What is Technology Adoption and What are its 5 Stages

We live in a time that is characterised by a major technology takeover, a time experiencing the 4th industrial revolution. Companies that want to survive and evolve must keep track of technology breakthroughs, because as we’ve come to know, technology can make or break a company’s success.  

In light of that, it is imperative to always look forward in anticipation and not just wait for a trend to start “trending”. We have created a list of what we speculate to be the major technology trends of 2020 that everyone should keep an eye out for.  

1. HyperAutomation  
2. BlockChain  
3. Artificial Intelligence 
   
   

HyperAutomation 

No matter how much technology advances, it is agreed that no single tool can replace humans. Most organisations out there are already familiar with automation, which involves automating simple tasks that require processes with predefined rules and structured data. The idea of HyperAutomation, on the other hand, involves a combination of tools that together result in the creation of an organisation’s digital twin, which allows for the automation of more complex work.  

According to Gartner, combining robotic process automation, intelligent business management software, and AI enables organisations to visualise how functions, processes, and key performance indicators interact to drive value.

Allowing this digital twin to become an integral part of the HyperAutomation process as it provides real-time continuous intelligence about the organisation will enable more informed decision making. Successful automation involves several key factors: discover, analyse, design, automate, measure, monitor, & reassess.

An example of a tool that is designed based on these factors would be Exceed’s ESP. 

BlockChain  

While Blockchain was first developed back in 1991, it came to life with the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009. The idea of bitcoin mimics printed currency in the transactional sense, but instead of being regulated by a central bank or government, bitcoin is regulated by a network of computers.  Blockchain is the protocol on which bitcoin is built.

In the simplest terms, Investopedia defines Blockchain as “a distributed, decentralised, public ledger”, which translates to digital information (blocks) that are stored in a public database (chain). While blockchain is beneficial in peer to peer transactions and small-scope projects, it remains immature for enterprise deployments due to technical issues.

However, market speculations anticipate it to be fully scalable by 2023. According to research conducted by Gartner, “true blockchain will have the potential to transform industries, and eventually the economy, as complementary technologies such as AI begin to integrate alongside blockchain.”

Artificial Intelligence 

Can Machines Think?  

AI involves designing “human-like” machines that are able to perform tasks requiring intelligence. Machines are built to mimic processes and tasks that involve recognition of images, speech, or patterns & decision making. Those processes include acquiring information and rules, using those rules to reach conclusions, & self-correction. 

Unlike traditional coding, the computer creates instructions for itself using machine learning algorithms rather than having humans write those instructions. To demonstrate the effect of AI, take google translate for an example.

When it first went live, google translate used to have more than a million lines of code (human-created instructions). Currently, google translate has 500 lines of code due to machine learning. However, while it is expected to overtake every industry, one must understand its limitations.  

Knowledge in AI comes from data, and for the machine to be accurate, it must read from accurate data. While businesses have been understanding what AI can and can't achieve for the past few years, it expected that the future points towards a time where machines are appointed not only all of the physical work, as they have done since the industrial revolution, but also the mental work involving planning, strategising, and making decisions.  

Sources:  

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blockchain.asp  

https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2020/ 

https://www.simplilearn.com/top-technology-trends-and-jobs-article 

You see the end product but we’re bringing you closer to the people behind it ! 

Among our recent partnerships, we joined forces with Ubility.  

To bring the service provider closer to YOU, we sat down with their CEO Khaled Dassouki, to gain firsthand insight on the things they do and the types of human capital profiles that drive their success.  

Khaled is a Lebanese national with an engineering background and PhD in Artificial Intelligence & Security obtained at Université de Technologie de Troyes, France. 

As a result of over 20 years in the field, Khaled decided to establish Ubility in France and build it on a base of Artificial Intelligence in Customer Experience, which was considered to be highly innovative as it was a niche field.  

Khaled was quick to notice that there had been a shift in the way business was carried out, the shift had been made to be more customer-focused. With that came new challenges, the ease with which customers can connect with the business led to a huge influx of queries and requests for support, which was very time consuming, tedious, and required businesses to grow their customer support teams leading to higher costs. 

While growing their teams did solve some challenges momentarily, organisations were quick to realise that the complexity and average time required to resolve customer challenges was growing which eventually led to dissatisfied customers. Not only that, customer service agents were quickly burning out as they were answering an ever-growing list of routine questions rather than helping solve complex problems and offering innovative solutions.  

Taking all that into account, Ubility offered an AI-powered platform that learns from interactions between an organisation’s customers & their customer care team to enable quick suggestions of appropriate solutions that could solve a customer’s challenge in seconds rather than minutes.  

In addition to that, Ubility also offers AI training for professionals in the IT industry, a sales chatbot that is based on a recommender system and knows the sales cycle, and AI Consultancy in which they are recruited to build and implement AI services in response to an assessment of an organisation’s processes. 

