Which products and solutions do you offer for today’s workplace?
Today’s current workplace is witnessing dynamic changes as work is now moved to ‘home’. Thanks to ever-evolving technologies, work from home as a concept is here to stay in a post-pandemic world as well. Working in a home environment might not be an ideal situation, however as we delve deeper, we are able to identify and provide a work-friendly environment for our employees.

At Innovations Group, a lot of our IT staff is deployed on temporary IT projects for about 3-6 months. Due to limited time in the country, they have no access to decent and affordable housing. In such a case, work from home becomes a challenge. If you look at the current middle-income professionals in the UAE, most of them are comfortable living in shared accommodations, thus, creating a hindrance for better productivity during these times.

As a group, we have addressed the current situation with the following solutions for our staff:

• All-Inclusive Housing: In order to be able to provide a safe and productive environment, we have built our own, ‘All-inclusive’ affordable luxury co-living housing for junior and middle-income professionals called ‘Resivation’ (resivation.com).
• Open and Independent Workstations: We now offer more open workstations rather than individual-owned stations. You come, plugin, work and leave. Gone are the days of fixed cabling and rigid seating plans. It’s been replaced by open workstations and meeting rooms that are available on a first come first serve basis.
• Ever-Evolving Technology: We have invested in IT infrastructure that is easily accessible and cloud-based such as softphones, Microsoft teams, cloud servers, and so on, in order to ensure the IT structure supports a smooth remote working environment while keeping information handy.

The above factors play a significant role in supporting a hybrid workplace structure.

How is tech driving our economic recovery?
There have been numerous challenges imposed on businesses due to the pandemic. These challenges can be controlled by aligning the right technology with the desired business goals. Moving the teams to remote working emerged as the biggest impact of the lockdown. This transition has enabled businesses to work with ease from any location with minimal reported impact on overall productivity. Technology has played a fundamental role in supporting this shift.

With technological advancements such as Chatbots, softphones, dialers and CRM technology, data is immediately accessible to employees as well as customers. This makes the customer-representative connection more efficient and thus improves customer service turnaround times. It is almost impossible for businesses now to not integrate android and ios applications which are allowing customers to process requests wherever they are. Pairing this with the advancements in CRM & dialer technology results in businesses being able to effectively monitor employee user experience and implement corrective actions at a much faster and accurate rate.

At Innovations, all our call center businesses, are operated by our own in-house built dialer and CRM. We have workstations set up for our staff in their home itself with all workplace essentials. The aim is to create a sustainable workplace at home to avoid crowding at the office and keep the spread of the virus at bay. Harnessing the right technology is key for businesses to bounce back, recover and thrive in the future.

How is your company investing in the workforce of tomorrow?
In recent years we have seen a surge in demand for tech jobs both pre- and post-pandemic. At Innovations Group, we have been successful in catering to the IT industry and have tremendously contributed to the sector’s business flexibility, agility and cost-effectiveness. Our clients have benefited drastically with the additional competitive edge of not having to manage their HR & recruitment processes and simply focus on delivering a strong core service.

As an outsourcing consultancy, we are continuously hand-holding our clients not just through recruitment assistance but managing the entire process in every step of the employee-company journey. We have heavily invested in solving the employee mobilization and deployment issues faced by large tech firms such as Etisalat, WIPRO, Cognizant, and so on.

We have the answers to pain points such as constant rotational deployment, short-term living solutions, and off-shore remote working facilities. Our clients enjoy a 100 percent personalized service as we devise a roadmap to provide improved accessibility, better performance, and increased productivity.

How do you think technology today helps businesses grow?
The recent pandemic has turned the spotlight on technology as an enabler of work. With increasing digitization and technical advancement, organizations and professionals are now understanding how workplace technology is driving and supporting our current economic recovery.

Covid-19 has pushed some companies to invest in new technological advancements as businesses cannot keep up with the fast-moving pace and uncertainty which covid-19 is bringing to our world. According to McKinsey’s recent report, companies have implemented various technological solutions faster and this is a behavior and way of working which is going to continue post-covid-19 as well.

To meet constantly changing demands, companies have to make choices between either purchasing off-the-shelf tech solutions or investing time and resources into building their own customized tech products. Digital adoption possesses its own unique set of challenges as companies need to invest a huge chunk of their time and resources to either build internally or integrate ready-made tech with the existing systems.

We at Innovations Group went the creation route where our in-house team has built our own ERP platform and applications. It was a much tougher journey; however, we are now reaping the rewards of lower running costs, flexible customizations, and faster turnaround times. As a result, we are processing 450 residence visas a month with people working from home with fewer human errors, less training time, and increased efficiency.

Companies are bound to focus on automating their operational processes through workflow engines, chatbots, and AI. Not only do these tech solutions help businesses grow but also push the employee growth curve. With the use of new-age technological solutions, entry-level positions can now be grown into supervisory roles that can guide, analyze and manage your chatbots, data analytics, and automated workflows.

Credit: Arabian Reseller