The Work Revolution is Here

The Work
Revolution is Here
Will you lead, or be left behind?
The sound you hear
It’s the sound of a revolution sweeping today’s workplace.
Companies are more ambitious and entrepreneurial. Employees are mobile and
networked. Globalized customers demand speed, quality, and real value. Your priorities
as a company and as an IT organization are changing. You must move more quickly
and demonstrate greater value on the way, but it’s a new definition of value.
To achieve it, you must have the right IT systems and processes in place. You’ll also
need a new kind of IT service partner to free you to focus on tomorrow’s opportunities.
In this white paper analysis from Astreya, we examine the Work Revolution and what’s
becoming important to your organization today. Then we look at the steps you should
take to create an IT function that supports your company’s changing goals, creative
iteration, and revolutionary work environment.
Are you ready for the new way of working? Are you asking the right questions and
taking the right steps? To find the answers, read on.
Understanding the Revolution
Impacting your company
Companies are changing, with savvy organizations striving to be more ambitious and
entrepreneurial. Given the constant pressure to innovate, creative disruption is the
accepted norm. To succeed and survive, companies must be more nimble, oriented to
growth and open to constant and rapid change.
In this emerging environment, customers expect and demand speed, quality and new
ideas. Successful competitors learn to fail fast, recover, and move forward. Astute
execs require both flexibility and control, and they absolutely need the benefit of new
technology and processes.
Employees are also increasingly distributed, both locally and globally. Work is more
mobile and connected. Both customers and Millennial business leaders show a clear
preference to collaborate from anywhere in the world, but also more often prefer
locally-sourced talent and resources compatible with their corporate cultures.
Reshaping your workforce
The modern workforce reflects these powerful dynamics. Native to the digital world,
today’s professionals are hyper-connected and instinctively collaborative and social.
Even though more dispersed, they want more intimate, face to face collaboration.
Freed from the desktop and desktop computer by mobile and cloud solutions, they
expect 24x7 access from anywhere on any device. When work syncs with their
passions, these Millennial-plus workers have the technical skills needed to transform
ideas into real-world results.
What matters now
To drive this Work Revolution, forward-looking companies are adjusting their priorities
accordingly.
That means no longer focusing primarily on cost reduction – but on more productive
people, tools, and processes. The new work model empowers teams and individuals.
It leverages the power of cloud, mobility and continuous improvement, and uses better
information to demonstrate real value.
This revolutionized workplace reflects the very real needs of today’s business
organization: for increased workplace productivity and greater strategic value.
Growing demands on IT
The Work Revolution is driving tectonic change in information technology. The
demands on IT are growing. Astute organizations now seek a new IT service model that
is geared to achieving visibility, execution, and measurable results.
You, as an IT leader, now recognize the need to be an internal service provider to your
organization. To make IT relevant to the business – rather than remain in the traditional
position of a reactive cost center – you must provide services that deliver enhanced
productivity and value-based outcomes.
That requires you to examine whether or not you have the right IT strategy and service
delivery platform – including people, processes, technologies, and the ability to track
and document delivered value. It demands that you ask the tough questions about the
services you provide, how you measure performance, and how you can help move your
company forward.
Visibility
Execution
Results
Leveraging people and
information to achieve
and document measurable
business value.
Delivering IT excellence
with solutions customtailored to the new way
of working.
Focusing on employee
productivity, business
outcomes and total value.
Are You Ready To Meet the Challenges?
Your current IT function has grown up with your company and supported its growth
with IT process and tools developed and managed from the inside, perhaps with some
staff augmentation.
Now, you’re realizing the need to achieve more maturity in your IT services in order
to deliver the new kind of outcomes and increased workforce productivity required by
the Work Revolution.
That demands a shift away from a reactive, less-organized approach defined by
informal documentation, manual information flows, and highly individualistic work
strategies. A more mature IT service model is proactive, managed, and driven by
underlying principles of service performance and delivered value.
With this more mature approach, you can free your team from managing day to
day technology challenges so you can help your company and its employees get its
new ideas and strategic initiatives to market faster. It allows you to implement new
processes and technologies, while pulling additional value from your current
investments. And it lets you avoid investments in infrastructure that will soon be
obsolete in today’s fast-changing environment.
