Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Or­gan­i­sa­tions should take a deep­er look at and use the tech­nol­o­gy evo­lu­tion to their ad­van­tage.

Mark White, De­loitte Con­sult­ing Unit­ed States chief tech­nol­o­gy of­fi­cer, demon­strat­ed to a room­ful of busi­ness own­ers and ex­ec­u­tives on March 20 on how they could use tech­nol­o­gy to their ad­van­tage, even the ones that may seem dis­rup­tive, name­ly so­cial me­dia.

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion at De­loitte's busi­ness con­fer­ence on Tech­nol­o­gy Trends 2013: El­e­ments of Post-Dig­i­tal, at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, White said busi­ness­es have to use tech­nol­o­gy to their ad­van­tage as the land­scape is chang­ing rapid­ly.

He said em­ploy­ees may use dif­fer­ent types of tech tools for per­son­al use, but busi­ness­es have to take them and see how they could use it too.

White said tech­nol­o­gy could be a vi­able tool to grow a busi­ness, while al­so main­tain­ing a so­cial de­sign to en­gage em­ploy­ees and con­sumers.

He out­lined steps in which busi­ness­es could make this hap­pen:

1. De­cide on a busi­ness ob­jec­tive to pur­sue. This would give you a busi­ness case and a re­turn on in­vest­ment goal.

2. Iden­ti­fy the so­cial net­work, the peo­ple and the in­for­ma­tion and how they con­nect rel­e­vant to achiev­ing that ob­jec­tive.

3. Choose the tech­nol­o­gy.

Over the last fours years, White said, De­loitte has been track­ing mo­bile tech­nol­o­gy and the cur­rent trend is point­ing to the con­nec­tiv­i­ty and in­no­va­tion of dif­fer­ent de­vices, like smart­phones and tablets.

He said the smart tech­nol­o­gy de­vices have fa­cil­i­tat­ed the use of mo­bile apps which busi­ness­es are us­ing.

"So the trend shows that busi­ness­es would on­ly be us­ing the mo­bile plat­form."

White said the next wave of mo­bile may fun­da­men­tal­ly re­shape op­er­a­tions, busi­ness and mar­ket­places.

The po­ten­tial, he said, goes far be­yond smart­phones and tablets to in­clude voice, ges­ture and lo­ca­tion-based in­ter­ac­tions, de­vice con­ver­gence and per­va­sive mo­bile com­put­ing.

"The very de­f­i­n­i­tion of mo­bile is chang­ing."

He said or­gan­i­sa­tions should do so­cial re-en­gi­neer­ing - take me­dia, net­works and tech­nol­o­gy and put them to work.

"Busi­ness­es are no longer build­ing tech­nolo­gies just to en­able in­ter­ac­tion - they are now en­gi­neer­ing so­cial plat­form for spe­cif­ic con­text - plat­forms that can re­lieve rather than serve tra­di­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion­al con­straints, such as deep hi­er­ar­chies, phys­i­cal prox­im­i­ty and re­source con­straints."

Gam­i­fi­ca­tion for busi­ness­es

White said some of the syn­di­cat­ed an­a­lysts pre­dict­ed there would be sig­nif­i­cant adop­tion of gam­i­fi­ca­tion by 2015, more than 50 per cent of large busi­ness­es would be us­ing gam­i­fi­ca­tion as part of their work process­es.

He de­fined gam­i­fi­ca­tion as a con­cept tak­en from video games.

"It is the learn­ing about how peo­ple en­gage very deeply in per­fect­ing, com­pre­hend­ing and pur­su­ing goals as a tech­nol­o­gy tool. It al­so takes what we have done in sim­u­la­tion and war games and build gam­ing me­chan­ics and those sim­u­la­tions in­to day to day ex­e­cu­tion of busi­ness."

For ex­am­ple, White said a com­pa­ny took its call cen­tre and gam­i­fied it with its day-to-day ex­e­cu­tion.

He said they went so far as build avatars that rep­re­sent­ed dif­fer­ent em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers.

"They put the cus­tomer avatar in the cen­tre of the screen and the call agent avatar at the top of the screen, and at one side is the nor­mal sup­port group, and the op­po­site side is the es­ca­la­tion sup­port.

If the agent han­dles the call in less than the av­er­age time, the agent is recog­nised with cred­its and gold pieces, and if the agent han­dles the call in the rec­om­mend­ed time, the ap­pro­pri­ate award would be giv­en, and if the agent han­dles the call at dif­fer­ent times through­out the day, it would be re­flect­ed by dif­fer­ent points on the leader board and so on.

