The past few weeks and months have presented unprecedented challenges to businesses. From those which are struggling to survive, to those which have found their products and services to be in high demand, organizations have had to change everything from how they work, to how they connect with their customers and employees.
We believe that in order to succeed in this new world, leaders will need to create “augmented organizations”.
An augmented organization uses technology in every part of the value chain
An augmented organization is one that applies technology, and in particular artificial intelligence, to functions and processes, in order to become more nimble, efficient, and innovative. It involves using technology to improve how your organization interacts with your customers, how you manage your supply chain, how you collect data and turn it into insights – in short, in every part of your business.
One of the most critical parts of becoming an augmented organization is using technology to improve the personal relationships between people and helping teams work better together. This is what we refer to as “augmented collaboration”.
The three pillars of an augmented collaboration
There are three core pillars that leading organizations are focusing on to improve how their people are working together:
- Using tech to foster cultural & personal connections. Remote work has very suddenly become the norm for businesses around the world. Distance though doesn’t have to equal remoteness. However, to overcome the challenges of a physically distanced workforce, means leaders need to put in place new organizational structures and take specific steps to maintain their culture and personal connections. Fortunately technology can play a helping hand here. Platforms such as StarMeUp OS provide businesses with the means to effectively manage a physically separated workforce while maintaining close personal and human relationships. Such platforms also enable leaders to use organizational network analyses, in order to see how people are connecting and relating to each other. We can use such technology tools to help foster collaboration and the personal relationships between people.
- Becoming an enabler instead of a controller. We know that now, more than ever, traditional organizational structures hinder collaboration and productivity. Despite that, the majority of organizations remain hierarchically structured, with cross-functional work just appearing at the team level. However, research indicates that Agile firms are twice as likely to achieve high performing financial results compared to traditional organizations. The Covid-19 pandemic, and the need for businesses to rapidly shift how they were operating almost overnight, emphasised more than ever that it is empowered individuals that enable a business to be agile and adaptive. For example, at Globant we use our Agile pod framework to create self-organized, collaborative and autonomous teams. These are teams that learn continuously and adapt quickly to changing circumstances – exactly what businesses need as they pivot their organizations to be successful in the “new normal”.
- Applying artificial intelligence to augment team capabilities. For technology teams, we’re seeing how AI can help developers and testers create better software more efficiently. In quality assurance, testers are using AI-powered bots to find coding errors. Agile teams are using machine learning to help them create more accurate estimations. Here at Globant we have created augmented coding – where with the help of AI and machine learning, we can significantly increase the productivity of developers. Augmented coding is a tool, similar in concept to how Google makes suggestions for when you write an email. The tool can understand code history and provide a natural language search engine – this means a developer can quickly and easily find a code snippet or certain functionality amid thousands or millions of lines of code. Thus it helps new developers ramp up quickly, and can even help experienced individuals work more effectively on large codebases.
Over the next few months we will be publishing a steady stream of content all focused on augmented organizations and augmented collaboration, focused on each of these three pillars. This content will provide insights on how businesses can use technology to succeed in a changing world by becoming more agile and adaptive.
We look forward to sharing this content with you and starting a conversation on how businesses can achieve long-term success in this new world.