Success Story 

Ubility was commissioned by a Telecom operator in the gulf to assess and analyse their IT processes. After a thorough analysis done by their team of experts, it was concluded that a huge portion of their IT processes had an opportunity for automation.

After studying the best ways in which they could automate their processes, they determined that incorporating AI would allow the elimination of a manual process by looking at historical data. Instead of their operational costs raking up to 50,000 USD a month, they were now cut by 80% to be only 10,000 USD.  

Intrigued and want to learn more?

Click here for a free trial !  

When speaking of per­for­mance man­age­ment, many think of the annu­al per­for­mance review process. But the annual per­for­mance review or appraisal is only a small com­po­nent of employee per­for­mance man­age­ment. 

Employee performance management goes much further than the traditional annual review. It involves regular purposeful interaction between management and employees that is focused on job performance as well as direction and support for the employees.

According to Gallup, organisations that successfully engage their customers and their employees, experience a 240% boost in performance-related business outcomes compared to an organisation without engaged employees or engaged customers.

What is employee per­for­mance man­age­ment?

Performance management defines your interaction with an employee at every step of the way in between these major life cycle occurrences.

According to the definition pro­vid­ed by Michael Arm­strong in his Hand­book of Per­for­mance Man­age­ment,

​“Per­for­mance man­age­ment is the con­tin­u­ous process of improv­ing per­for­mance by set­ting indi­vid­ual and team goals which are aligned to the strate­gic goals of the organ­i­sa­tion, plan­ning per­for­mance to achieve the goals, review­ing and assess­ing progress, and devel­op­ing the knowl­edge, skills and abil­i­ties of peo­ple.”

Note how he mentions that per­for­mance man­age­ment is a con­tin­u­ous process — not an annual event. 

A per­for­mance man­age­r should, there­fore, bring togeth­er dif­fer­ent, inte­grat­ed activ­i­ties to form an ongo­ing​”per­for­mance man­age­ment cycle”. Ideal performance management should make every interaction opportunity with an employee into a learning opportunity.

We have put together some tips for optimising your employee performance management system.

1. Identify the goals of your performance management initiatives

As you develop a performance management program, you need to understand what you want to accomplish from it. Ask the following questions to define your goals: 

• Do you want to increase productivity?
• Does your organisation want to identify potential leaders and develop them?
• Do you want to optimise the incentives process?
• Are you seeking to improve employee retention or engagement?

If you know what you want your program to do, it will be easier to build it to accomplish that goal.

Related: FREE guide! Learn everything you need to know about creating the ultimate Digital Employee Experience .

2. Align goals with a performance plan

Now that you have set your goals, develop a performance plan to go alongside. Develop short term goals. As long term goals can overwhelm the employees even before they start.

3. Monitor progress towards performance plan

Review employee performance regularly. Use metrics and analytics to track how goals are progressing. This will keep the process transparent and allow you to support your employees, whenever necessary.

4. Offer actionable feedback

During the feedback sessions, tensions can arise if the feedback is not constructive and actionable. It is not very helpful for employee morale to blame and point fingers. Instead performance manager should guide employees towards future success. 

Managers should make sure to keep feedback professional and remember to focus on behaviour, rather than characteristics.

5. Take advantage of multiple-source feedback

Ask employees to provide feedback for each other. This will give the performance manager a more holistic view of employee performance. It will also help them understand the challenges that teams are facing, and be able to better offer feedback.

Related: How to Manage Results vs. Efforts and the Communications Gap - FREE Ebook!

6. Provide frequent training to your employees

Regular coaching can help identify and solve problems before they get out of hand. Monthly or quarterly meetings should be held to help keep employees on the right track. It also helps to organise cross-functional coaching sessions. This helps employees - and managers - understand what other departments do and operate.

7. Accept that employees’ are not always the source of problems

It is easy to assume for the management that problems are always caused by employees, but that simply is not the case. Problems can come from various external factors such as availability of supplies, internal processes that are causing issues, or organisational policies. Seek out the other source of problems as precisely as you can in order to fix them.

8. Acknowledge and reward employee achievements 

You cannot expect employees to stay motivated if their achievements are never rewarded. Yet, many organisations overlook this key element. Make sure that employees are not only compensated but also recognised for their hard work. You can rest in peace that they will continue performing for your organisation.

9. Foster a performance-oriented culture in your team

Make sure that your organisation has shared values and cultural alignment. A sense of shared goals, beliefs and expectations among employees creates a pleasant workplace. And a harmonious workplace is good for productivity, positivity and eventually better performances. 

In conclusion...

We can all agree that performance management has a significant benefits for employees and managers, as well as for the company as a whole.

For any Human Resources department, performance management is an important system for onboarding, developing and retaining employees, as well as reviewing their performance. 

If you are a performance manager or human resource manager it may seem overwhelming to keep up with the entire process. But there are tools to make your life easier at work. 

Simple Strata can help you align your entire employee performance management strategy. 

Learn More about SimpleStrata