who do this well will have a more motivated and
passionate workforce that produces better results.
Silos will be broken down in the pursuit of work
structures that are more collaborative and accepting
of how people live and their individual interests.
INTEGRATION OF TECHNOLOGY AND PEOPLE:
Technological integration across different systems,
processes and data is very much a given. 2014 saw
organisations scramble to get their CRM, cloud
content, ERP, social and other data management
systems talking to each other. For newer businesses,
it was a relatively easy process and for others such
as hospitality, where legacy systems had to be
integrated, the approach has been slower.
2015 will see more collaborations take place with
organisations aiming to put more data into action
through sharing, analysis and application.
Owing to technology, last year also saw greater
collaboration in areas such as resource and team
management. Gone are the days where employees
were brought on board to work 9 to 5 for a job, over
a certain period of time, at a given location. The
collaborative nature of technology has benefited
entrepreneurs greatly as, with limited budgets, they
have been able to pull together the most effective
teams for the job – without geographic and time
constraints. Small businesses have just as much
access to the best personnel suited to the job as
bigger organisations.
This plug and play business model will continue to
gain popularity this year.
COLLABORATIVE COMPETITION:
Early in 2013, Harvard Business Review published
an article noting that collaboration is the new
competition. The article highlights how, in an effort
to tackle today’s complex and interconnected
problems, leaders and organisations are putting
aside self-interest to build a new civic infrastructure
and advance shared objectives.
While competition will continue to drive many
people, the nature, parameters and desire that craft
it will shift to a more collaborative model.
Increasingly, non-traditional partners are coming
together, and will continue to do so, to embrace
a new way of working together. From angel
investment and funding to launching new
publications, the measure of competition will be
more collective. People will pool in resources
to support collective and individual growth. As
entrepreneur Janine Garner notes in her book From
Me To We, to succeed in a ‘we’ world, we need to
learn how to engage, as commercial collaboration is
key to future-proofing the economy.
As the economy continues to get reshaped,
collaboration’s role in the new culture and the very
fabric of business will continue to evolve. The above
noted trends and new ones that pop up through
2015 will become a more intrinsic part of how we do
business and interact with the world around us.