Future of Work: What You Don’t Know Will Cost You
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The future of work is here—it’s just not evenly distributed. Indeed, many of the technologies, trends, and cultural norms that will drive tomorrow’s workplaces are already reshaping organizations around the world today. We examine this topic in a new Google Cloud report on the future of collaboration and productivity, featuring the results of original research, predictions by business and technology leaders, and recommendations from Google experts.
The report also identifies three important and impactful changes that businesses can make today to catch up with forward-thinking competitors. Here are the highlights:
1. Give people tools that help them save time and work faster.
What is it about work that just isn’t working? Research shows that employees around the world spend significant chunks of their day on low-value activities that get in the way of efficiency, productivity, and innovation. These include attending unnecessary meetings, managing high volumes of email, tracking down the right versions of documents, switching between applications, and generally struggling with outdated technology.
To help their employees spend more time on work that matters, future-minded organizations are replacing legacy business software with cloud-based tools that integrate seamlessly with one another and use automation to make routine tasks less burdensome. For example, an app might surface the right information at the right time so you don’t have to go hunting for it, suggest commonly used phrases as you type, or propose available meeting times and conference rooms. Add up the few minutes you save on each task, and that’s a significant portion of the day you’ve reclaimed for the work that matters.
2. Empower people to access knowledge and share ideas.
Have you ever used Google Search to find your own company’s logo? Or recreated content that already existed because you couldn’t track something down? Employees around the world experience similar challenges when searching for what they need across siloed, ineffective information repositories within their organizations. And that’s a problem, because nearly 80% of business leaders agree that seamless, digital access to knowledge is very important to overall performance, according to a survey sponsored by Google Cloud and conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services.
The solution? Providing employees with centrally managed technology that lets them access and share knowledge more easily, curbing reliance on unsanctioned apps that may put sensitive data at risk. Fast access to relevant information can also help cultivate new opportunities for employees to contribute, whether it’s by suggesting a new product or service, providing feedback on internal processes or business initiatives, or exchanging insights with colleagues across the company. Eighty-nine percent of executives say that for a business to be successful, new ideas must come from everyone across the organization, from senior executives to front-line employees, according to another survey sponsored by Google Cloud and conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services.
3. Let people work how they want: flexibly and collaboratively.
Along with time-saving tools and expanded access to information, two core values are reshaping work for forward-thinking organizations and will help determine the future success of every business: flexibility and collaboration. According to Deloitte research, only 17% of millennials are willing to stay with an employer for more than five years without the opportunity to work where they choose, while 74% of global employees believe that businesses perform better when they encourage teamwork.
Luckily, technology is evolving to support this sweeping shift toward flexible collaboration. We now have tools that let people on opposite sides of the globe work together as a team, from video meetings for face-to-face interaction to digital whiteboards for collective brainstorming. Research shows that more and more businesses are taking advantage of these cloud-powered services: 27% of global executives adopted integrated software suites for collaborative content creation and idea-sharing in the last two years, while an additional 24% plan to do so by 2021, according to Harvard Business Review Analytic Services.
Transport Platform’s Richly-detailed Geospatial Data Allows Commuters to Track Buses in Real-time!
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Vinayak Bhavnani, Co-Founder and CTO of India-based bus transport technology company Chalo, shares how Google Maps Platform is used to improve visibility for commuters and bus operators across India by visualizing geospatial data.
Effective public transport networks contribute to the local economy and help make cities safe, pleasant, and sustainable. In India, buses make up around 90% of the public transport offering, but when you talk to the people who ride them every day, you find that there’s a lot of room for improvement. Heavy traffic means there are rarely any fixed schedules and it’s impossible to know exactly when your bus is coming. We’ve found that people tend to wait at a bus stop for up to 30 minutes a day, which creates a lot of frustration and wasted time.
When we founded Chalo, our aim was to make the daily city commute a more positive experience. Reliability is synonymous with visibility: when you know exactly when the bus is coming, you can plan your day better. If you’re in your office, for example, and see the next bus is in 10 minutes, you can be at the stop at the exact time it arrives, instead of waiting around. To enable this, we base our solutions on richly-detailed geospatial data provided by Google Maps Platform.
Eliminating wait times and increasing revenue with geospatial data
In India, bus passengers tend to have fewer resources. The Chalo App, which can be downloaded for free, allows them to see exactly where their bus is on its route and when it will arrive at their nearest stop. They also tend to be late adopters of mobile technology, meaning we had to create an interface that was user-friendly, reassuring and adapted to all age groups and backgrounds. One of the main reasons we opted for Google Maps Platform is that it’s very present in India and other emerging markets and is familiar to our users, which inspires trust. At the same time, we like the fact that Google Maps Platform provides rich geospatial data while being simple to implement and work with. We use the Geocoding API, Reverse Geocoding, and the Directions API to enable location search and provide directions.
We also worked with MediaAgility to identify the Google Maps Platform products most suited to our needs and the best practices to be followed. This helped to ensure that our business objectives could be met efficiently.
The Chalo App also enables digital ticketing, alongside the Chalo Card, a payment card for those who don’t own a smartphone. India, like the rest of the world, is gradually moving away from cash payments, but the public transport system is proving slow to catch up, meaning people still must have cash in hand when they board the bus. Digital ticketing not only makes commuting more convenient, it also helps protect passengers, drivers and conductors during the COVID-19 health crisis by limiting physical contact.
