Anywhere, Everywhere: Bring Your Own Environment

Vitalie Schiopu, former Technology innovation Leader at Accenture Luxembourg, now Co-founder at ClimateCamp (Photo © Marion Dessard / Silicon Luxembourg)

“Most Luxembourg companies in the finance & high-tech industries – especially banking and payment services companies – have already onboarded new technologies and devices in their transformation processes,” notices Vitalie Schiopu, Data Science Senior Manager at Accenture. “However, such a shift requires trust and leadership from the top, with a holistic approach not just compliance.”

Image Credits: Marion Dessard / Silicon Luxembourg

Under the title “Leaders Wanted: Masters of Change at a Moment of Truth”, Accenture’s Technology Vision 2021 highlights the speed of technology change, predicted to continue in the coming years. One of the five key trends this annual survey identifies is “Anywhere, Everywhere: Bring Your Own Environment”, which looks at how companies can leverage technology to reimagine remote working as a competitive advantage and not just as an accommodation for their employees.

“These changes are here to stay!”

The pandemic and multiple lockdowns have accelerated remote working arrangements within many organizations, driving a shift from traditional work settings to homeworking. It is the time to rethink what the organizations look like and what they can achieve with a virtualized workforce model.

“During the first weeks of the pandemic, most Luxembourg companies switched quickly to this new way of working,” notes Vitalie Schiopu, Data Science Senior Manager in the global Applied Intelligence group at Accenture. “And for organizations that were already implementing and using new technologies and collaborative tools, the switch further accelerated their digital transformation agendas. These organizations will recover faster from the impact of the pandemic and return stronger to the market.”

However, companies whose activities require on-site presence were also forced to implement remote working arrangements, with the support of other technologies than the usual collaborative tools. These tools included Internet of Things (IoT) devices and extended reality to create a virtual presence inside facilities, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as visual recognition and cognitive automation to fulfil tasks in remote mode.

“Companies that adopted this hybrid mode of working with less physical presence during lockdowns have continued operating their facilities in this way,” Schiopu adds. “These changes are here to stay! Leading organizations in their industry are shifting from a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to Bring Your Own Environment (BYOE) strategies, addressing the security ramifications of remote work, necessary cultural shifts, and the evolving purpose of physical office space.”

As a consequence, organizations now have to rethink and reorganize their operations around these new tools and new ways of working and collaborating, as Schiopu explains: “Organizations’ leaders need to prioritize which technologies to choose and which collaboration tools they need, how to implement them and apply AI and extended reality to their existing operations. In a second step, they will also need to define how to track and measure the success of the implementation, to ensure that the implemented solutions work seamlessly, benefit employees and create value for the business,” he adds.

Technological shift creates new challenges

How advanced are Luxembourg businesses with this new way of working? According to Schiopu, the trend is unequally adopted. “Some organizations have already reoriented or changed their business processes – for instance through the automation of repetitive and redundant tasks,” Schiopu explains. “These organizations are now in a stronger position to benefit from the new technologies and use the talents of their staff for more value adding tasks.”

While some sections of the economy, such as secondary and service sectors, have not yet reached this level of adoption, financial services, high-tech and knowledge-based organizations have moved ahead quickly, even though many were caught by surprise at the very beginning of the pandemic, Schiopu notes.

In addition, this technological shift is creating new challenges, such as the talent gap. “To operate these new technologies and adopt this new way of working successfully, organizations need to find the right talent and experts, people who understand the new strategy and can support the cultural change journey,” Schiopu warns. “The competition for talent will accelerate in the coming years.” Indeed, according to Technology Vision 2021, more than 85% of the executives surveyed fear that this battle for talent will further intensify even after the pandemic.

Trust and collaboration

The key to successful transformation starts at the top and requires trust, with a holistic approach not just compliance. Securing this trust depends on two factors. The first is technical, encompassing IT infrastructure security, confidentiality, secure connections and distributed settings. The second is human: trust between employees and their leaders, employee autonomy, and flexibility. “It is about creating a safe environment for your people, the trust applies in both directions,” Schiopu says. “There has to be a real behavioral shift on the part of the leadership. This is an opportunity for leaders to step up and make the organization more innovative.”

Can startups help these organizations transform? “Startups are big generators of innovative ideas,” Schiopu concludes. “They thrive with the ‘fail fast, learn fast’ mindset; they try out new ideas, iterate on them and scale up what is useful. Corporates should therefore seize the opportunity to tap into this talent pool to scale innovative ideas and run joint projects in what is ultimately a win-win collaboration.”

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