Technology changes everything. Not just the size or the process, but it makes a resultant impact on the speed with which a decision can take place. How does Technology evolve the everyday workings of a CXO? Umair Naeem takes a look
It was not long ago, when you’d enter your office as a manager, you’d be met by a pile of letters that had been delivered: memos, requests, requisitions, proposals, forecasts, daily reports and what not. You would take a deep breath, ask for your morning cup of coffee (or tea), and get cracking to answering the letters and filing away the memos. Needless to say, you’d have your own share of mails to write and dispatch.
You would pick up your phone (yes, it’s not that long ago!) and speak to a subordinate (or your boss) and be involved in the communication of some piece of information. You would then head over to a conference room just in time for the first of a number of meetings that you’d need to be part of, some that may even have needed you to leave your office to go to some far of supplier, factory or agency!
Soon, the working day would be at an end, and you’d be screaming blue murder, because there was still so much to be documented and still so many letters to be answered! It would be frustrating; you had spent the whole day working, but the time had been too little.
Now, it’s a little different. Thanks to the evolution of work-place technology and collaborative software, communication, planning, monitoring, strategizing and overall management has become much more efficient. The Internet, for one thing, has made basic raw information gathering so much easier for one thing. Suppose you’re the Brand Manager, and you need to design a marketing strategy around a product that you’re going to be re-launching soon. Apart from the usual text-book knowledge, you would want to know what the competition is doing, and get a feeler for about the consumer’s feedback and/or acceptance with regards to that.
You can log onto the Internet, and scour the blog-scape and advertising websites to get an idea about how the competition’s campaigns are being received. Particularly for Pakistan, Telecom Marketing personnel would get an excellent feeler, as there are countless opinion pieces online with regards to various telecom brands and their strategies. Staying within the same hypothetical model, you can access global White Papers and success model on Brands that are related to your product, and get a creative idea about your campaign. It’s free information, and it’s easily accessible.
Of course, before you can hunt the Internet for potentially useful information, you would need to settle your day-to-day monitoring and feedback communication, and there-in the wonderful tool called the E-Mail makes life so much easier! All you now need, is a PC, laptop, or even your mobile. A couple of clicks, and your communication channels are on; and more importantly, the information is conveyed almost instantaneously. Most likely, you would also have IM Software, connecting you to the rest of your company; and in the case of MNC, with the rest of the globe.
What better way for information sharing and knowledge transfer? And did I mention how easily and in little time your queries can potentially be answered!? And of course, if you’re looking for more in-depth and detailed meetings with your stakeholders, clients, suppliers, or global partners/colleagues, what better way than teleconferencing or better yet, Video Conferencing! All of these are very common in businesses nowadays, and the result has been that managers, CIOs, CEOs and CMOs are able to spend their time more effectively, doing the more important things; such as monitoring, planning and subsequently strategizing.
The different roles
As a Brand Manager, technology is certainly a God send. You have constant information regarding your various communication vehicles, and which ones would be most suitable to the message you are intending for your targets. For instance, your campaign may consist of a TV Ad, and you need to find out which TV Channels at which time slots would be most effective in reaching your target audience. To get the necessary information, you would be getting daily reports detailing the ratings for the various channels for various time slots for a particular audience demographic segment. This allows you to better cater your message for your target (according to that timeslot) and effectively spend your marketing budget rather than just blindly shooting in the dark and putting your Ad online every which where. These very ratings are possible again due to technology, which allows frequency and measurement of TV channels watched for a household sample that can define an entire segment.
As a marketer, you would also want to know how the ads that you approved run did, and this again you can ascertain through these ratings and other tracker data that is easily available. Through the above-said, you have a clear picture as to how effective a particular time slot, in a particular day was pertaining to your relevant target audience. And this is just the tip of the iceberg! Other media communication vehicles, from print to digital advertising, can be monitored to find the most effective vehicle within these media to carry your message to your target audience.
Even for internal information, technology acts to facilitate information and decisions in the modern business. Easy access is available to data that allows you to base you daily directions as a business manager. You will get daily reports telling you how much of your product was sold nationally (or internationally, if the case may be), giving you the ability to drill down to the smallest area, city or location (or shop) to find out the distribution and sales. You can know your coverage in terms of area covered or shops covered, allowing you to measure your productivity and hence the effectiveness of your sales team.
Further more, stock information, raw material information and stock in transit and available for sale; all can be available through technology. All you need to do is start analyzing ways to improve your business. Such reporting software is particularly useful for MNCs, where a CFO sitting in London may want to know the product wise profitability of its Pakistani operations; or a CMO in Geneva might want to know how the Portfolio Mix differs in various countries and how it can potentially drive sales.
But it’s not only Marketing that has been benefiting from the positive impact of technology. Other functions have improved in effectiveness in the same vain. We touched upon the financials that can are accessible through internal software, and this makes reporting for Finance so much easier. Sales are reported better and the operations can be more easily managed through hand held devices through which the sales team records their sales. IS can better control resources and better troubleshoot through automated help desk software and security features installed in PCs and laptops.
HR’s record keeping improves dramatically through the use of databases, and this can lead to better access of international personnel and can help in the improved identification of potential candidates for hiring. MNC Intra-Net can be a haven for HR sponsored multicultural activities promoting better understanding of operations and personnel across international markets. Procurement can be automated, and this can result in its own savings in terms of man-power and time. Overall, feedback from the employees with regards to various functions, departments, performance evaluations and so on can be more real-time and hence more relevant.
So no matter which function you belong to, for the modern business manager, technology evolution has opened up new avenues of thought and strategy. It has made information access and analysis easier, and so much more relevant. Needless to say, as is the case with all of humanity’s endeavours, new knowledge (and technology) opens up new questions, and the further evolution of technology will certainly take management towards a new direction. It can only be exciting, when you’re part of a business and you see technology that helps you thrive.