Chalo also offers solutions aimed at bus operators that help them improve their services and their bottom line. In major Indian cities, buses are run by a combination of public and private agencies and small private individual bus operators, with the majority of the latter only operating one or two buses. The market is very fragmented and there’s not much incentive for bus operators to invest in infrastructure or customer experience – especially when they have little to no visibility on where their fleet is at a given time, how many kilometers it travels in a day, or how much money it takes.
The Chalo dashboard provides operators with a map-based real-time overview of bus locations, alongside scheduling features and route, ticketing, and passenger statistics. Geospatial intelligence and insight into passenger demand enable operators to explore new avenues of revenue and adapt routes and services to passenger needs. Operators who’ve partnered with Chalo report an average improvement of 10% to 30% of their bus fleet operations.
Chalo is currently powering about 100 million rides a month on 15,000 buses in 37 cities. We’d like to see the number of rides increase tenfold over the next few years. To do that, we’re looking to broaden our offer and expand to other parts of the country and across international borders. A pilot is underway in Bangkok, and we’re considering expansion into South-East Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Having access to detailed geospatial data anywhere in the world via Google Maps Platform, without having to make any major investments or changes to our technology stack, will make this considerably easier.
At the same time, we’re exploring artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the accuracy of our scheduling features and we’re introducing video-based solutions for people-counting on buses. Our aim is to continually improve our offering and optimize our services. We’re looking forward to working closely with Google to make that happen.
For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website.
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Trusted Collaboration for Hybrid Workplace with Google Workspace
Hybrid workspace need high levels of security, data privacy, and trust for seamless collaboration across workforce. As we navigate to the new normal, your enterprise can learn about the security and privacy specific innovations Google Workspace utilizes to help customers realize powerful, trusted, cloud-native collaboration.
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The Amazing Tech Behind This Animal Rescue Center Helps Save Costs and Rescue More Animals
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) is the UK’s largest animal welfare charity. Each year, it finds new homes for more than 50,000 animals in need.
Streamlining the charity’s IT systems is the job of Billie Laidlaw, Assistant Director IT Resources. “Every pound we save with our solutions helps to rescue, rehabilitate and re-home animals across England and Wales,” says Billie.
Google Apps for Work was introduced to replace the legacy email system, and the move has saved the charity hundreds of thousands of pounds and introduced more effective ways of working. With Apps for Work on Android phones and Chromebooks, RSPCA inspectors can use Drive and Gmail on the go to connect, check documentation, share information, and request temporary shelter for rescued animals.
With Slides and Chromebox, rescue centre managers can quickly and easily create promotional screens to display in their reception areas showcasing animals that need new owners. And the slides can be pushed simultaneously to RSPCA charity shop screens to help ensure the best chance of finding the animals loving new homes.
“Every time a supporter puts a pound in one of our collection tins, they want it to be spent wisely,” says Billie. “By streamlining our services with Google Apps for Work, we make sure that more of that money serves the animals who need it.”
Watch this video to find out the tech that helps RSPCA make a difference.
Collaboration Helps Nielsen Gain Better Consumer Insights and Save Costs by 20%
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The Nielsen Company is one of the world’s most well-known and respected marketing research firms, with operations in over 100 countries. Its 56,000 employees work to provide insights and data that give customers a better understanding of what people watch, listen to, and buy.
Those insights are essential to companies in a variety of industries, including media and entertainment, consumer products, and retail, that must stay in touch with customers in a fast-changing marketplace.
In order to help customers get the information they need to increase ad sales and boost market share, Nielsen must empower its employees to collaborate across markets and global offices.
But Nielsen’s employees were working out of individual e-mail inboxes that delayed decision-making and made it difficult for the company to take immediate action on time-sensitive information.
The company saw an opportunity to improve collaboration by moving productivity apps to the cloud—Google Cloud’s G Suite—allowing employees to work anytime, anywhere, and on any device and collaborating in real-time.
“In keeping with our cloud-first strategy and digital transformation, we wanted to give our employees state-of-the-art collaboration tools,” says Kimberly Anstett, CIO at Nielsen. “We knew that a global, cloud-based toolset would help change the way everyone in the company works and maximize the value we deliver to our customers.”
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The Simple Salesforce Extension on Gmail That Can Make Sales and Marketing More Productive
What’s one of the big problems of sales and marketing? The inability to get a more holistic picture of a customer when reaching out to them.
There’s a fix for that if you’re using Gmail.
It’s a Salesforce Lightning Chrome extension. As you read and respond to emails in your inbox Salesforce Lightning for Gmail will surface relevant customer information from your CRM directly to you within the Gmail interface.
This will not only save you time by reducing how often you’re toggling between tools, but it’ll also ensure that you have the most current customer information at hand at all times.
With Salesforce Lightning for Gmail you’ll be able to see opportunities, cases, leads and other Salesforce records the contact has with your organisation enabling you to better craft your email response to match your customer’s specific situation.
Find out how else Salesforce Lightning for Gmail can make you smarter, faster and more accurate. Watch this short video now.
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