This blog will focus on some of the business technology challenges Outrider has worked on - to avoid client confidentiality issues these posts will speak to the challenges without including any contextual information that might identify the client.
Outrider has had a series of conversations with a client during 2019 about the challenges faced delivering services that rely on time intensive manual effort. The client's business foundation is built upon experienced staff capable of interpreting detailed industry data and then delivering valuable guidance to customers that is time consuming to prepare.
The client's leadership team feel they are already at technology's leading edge having recently migrated all their technology systems into the cloud; yet they remain troubled. They face questions about the long term viability of their operating model due to increasing difficulties identifying new staff who were both qualified and willing to take on the required manual processing. At the same time many existing staff were reporting job dissatisfaction and complaining about the way things were done.
The business challenges discussed with Outrider were wide ranging:
- are we alone in facing these sorts of problems?
- is this genuinely a technology problem at all and if so does technology offer a solution?
- how do we look at our staffing issues more holistically?
- can we orchestrate change without disenfranchising older staff members who are happy with the way things are currently being done?
- can we afford to invest in new ways of doing things?
- how do approach such an investment?
- where do we go to if we want to start learning about different solution options?
- how do we develop the capability to implement the needed change?
- do we really need to do anything at all?
This is a broad problem statement and its tempting to go for a default response of doing nothing because to do otherwise appears complex and challenging. But there are tremendous opportunities that arise when making the decision to deal proactively with a predicament like this that encourage looking at the business operating model in a new way - something Outrider is keen to support with all its clients.