How can technology bring a human touch back to businesses?

In 2019, I flew more times than I can count to meet with customers and partners in countries from Japan to India to the US. Then in 2020 I, like many of my peers and colleagues, came to a standstill. The business world, however, kept on spinning - thanks to technology. While 2020 has come and gone, travel bans remain across the region, which means the virtual business meeting is here to stay.

According to the latest Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI), 68 per cent of businesses in the APJ region intend to conduct more business using video conferencing and limit travel where possible. This brave new world of business turns a lot of long-held beliefs on their head. Business leaders have celebrated the value of face-to-face meetings for decades, suggesting that face to face was the only way to build relationships based on trust. Nowhere is this more ingrained than in Asia, a region where professional travel is a way of life and in-person meetings are crucial for engaging new customers, showing respect to partners, and navigating both business and cultural nuances.

Adapting to a new world

Never has the power of technology been so felt and understood. While we haven’t been able to travel corporeally, technology has enabled us to maintain and build new human connections.

The organizations I have seen truly embracing technology as means to ‘carry on’ are the ones I deem to have a truly innovative mindset. For example, the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which designed its IT environment specifically to flexibly respond to the evolution of technology, or Sakra World Hospital in Bangalore, which ramped up telehealth services during the pandemic to respond to remote patient needs.

Embracing the changes

We’ve already seen companies pivot to deal with the significant uptick in work from home, with 46 per cent of organisations modifying their IT infrastructures to improve support for remote workers according to the ECI research. This rapid change has been supported by technologies like hybrid cloud, which allowed organisations to deliver secure and efficient access to virtual apps, desktops and data to all remote workers.

Now, business leaders need to apply a similar technological transformation to their external business relationships.

This is already starting to happen. Once business leaders settled into the fact that face-to-face was no longer possible, they embraced the benefits that virtual meetings enabled – including more time available to do business, rather than sitting in traffic, or being stuck on the train during the morning commute; the chance to turn ‘administrative’ meetings into emails or messages; and the ability to conduct business with people around the world from the safety of their own homes.

Technology has helped us stay connected

Thanks to technology, we’ve all inadvertently been invited into the homes of our peers and colleagues and witnessed families and pets, wandering in and out of frame. This has allowed us to build relationships that are more real and based on our shared human experiences, rather than on the hyper-professional facades we present to each other on short business trips.

Likewise, with everyone working remotely, we’ve all faced the struggle of making ourselves understood via video conference or group call. Previously, a room full of people would have a speakerphone in the middle of the table and maybe a video on a big screen to connect to one or two remote workers. Now, the challenges of remote workers are everyone’s challenges – creating a common ground that a new generation of business relationships can be built upon. When everyone is remote and often communicating asynchronously, it’s easier to use translation tools as well, which broadens participation around the region.

Being grounded hasn’t stopped me from connecting with my employees, customers and partners. On the contrary - being in one place on a more predictable schedule has enabled me to connect more with team members on the front line, and with a larger number of partners than I would ever be able to fit into a business trip. This ability to come together despite distance and considerable challenges exemplifies humankind’s capacity for innovation – one of our greatest assets – and I am excited for us all to embrace the potential of technology to create better ways of doing business soon.

The author of the article is Matt Young, Senior Vice President & Head, APAC, Nutanix