TORONTO -Last year, while still president of Cisco Canada, “I spoke here about the opportunity to drive innovation through collaboration and improved productivity,” said Nitin Kawale, now president of Rogers Enterprise Business division, to delegates at the first day of the Canadian Telecom Summit.
“In one year, not much has changed.”
He pointed to a Conference Board of Canada study that showed Canada ranking 13th in a list of 16 peer countries when it comes to innovation. Clearly, that’s lousy.
When it comes to the consumer side of the information, communications and technology revolution, Canadians are in step with the rest of the world, he said, using their mobile devices, software and apps to enrich their lives and improve their own personal productivity. However, when they go to work, they are often using communications tools stubbornly tethered to a wall which were invented in the 1960s and ’70s. With the rapid pace of change happening globally, this phenomenon must change or Canada will fall farther and farther behind.
Kawale asked the crowd of employees and executives of telcos, wireless firms, vendors, consultants, and so on whether or not their companies still use PBX or Centrex or IP Telephony to take and make calls in their day to day work. Using a texting instant poll, he found about 75% of the audience still reported using this tech as part of their daily work life.
He then added PBX originated more than 100 years ago and in the 1960s companies rolled out PBXs in a big way in order to streamline communications. Centrex came to market in the mid 1960s and IP Telephony and Voice over IP (VoIP) showed up in the early 1970s.
“We are relying on technology invented decades ago – and killing our productivity,” he added – while showing a photo of himself cutting the cord on his ancient Rogers office phone when he came aboard last fall.
Without moving aggressively and immediately to modern, collaborative ICT tools, Canada will continue to fall behind – as will the companies who hang onto the old way of doing things for fear of spending money on upgrades and training. Millennials, Kawale (pictured) pointed out, are poised to be the bulk of most companies’ workforce, “and they expect real-time, any time, any where communications. And they are hungry for collaboration.”
Plus, all that real-time communication and collaboration is excellent for business. “We know over 75% of people are more productive in collaborative work environments and over 95% of people who can have impromptu collaboration are highly satisfied with their employer,” he explained.
Despite the fact we all know businesses must innovate to grow and be successful, still fewer than 50% of Canadian businesses even have a web site and companies here will spend over $2 billion on elderly legacy voice services – money that could be so much better invested, if executives were better educated, it would seem. Kawale noted that Microsoft released research last year that showed just 10% of Canadian executives could define "cloud and only 5% could accurately describe it.”
“Traditional legacy voice providers have no interest in transition the market – these providers don’t have the best interest of Canadian businesses at heart." – Nitin Kawale, Rogers Communications
As well, Canadian businesses are not helped by their tech providers. “Traditional legacy voice providers have no interest in transition the market – these providers don’t have the best interest of Canadian businesses at heart,” he said.
That said, Kawale added the telecom industry itself has done a poor job demonstrating the benefits of next generation ICT to business leaders in the way it has been successful with consumers. Last year, he noted, Rogers worked with Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management to talk with Canadian business leaders in the middle of using mobile to transform their workplaces.
“We found almost all (96%) companies were using some form of mobile technology, but less than 30% saw a clear value proposition for it.”
So, Rogers is transforming the way it does business inside its own walls by going all-mobile and fostering a far more collaborative culture – right down to removing the traditional offices in its headquarters in favour of open spaces. Then, it can teach by example. “We are going to help businesses of all sizes make this transition,” said Kawale. “As a company, we re-organized around the customer – and in the Enterprise Business Unit, we are organized around the Canadian business customer.”
“Let’s get out of the 1960’s – ditch the shag rug, the bell bottoms,” he continued. To get ourselves back on the world stage, our innovation and productivity must improve and to do that, perhaps employees can force change from the bottom-up.
“Tell your leadership teams you demand the same level of productivity in your workplace that you have as a consumer every single day,” he urged, because in the end, this isn’t really a technology issue. Instead, it’s “a business process change and management courage story.”
Nitin Kawale photo by Michal Tomaszewski / Pinpoint National
