraints are an issue.
With the right tools and mindset, businesses can evolve and benefit from what technology and the digital age have to offer.