The most important part of digital transformation for businesses is gathering insights and using them to create more value, according to Lorri Rowlandson, Vice President of Innovation and Strategy and BGIS, a provider of real estate and technology innovation consulting.
Speaking at WORKTECH17 in Toronto in October, Rowlandson says that while a shiny new piece of technology can be useful, the most important part of digital transformation for businesses is gathering insights and using them to create more value.
Success is not some shiny new dashboard — it’s learning how to build and run a better business through insights, she says.
“Success is actually implementing some type of insight that you actually learn from the analytics. A lot of people get technology narcissism, where they care about the dashboard but they don’t actually have the skills to interpret the data and do something different.”
GoSpaces
At WorkTech, Rowlandson presented on gamification within the workplace, and how data derived from new tools that adopt game-like interfaces can be used to improve the employee experience. Gamification is already being used in consumer products such as Waze and FourSquare, but the potential of these tools to engage employees is only just being realized now.
BGIS is working with an app called GoSpaces that intends to gamify employee goals, allowing businesses to educate employees, receive regular feedback and build valuable insights to drive practical innovation.
GoSpaces functions as a “fitbit for the workplace,” says Rowlandson, providing a challenge and award system intended to boost the social, sustainable and financial outcomes of the business.
The GoSpaces app focusses on several key areas of the employee journey within the workplace:
- Collecting feedback and service requests
- Providing efficient reservation tools for meeting rooms
- Tracking and rewarding daily sustainability goals such as biking, reducing paper usage or carpooling
- Enabling hot-desking and flexible workspaces
All of this data allows businesses to mine key insights that can be used to drive innovative change. The GoSpaces app brings the feedback economy into the regular workcycle, giving businesses a better understanding of the employee journey.
Who deals with DX?
One of the biggest questions for businesses right now is who directs digital transformation, and employee-facing technology is no exception. So who drives initiatives such as GoSpaces that transform the work environment? Rowlandson points to the need for a holistic approach.
She says the importance of making sure that the head of real estate and the head of IT are working “hand in hand” helps to promote innovation.
“With a lot of cloud computing, information security, IT has their own pipeline of activities and then of course corporate real estate comes in from the outside. It gets at risk of being deprioritized.”
Corporate real estate can shape the innovation conversation, and help businesses avoid siloing when it comes to the complex process of digital transformation.
”To make sure that we’re not stalling and stifling innovation with the approval process and then becoming irrelevant,” says Rowlandson, “it’s important that they’re working together closely — closer than ever before.”