The agent would then ac­cu­mu­late cred­its and points or get com­pen­sat­ed for pro­mo­tion re­wards.

So that is gam­i­fi­ca­tion in the heart of a busi­ness."

White em­pha­sised that "gam­i­fi­ca­tion it not gam­ing, nor sim­u­la­tion nor busi­ness process au­toma­tion, but putting these three things to­geth­er in a very spe­cif­ic way to achieve greater trans­paren­cy, per­for­mance and en­gage­ment."

How­ev­er, White said there is room for im­prove­ment with the gam­i­fi­ca­tion con­cept be­cause it would not be suc­cess­ful if bad­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

"Done bad­ly, gam­i­fi­ca­tion is worst than none at all be­cause peo­ple can feel ma­nip­u­lat­ed as op­posed to be en­cour­aged. In some cas­es, they could feel con­trolled rather than en­abled."

White said part of the so­lu­tion is hav­ing the right soft­ware.

"I am not en­dors­ing any prod­uct, but there are some suc­cess­ful soft­ware play­ers in the gam­i­fi­ca­tion space, such as Badgeville, that treat with spe­cif­ic pieces of the puz­zle where­by the land­scape is very much larg­er than just en­gage­ment and per­for­mances."

Prof­it­ing in a di­gi-world

Like De­loitte, Chike Far­rell, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Caribbean Ideas, ad­vised busi­ness to use tech­nol­o­gy to dri­ve their busi­ness.

Far­rell said with the prop­er and ef­fec­tive tech­nol­o­gy tools, busi­ness stand to ben­e­fit a great deal.

"I think for the most part, there is a lot of up­side for lo­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion to re­al­ly ben­e­fit from us­ing tech­nol­o­gy. There are com­pa­nies that are push­ing the en­ve­lope with the use of so­cial me­dia for the pur­pose of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and en­gag­ing the cus­tomers to a high­er lev­el."

Far­rell said cer­tain tech­nolo­gies could be fur­ther max­imised to achieve greater val­ue.

For ex­am­ple, he said, web mo­bile could be used to in­crease sales and re­duce costs in­stead of be­ing on­ly a mar­ket­ing tool.

"A re­tail store that re­al­ly analy­ses what of­fers the cus­tomers re­spond to and be­comes very good at SMS and e-mail to de­liv­er tar­get­ed of­fers, which re­sults in at­tract­ing cus­tomers to their store, is well on its way."

"It goes back to the con­cept Cus­tomer 101 - Who is my cus­tomer? Where do they spend their time? and cre­ate op­tions for them to make it eas­i­er and eas­i­er to do busi­ness with them."

Far­rell said or­gan­i­sa­tions in­ter­est­ed in dri­ving their busi­ness for­ward could learn this and more at the Caribbean Dig­i­tal Ex­po card­ed for April 10 and 11.

He said the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and busi­ness con­fer­ence would host lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al pre­sen­ters.

Among them are Trinidad-born Ter­rence Samuel, po­lit­i­cal ed­i­tor at Wash­ing­ton Post' Kathryn Friedrich, head of video strat­e­gy, Amer­i­c­as You Tube; and glob­al fu­tur­ist named Mag­nus Lind­kvist, who would be talk­ing on how lo­cal com­pa­nies could thrive in a more con­nect­ed dig­i­tal world.

Guard­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions

Mean­while, some lo­cal busi­ness­es said they are open and will­ing to change and have no prob­lem em­brac­ing the tech­nol­o­gy, but are faced with some chal­lenges.

Dur­ing the De­loitte con­fer­ence, Do­minic Hadeed, own­er of Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Ltd, said in some in­stances, peo­ple want to be adopters, but those at the top of var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­sti­tu­tions re­main very guard­ed, for ex­am­ple, banks and the pub­lic sec­tor.

"So the val­ue of the tech­nol­o­gy is not ap­pre­ci­at­ed be­cause we are not all con­nect­ed. In some cas­es, it is very ex­pen­sive, so there is a bit of hes­i­ta­tion."

Yoland Agard-Sim­mons, man­ag­er of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Trade and In­vest­ment Min­istry, said the min­istry is very open to new tech­nol­o­gy, so the chal­lenge is not from the adop­tion stage, but more sys­temic.

She said the min­istry is very for­ward think­ing and us­es "black­ber­ry mes­sen­ger (bbm) for in­ter­nal use, which as­sists in break­ing down com­mu­ni­ca­tion bar­ri­ers. We use wire­less tech­nol­o­gy, video con­fer­enc­ing and have a very ac­tive In­tranet sys­tem.

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