The Future of Enterprise

‘What will the future of enterprise look like?’ is a question on everyone’s minds right now. With the majority of our workforce now working from home, businesses have had to navigate new ways of operating in such a short amount of time, experimenting with best practices to adjust to the ‘new normal’ of a COVID-19 world.

We had a chat with Robert Hillard, Chief Transformation Officer of Deloitte Asia Pacific, to get his perspective on business during a global pandemic and his advice for the broader community ahead of his Virtual Integrate Speaker Series session.

Q. What has been your views on the digital disruption seen during worldwide lockdowns, and businesses and people trying to stay connected?

This pandemic disruption has triggered much of the business world to develop new digital muscles they didn’t know they had!  Through the technology broadly existed to do everything we are doing now before COVID-19 struck, we have filled in some really important gaps over the last six months.  The technology vendors have simplified their video platforms (in fact they’ve done more updates in six months than they’d typically do in six years).  Our people have developed the habit of turning on their camera (no more voice only calls).  We’ve learnt that when “one is virtual” it is best if “all are virtual”, that is it is better not to have a room of people together and a few people connecting remotely.  But most importantly we’ve learnt to work in a more digital manner, codifying business activities for more remote handoffs providing opportunities to simplify, streamline and even automate business processes.

Q. In your opinion, how would an ideal business transform during this period to adapt to the new ‘normal’? What aspects are most important to take into account?

Almost every business I come across has done an incredible job to navigate the pandemic.  While some are more disrupted than others, almost everyone has found ways to make the most of remote work (where possible), safe working practices and dramatically changing customer behaviours.  Some questions that businesses should ask themselves include: what do they want to keep from this new way of working? Pulling apart some of their businesses processes to work differently, what could they do better in the future?  What should their portfolio of products or services look like as the pandemic (hopefully) moves to the next phase of “COVID normal” and recovery?

Q. We are at a time where information is vastly available – what are your thoughts on ‘over information’ and is there such a thing?

The word of 2020 is, without doubt, “unprecedented”.  That means that even with a huge amount of information, we lack longitudinal insights given it is very hard to extrapolate the 1918 Spanish Flu to the 2020 COVID-19 events!  But, the best businesses combine insights with intuition based on rapid experiments combined with experience.

Q. What can viewers expect to hear from you on the “Future of Enterprise”?

I’ve spent my career working on leveraging the information economy to transform the future of business.  As unsettling as 2020 is, I firmly believe that it has accelerated a number of trends that were already visible to us.  I’ll specifically highlight six things that we thought would happen by 2030 but which COVID-19 has brought forward and are upon us now as we look to 2021.  In those six are some amazing opportunities for business, but there are no low risk options – we have to make smart bets and be more agile than ever before!

Learn more from Robert Hillard live at the Future of Enterprise panel session at the Integrate Virtual Speaker Series on Wednesday 19 August, as he discusses this topic in-depth alongside Riana Steyn, CEO of Bartier Perry Lawyers and Angela Ferguson, Managing Director of Futurespace. These expert professionals will offer us first-hand perspectives of the impact of 2020 on the industry, the significant challenges that it has posed to an AV professional within the enterprise sector, and priorities for recovery.

Integrate’s Virtual Speaker Series is running this week from 19 – 21 August 2020 and offers an opportunity for the AV community to come together and look towards the future. Offering 15 sessions and access to 35+ industry experts over 3 days, immerse yourself in the future of AV and discover how to navigate business in our changing world – all for free.

No registered yet? There’s still time, simply click here to register for the Integrate Virtual event!