To Our Clients & Friends,
The Thanksgiving season is a time for us to reflect on our gratefulness for the family, friends, and many blessings we have been fortunate to receive and experience throughout the current year.
To all of our clients, connections, business partners, family, and friends, we thank you for your support throughout the year and we send our best wishes to all for a safe and Happy Thanksgiving and upcoming holiday season!
Jeff Gundersen
Improving Employee Experience through Digital Transformation
by Darcy Bevelacqua, Managing Director – Analytics & Customer Experience
Forrester says 56% of companies have official digital transformation projects underway, but many don’t realize transformation will be a permanent state of being. 21% of businesses think they are “finished” with digital transformation but they are just past the beginning phase.
We all know that as a company leader we are constantly being asked to do more with less resources. We have to manage our people and our culture to make it a great place to work and a great experience for our customers.
How do we facilitate innovative and flexible working practices to keep us moving forward? We need to work with our management team to create tech-based solutions and tools to allow employees to be productive, creative, and engaged at any time, in any place.
Even though the pace of change is very rapid, technology innovation has transformed the way we live and work. We need to be able to communicate, collaborate, share knowledge, and engage each other on demand. If we can’t do this, it will have a profound impact on our productivity and innovation no matter what size organization we work in.
Our workforce is more diverse (more cultures, languages, generations) and we need to be able to work with each other, other companies (partners), and outside contractors effectively. Teams can be assembled on demand from all over the world. However, they all need to work together closely communicating and collaborating. We need to enable an accessible digital workplace that is responsive to globalization and technology change. We are in the middle of a talent deficit where the average tenure of US employees is shrinking from 4.6 years in 2014 to 4.2 years in 2016 (Deloitte). However, getting the employee experience right is a challenge. It can have crippling effects on productivity, employee engagement, security, and the pace of innovation.
The real challenge is enabling our workforce to function in new ways when we are in the middle of a talent crunch. We need to find ways to engage with openness, equity, community and purpose. When the world is driving people apart – organizations need to find a way to unify and engage. These 6 steps should help.
- Create knowledge management and work product management solutions: This is a secure place to retain information and knowledge across the enterprise. This is a place to store information, look up policies and procedures, and find the right internal contacts.
- Communication and Community: We need to connect people across all platforms – including countries, languages, and departments. Let people review, persuade, check in, and engage with one another. Empower people to express themselves and share news.
- Collaboration: Enable co-authorization, file sharing, calendar coordination, in order to bring people together physically and contextually. Create “gathering” areas for employees to share and discuss.
- Social Engagement: Allow employees to manage their own profiles, share their opinions and knowledge, and comment on what is going on. This lets employees connect with other people and get to know them on a more personal level.
- Security: User authentication, identity management, data loss recovery, encryption, and employee privacy protection.
- Tech Support & Flexibility: Be able to grow and evolve your technology platforms to integrate with other systems such as Salesforce, HR, IT, ticket management, Office 365, Google Suite etc.
We know that the coming year 2019 will bring us success and challenges. Preparing to be the best to attract and retain the right talent will only make it easier to achieve your goals.
Chris Hendren – Managing Director – Analytics, Retail & Technology
EC is pleased to welcome Chris Hendren who recently joined our firm as Managing Director – Analytics, Retail & Technology.
Chris is a business strategy, digital transformation, and technology professional with more than 25 years experience leading clients as they redesign and re-architect their businesses leveraging data and technology to transform operations and customer experiences. As a former member of IBM’s exclusive Industry Academy, Chris is a recognized retail thought leader, innovator, and speaker with deep experience in all aspects of the consumer industries.
Chris has spent the last 15 years at IBM in a variety of executive sales and consulting leadership roles having joined IBM as part of IBM’s acquisition of PWC (Price Waterhouse Coopers). Most recently as Vice President Analytic Solutions, Chris led sales and delivery of IBM’s Watson and Advanced Analytics portfolio. Prior to that he led an incubation unit in IBM software group focused on advanced analytics and AI (artificial intelligence). His skills span business, technology, and organization strategy, solution design, implementation, and technology and sales consulting, having held senior roles in global solution sales, software and offering management, and technology consulting.
Throughout his career Chris has assisted his executive clients achieve outstanding results having led some of the most strategic transformations and sales programs for leading retailers in big box, food, food service, entertainment, luxury & fashion apparel, discount, and department store segments. He’s especially proud of his leadership of IBM’s industry solutions strategy & sales enablement during a critical period in IBM’s transformation from products to solution provider. In addition to his technology breadth, Chris brings deep functional expertise having held officer roles in finance, operations, and supply chain for progressively larger retailers earlier in his career.
Chris is a long-time supporter of children’s welfare causes and serves as executive advisor to the CEO of organization serving underserved youth. He is a former board member of a charitable regional mental health organization and is an advocate for the support of the homeless.
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