Five actions to future-proof remote working
Business and IT leaders looking to embed remote working and the digital workplace into business strategy face a number of technology and human challenges. Our conversations with leaders who are tackling these challenges revealed five key actions for effective change:
Promote all the benefits
The main cost savings to be gained of remote working mainly come from the removal of CAPEX traditionally spent on legacy technology and instead switching to a single global price per user and the ability to only pay for what you use. You can easily predict costs, as well as realising and demonstrating a quick return on investment. Fran Hogan, Senior IT Infrastructure Engineer at Cook Medical says: “The pandemic has transformed our organisation, remote working actually increasing our productivity. The benefits are now more widely understood, one of which being the rapid disappearance of paper. Our highly regulated industry produces lots of things that need endless signatures, meaning we’ve never quite managed to go paperless, but now it’s become normal.” More potential benefits include enhanced employee engagement and retention, reduced office costs and carbon footprint. As a result of changed working patterns in the pandemic, Gartner’s research suggests that 20% of CFOs had deferred on premise technology spend and 13% had made cost reductions in real estate spend6.
Getting budget and buy-in for this relies on communicating these benefits effectively to budget holders. Present documented case studies from businesses that have already done what you are planning to do. Put a price on the impact of standing still on your business and the revenue you’re losing by not moving forward. If you end up doing nothing due to fear of transition then you will miss out on potential cost savings.
Natasha Davydova points out: “Maybe doing nothing at the moment can save you money, but longer term, the mean person pays twice. Many companies now offer work from home or remote working options, because they have realised that the cost of requiring every employee to work from the office five days a week, outweighs the benefits.”
While many business leaders can see the benefits of reduced office costs, Felix Bailer has identified an opportunity to redesign workspaces for more effective collaboration, maximising the time that employees are together in the office: “We’re already reimagining how can we repurpose offices for more collaboration, reducing footprint by hoteling or desk sharing.”
Some businesses are now able to set new operational goals, made possible by increased digital remote working. ICON provides contract research and development services to the pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device and government sectors. It supported Pfizer BioNTech in the development of their Covid vaccine. Thomas O’Leary, Chief Information Officer at ICON plc, says: “We are always seeking to enrol patients in order to test the drug or device and be able to improve the safety and efficacy as appropriate. And the way in which that was done prior to the pandemic was largely physical with the patient visiting the physician in person.
“As we have gone through the pandemic, all of that has been virtualised . The interactions with patients have become much more virtual and we see that as a significant opportunity to increase the number of people that we can consider for clinical trials in the future.”
We asked business leaders, on a scale of 1-10, to what extent do you agree that the cost savings of cloud working come mainly from removing CAPEX on technology?
44 responses
Source: BT/Techpros survey
Natasha Davydova,
VP, CTO | Salesforce
As well as saving on office space, travel costs and salaries for workers in cheaper locations, there’s also a shifting concept of what is the workplace? It’s the place to do the best work you can.
Action Points
- Tap into supplier knowledge to present a business case backed with hard costs and prices.
- Use the opportunity not to digitise what you have, but to reimagine workspaces and business processes.
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