UCEXPO 2015: CIOs must drive a cultural change
I’ve been reflecting on UCEXPO which took place last week – which as a whole was a fascinating coming together of industry leaders in the unified comms space.
I sat on a panel discussion on the second day and one thing really stuck with me. How technology is actually driving a need for cultural change within businesses.
The way we consume technology in our personal lives has changed massively in the past few years, and we are now seeing that in the world of enterprise as well.
On top of this, for organisations and governments to realise their full productivity potential they must accept that it is going to be harder and harder to get any more out of individuals. Instead, the next wave of improvements will come by fostering teamwork and collaboration.
In my view, it is the CIO who must lead this charge and I believe they will have to really take ownership and drive the conversation.
We must remember advancements in technology have led to their roles changing. It’s all about how people use the tech, and what they get out of it. It puts the CIO at the heart of that process, and I’m confident they will be stepping up to the challenge. I also believe we will see a much bigger focus on user adoption from a business side.
The upside of this is users are becoming more familiar with the technology in their hands, as a result of what they experience at home. This should free up more time for CIOs to focus on owning this cultural change within their organisation.
What else did I see?
I had a thoroughly enjoyable couple of days at the conference. Our stand was buzzing over both days and I really enjoyed meeting everyone on the ground.
Out of everything we discussed, there were a handful of common themes which kept emerging.
The main thrust of this is that user experience must be at the heart of everything to do with unified communications.
Collaboration needs to be about making technology accessible to everyone – and we want to be in every room, on every desk and in every pocket.
By its very definition, collaboration is anything that allows people to communicate and work better together.
The future is already here, the issue is it’s just not evenly distributed. Typically at the moment collaboration is not available for everyone in an organisation, so this will be a key driver of enhancing teamwork.
As I mentioned before, there is not a lot more that individuals can give – so it’s vital that everything we do is to make teamwork much more natural.
For me, I believe it’s all about creating applications which make everything else work better.
What did you think of UCEXPO? Do you agree about the change in roles for the CIO? I’m keen to hear your thoughts, so please comment or tweet me @DonaldMcL.
