“The bonus of empowering people to make real change is that you end up with a bias towards action.” Paul Pluschkell, Spigit
At Steljes innovation is a big part of what we believe in, and there are some interesting articles floating around about what that actually means – and how we can achieve it.
Did you know that SMEs are already one of the more innovative groups out there?
We’re all already front-runners for social impact, innovating business practices and finding new and better ways of getting ourselves out there, but how can we take this further in the workplace?
In his article on “Why your team won’t innovate”, Jeffrey Philips suggests that the key way to boost innovation in a business is to empower your employees. Philips argues that people are inherently innovative – and this is true. Taking risks and sharing ideas in a workplace can be intimidating, though, so it’s up to businesses to make innovative ideas safe and keep them moving forward.
According to this article by Mike Michalowicz, author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, the number one question that keeps your team dynamic is “How could that be done better?” This awesome video from the IBM THINK Exhibit shown in New York last year shows just how much people have achieved in the name of this question:
And that’s where Steljes fits in. Our solutions are usually born out of this question: check out our case studies to see how we’ve helped revolutionise meetings, strategy development and teamwork with a range of different companies from Microsoft to BT. But innovation is an art, not a science and it can be difficult to assess ROI on innovation. Instead, time is saved on travelling, set-up and even write-ups, productivity is increased and company culture becomes more collaborative and efficient – let our ROI calculator show you how. Innovation becomes, funnily enough, commonplace.
So what do have you done to boost workplace innovation and productivity lately?
At Steljes we’re really proud of where our technology has ended up, from schools and police stations to rugby clubs, RAF training and business! Here are our five favourite case studies – who will be our next success story?
5. Scottish Water
“It has created an inspirational environment, acting as a catalyst for better collaboration as well as a platform for idea generation.”
Scottish Water faces a huge logistical challenge as the sole provider of water services to an area of 30,000 square miles, covering a third of Great Britain.
Driving up performance levels, creating the right inspirational environment and finding efficiencies is critical to Scottish Water’s aims for improving this vital public service – and ensuring value for money for the Scottish public. However, the tools available for its head office teams to plan, collaborate and work together were limited to flipcharts, conventional whiteboards and projectors.
So SMART provided the solution: Scottish Water installed four SMART Board™ units and hubs at its head office in Dunfermline, one in each of its newly-refurbished meeting rooms. With these tools, Scottish Water’s teams can write in digital ink over any application, make notes as they go and instantly capture the flow of ideas. The whole collaborative process is faster, more engaging and more productive as a result; the boards are being put to great use every day by all of the head office departments, including the senior management, finance and IT teams.
Scottish Water’s transformative programme of infrastructure, facilities and IT investment has helped it hit record levels of customer service, water quality and environmental sustainability, whilst keeping bills low.
(Read more about investing in the future with Scottish Water)
4. BT
“Ultimately we’re using this technology to change and transform the culture of the company.”
BT’s motivations are all about being number one for customer service. With teams across the UK, India, China, the USA and Central Europe. BT Innovate and Design (BTID) realised that it needed a new environment where both layout and technology supported agile delivery.
The answer was the adoption of SMART Technologies’ collaborative solution.
It started with a proof of concept at Adastral Park, BT’s centre for development in Ipswich, leading to two hundred people and seventeen SMART Board interactive whiteboards at Adastral Park, one whiteboard each in Belfast and Glasgow and two whiteboards in India.
By using the new SMART collaboration tools, a group of five developers are able to resolve a problem within two days rather than travel to India for five days – improving staff retention and work life balance, as well as reducing travel costs and carbon footprint.
“We estimate that the SMART Boards and the TAP system deliver a saving of tens of thousands of dollars in indirect costs.”
For a company like Tullow Oil, it is critically important to manage the interaction between what is happening below and above the surface – a technically challenging business, and this is where the need for real-time data and technologically advanced tools for data handling and team collaboration comes into play.
Within TAP, their ‘Technology Assisted Production’ system, SMART Boards have a critical role as a key visualisation and collaborative tool giving its engineers and other colleagues not only the ability to view and share data, but also to annotate, manipulate and write on the display, to use touchscreen commands and to instantly save and share the results.
All in all, SMART Technologies is playing a pivotal role helping Tullow Oil to achieve its business-critical goals faster and more accurately. In due course, Tullow Oil is aiming to expand their use of SMART products and replicate this system elsewhere, including Uganda, where its oil exploration project will soon be moving into the production phase, and London.
“We can set up a conference in less than three minutes and SMART’s collaboration technology fits perfectly with our mantras of “walk up and use” and “three touches and go”. It really is that simple.”
O2’s business case is built around realising efficiencies, improving time to market and reducing costs for the business, and the company has multiple offices throughout the UK – as well as headquarters in Slough, where it also has two other offices. With frequent travel between the Slough and Leeds locations, the company realised something had to change, as a great deal of time was wasted simply ‘setting up’.
“We decided to amalgamate the three Slough offices into one location accommodating 2,200 people,” explains Alan Parkin, programme manager, infrastructure design and delivery. With only 47 meeting rooms – half the number previously available – the new Slough site demanded a more productive and collaborative working environment.
We were able to provide that for them. The pilot we set up with them was so successful that almost all of the 47 meeting rooms in the new Slough office will have a SMART Board and the boardroom will have two SMART Podiums.
“Using the new solution from SMART Technologies, we have improved the effectiveness and efficiency of our meetings and write ups.”
Microsoft’s Technology Centre (MTC) in Reading, Berkshire hosts hundreds of customers per year – from start up companies to FTSE 100 companies – to help them understand and improve their business processes.
Meetings could often last up to 3 days with Microsoft’s Developer and Platform Evangelist (DPE) team discussing products that have not been officially released yet, and the use of normal whiteboards meant writing up all of the information from the meeting could take up a day or more.
The productivity and effectiveness of these meetings was improved massively when Microsoft installed a new meeting room solution from SMART Technologies. The system combines SMART Board interactive whiteboards, SMART Meeting Pro Premium software, SMART Bridgit conferencing software, ultra-short-throw projectors and multimedia speakers.
The new meeting room solution from SMART Technologies has enriched the way in which Microsoft and its customers work together; customers have told Microsoft that they feel more actively involved in the meeting and that the interactive whiteboards help to break down any barriers to creating new ideas.
(Read more about enriching customer experience with Microsoft)
PRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY 