2020 has been a wild ride, and you know what, it did lead us faster and further down the road of transformation. While I can't say we achieved all we aimed for, we're still driving forward in leaps and bounds, and that’s a good sign.
It all started with a big, swift shift from our main much-loved brick-and-mortar offices to 100% virtual work from anywhere #WFA while ensuring zero interruption to any of our services.
As we shifted our working model, we figured that the crucial way to enable everyone to stay updated during this unprecedented time is through more communication and live discussions with industry experts.
This marked the birth of our TRG Talk Virtual series. Our usual monthly TRG Talk in-person also had to go virtual. We upped the frequency to 3x a week and launched series surrounding Infor SunSystems, Digital Transformation, AI, Digital Marketing, OKRs, and more.
One of the critical components that enable us to have a smooth transition is our cloud-first / cloud-only adoption strategy. These cloud-enabled applications have allowed our teams here at TRG to Work From Anywhere (home, coffee shop, even the office) from any device, and thus, ensure our services never get disrupted.
A smooth transition from the usual physical office to a virtual one is only possible with enhanced collaboration. We use Microsoft Teams as our primary communication platform, and of course, Zoom. Additionally, we took advantage of the crisis by embracing virtual internships and scaling up. Usually, we have 6-12 interns from multiple countries in the office most months of the year; we scaled this to see what would happen. And now, we typically have 20-30 interns from up to 10 different countries at any time during the year, and since we started in March 2020, up to 75% of them are virtual.
The virtual internships allow us to significantly diversify our workforce without having to expand our physical footprint as well as taught us how to improve onboarding, how to collaborate better and faster and how to work together and have fun across multiple time zones. I believe businesses can no longer operate as normal post-COVID, nor in the "new normal", in fact, I continually refer to this phenomenon as "Business-As-UnUsual" #BAUU.
As I reflect over the past year, I could not help but ask myself "were there any other options? If so, what could we do differently?" There are loads of things I can think of. It is easy to lose your way, so I tried to spend as much time as possible to talk to my employees, pivot to feedforward and to uncover new ideas. I also spoke (a lot) to my coaches because I, too, need guidance, as they say, in order to be a good coach you need to be coached. Various coaching sessions as a coachee as well as many more as a coach have led to many beautiful partnerships. It's true what coaches say, you learn a lot from your coachees, maybe that’s why I enjoy it so much.
2020 is also the year that we put our disaster recovery and business continuity plans to the ‘real’ test. I believe agility is the key to digital transformation, which is characterised by high-quality data sources, rapid decision-making process beyond departmental boundaries plus the critical ability to self-learn and self-improve.
As our teams developed our own internal knowledge base and we rapidly developed a slew of training to enable onboarding of interns literally every week, we are inspired to share and deliver these high-quality, interactive courses to you. This has motivated us to kick-start a special project - an all-in-one online hub for every training need.
We are proud to present to you: TRG ACADEMY. We are expecting to launch the TRG Academy in early 2021.
Looking back, I would prefer to think of 2020 as a ‘reboot’, albeit a hard one that wiped out many things one may hold dear. A reboot also means refresh, reclarify, realign, rebound, an opportunity for a new start, a pivot. Hello #BAUU.
That being said, what should business leaders keep in mind moving into 2021? For me, an overarching theme is #BAUU which includes “back to basics.” Businesses need to get the fundamentals right before they can rebound in a post-pandemic world.
An area where the #BAUU message really resonates is in dealing with data. During recent years, we’ve witnessed the rise of data analytics in the business world. As a result, data analytics software has slowly and steadily become more mainstream in many enterprises.
The problem is people sometimes forget the age-old wisdom: “garbage in, garbage out.” Even the most sophisticated analytics software can’t do much if it’s fed with dirty / messy data.
As data generated throughout your business grows exponentially, the demand for fundamental data management practices such as data cleansing and data governance morphs from nice to have to essential and before too long, critical.
Going forward, I believe enterprises will increasingly focus on building a strong foundation of cleaned and well-organised business data, upon which data analytics software can be used to the fullest potential.
During such a crisis, downsizing is a grim but unavoidable reality. The real challenge, however, only comes after the downsizing: how to manage the workloads with fewer people. Of course, you can ask them to work overtime, but you can only push people for so long. On reflection, it’s just more echoes of "doing more with less."
A first-year business student would tell you to solve that problem by increasing productivity. A third-year student will tell you to do so by applying advanced technology like A.I. As a veteran businessperson, you still have a lingering doubt about whether A.I. has evolved enough to deliver real results or it still is an overhyped sci-fi concept.
The answer, once again, can be found in #BAUU when we are back to basics. The key to improved productivity is getting rid of all those tedious, repeated tasks. They consume a lot of time while producing very little. And did I say they suck all the joy out of doing our jobs?
A.I. should not be treated as an all-knowing, all-seeing application like in those Hollywood movies. In other words, you shouldn’t expect to just sit back and tell A.I. to do your employees’ jobs. At least not quite yet.
The most-proven way to implement A.I. to increase productivity is to embed it into existing systems, to let it work in the background and assist your employees through automated workflows and elimination of repeated, manual tasks.
For instance, users of the latest version of Infor SunSystems, the venerable 30+year-old accounting software (obviously still the best in the world), can interact with Coleman, an integrated A.I. engine, through chat-based queries such as “Coleman, run Ledger Import”, or “Coleman, what’s the balance for account AB12300."
With the behaviour learning function, Coleman analyses how users do their job. For example, Coleman can learn how a manager approves expenses for his / her department and later does the work for them in the background. It’s pretty cool. I’m still waiting for Coleman to make me a cup of coffee, though, now I think about it… “Hey Siri, message Q and order me a large PJ’s Southern Pecan right away, please.”
If you want to get more state-of-the-art, then use DataBelt, the equivalent of a Swiss army knife that’ll cleanse, classify, virtually visualise all your data. By all, I really mean ALL: structured, unstructured, voice, video, images, CCTV, and probably the kitchen sink. What you can do is only limited by your imagination. Easily handle a DSAR (Data Subject Access Request), RegTech compliance, or even help find that missing data in contracts to help with your IFRS17 nightmare (though, if you engage with us, we’ll help that nightmare also go away).
2020 is a year when science and its values are once again under intense scrutiny. Amid all the chaos, confusion, and fury caused by the pandemic and debates about how to handle it, science has taken a lot of punches.
While scepticism about science is not a new phenomenon, from the 16th century’s trial of Galileo to the modern day’s ‘fake moon landing theory’, the rise of social media, ironically another product of science, has fuelled a new wave of science sceptics.
It’s easy to dismiss those who doubt science as some ‘crazy conspiracy theorists’. But don’t forget that even reasonable people don’t always follow the scientifically-proven ways of doing things.
Even in the business world, presumably consisting of mostly reasonable people, scientific ways do not always prevail. Take a job interview as an example.
If you still believe traditional questions like “What makes you the best candidate” or “Tell us about your strengths and weaknesses” can help predict the future performance of a candidate, then you are following your gut rather than scientific methods.
Don’t get me wrong. Your intuition still plays a vital role in decision making. However, it should only be an alternative to fact gathering, analysis and data-driven decision making. And when it comes to the complex nature of human beings, science can and should help untangle a lot of myths and misconceptions surrounding the ‘dark art’ of finding the right people for the right jobs.
We can’t foretell the future with absolute certainty, we will always move on and move forward with our lives. On that note, it's #BAUU. I trust this letter will further inspire you to move forward into 2021 and beyond with strength, confidence, persistence and vigour.
Happy New Year!