To gain true IT service maturity, you may choose to work with an IT outsourcing
partner.
If so, what kind? To gain the full benefits of this approach, your partner must be
a fellow Work Revolutionary.
A New Kind of IT Services Partner for
the Revolution
The tectonic shifts driving change in the workplace and in the nature of IT are also
driving change in the nature of IT partnerships.
In years past, because most work was done from desktops in brick-and-mortar
offices, companies relied on IT service providers who were device-centric, focused
on PC computing, and measured largely on support cost per desktop.
In the rigid days before the revolution:
• IT service providers owned and controlled the people, processes and tools
• Relationships were inflexible and slow
• You traded quality for lowest cost
• You gave up flexibility and agility for standardization
In today’s faster, more complex and more competitive marketplace, you recognize
the need for a new kind of workplace IT solutions partner.
This new workplace model:
• Is a collaboration, not just a supplier relationship
• Works across any device, not just an IT service provider’s device
• Focuses less on cost and more on productivity
• Is more responsive and flexible
• Frees you to focus on strategic innovation and value
You need help, but want control and are naturally wary of bringing in an IT partner.
That’s why a true post-revolution partner should be one that gives you both the
control and flexibility you require. One that delivers the benefit of new processes and
technology, but does not burden you with soon-to-be obsolete infrastructure. An ally
that allows you to fail fast, recover, and then move forward to success.
Mapping the Work Revolution
Rather than a rigid, supplier-owned platform approach, the new optimal IT services
model embraces co-sourcing, on-site sourcing, and cloud-based solutions.
Expect your new-wave provider to:
• Work seamlessly with your existing processes, tools, and systems – operationalizing
those assets and extending the working life of those investments.
• Ensure anywhere, anytime support across multiple devices to an increasingly
mobile and globalized workforce.
• Allow you to buy IT services in the way that best meets your strategic needs.
• Deliver readily-customizable solutions that can flex quickly to meet changes in
business or consumer requirements.
• Leverage information and intelligence to open true visibility into results.
• Drive collaboration and productivity, and create real and measurable business value.
• Fit your culture, your work style and your aspirations.
Getting there: your path to a revolutionary
IT function
The Next Five Years
Start by asking yourself where you want to be and what challenges do you face.
To do that, you need clear visibility into key systems and processes. Should you
shift thinking away from a singular focus on cost, to a more forward-looking pursuit
of measurable value and enhanced productivity? And are you starting this crucial
conversation now?
The Key Capabilities You Need
Where do you stand with the critical systems that will drive the revolutionized
workforce? Things like video conferencing, collaboration, cloud desktops and
applications. The ability to manage vast numbers of assets, and shifting to pervasive
anywhere, anytime capabilities.
Choose Your Partner
You now have greater freedom in how you purchase and consume IT solutions. It may
be via professional services, managed services, supplemental staffing, or traditional
hardware sales and support, but a robust partner should also offer co-sourcing,
experience with cloud-based solutions, and provide on-site collaborative resources.
Set Your Own Standard
Aspirational companies like yours no longer accept someone else’s rigid IT standards.
Instead, you seek flexible environments that leverage current investments. You expect
work styles that can be customized to meet specific needs. And demand ownership of
processes and tools.
Find a Cultural Fit
Align yourself with smart people who will sit next to you, who understand your 24x7
vision of the workplace, and who can match your speed and agility with their own
when needed.
The Next Step
As your organization matures, you naturally evolve from traditional labor-oriented
solutions toward service models that are more proactive, outcomes-based and driven
by value. Many companies have already progressed through the stages of staff
augmentation and managed staffing, and while those models can still deliver positive
results, successful companies now increasingly seek the benefits of managed
services and managed outcomes-based IT solutions.
Astreya will address the challenges and opportunities of the Managed Outcomes
approach in the next in our series of IT services white papers.
Create your future, faster
IT service providers have traditionally focused on specific devices, technical
metrics, and cost-per-desktop efficiencies. And that was fine for previousgeneration companies.
But today’s smarter, aspirational organizations want a new kind of global IT solution
– one that supports an evolving workplace, that drives productivity, and that delivers
measurable value. Astreya can be that kind of partner.
Are you ready for the Work Revolution?
Start the conversation now.
Contact the IT service specialists at Astreya.
[email protected]