The labor market in 2023 is facing many challenges. For the first time, there are 5 generations in the workplace: from the so-called Traditionalists through to Generation Z, the range of expectations for employers is broad.
A combination of the different priorities of the younger working generations and the shift that occurred during the pandemic and lockdown has led to a reported 44% of us now thinking of our careers in terms of months, not years (Korn Ferry).
We’ve seen that employees are not afraid to vote with their feet so how can organizations address these challenges, acquire, and then retain their talent to future-proof their performance?
Employee experience is the key to employment loyalty
We recently attended the NAW Executive Summit which covered these challenges and more. Again and again, the way employees are made to feel came up as a critical factor.
This isn’t just about benefits and rewards though. It’s about people feeling a sense of purpose – understanding where their role fits into the bigger picture – and also feeling that they are able to contribute.
Ability to make a difference leaves people with a feeling of satisfaction. Bureaucracy, unwieldy processes, or poorly designed systems are the things that get in the way of this and that’s when work can start to feel like a chore.
Especially for the younger generations of workers who recognize that digital is here and it can solve a lot of problems. So why aren’t organizations taking advantage of solutions designed to make life easier?
Let’s take the example of a business that provides RFQs (request for quote).
In some sectors, these can include as many as 500-to-1000-line items. Often these RFQs are faxed, occasionally they are handwritten, and so in many cases a business receives an RFQ and the customer service representative then has to manually locate the material number in their system for each line item and enter it into the quote.
For some businesses this process to create a quote can take as long as two days.
And here’s the rub: these businesses are also telling us that, in 90% of cases, whoever returns the RFQ the fastest gets the deal.
Our cross-channel order management platform (OMS+) solves this admin burden by using process automation to save time enabling organizations to quickly manage complex sales order in a few minutes instead of days. This frees up your employees to focus on the customer, rather than fighting the technology. That gives your employees an experience that’s worth hanging around for.
Investment in this area is key as the retention issue isn’t one that’s going to be short-term, according to DataXstream CEO, Tim Yates, who said “Based on information from leading economist Alan Beaulieu, the labor shortage will not be remediated any time soon. Companies can take a two-pronged approach to this challenge: one is to focus on retaining employees and the other is to leverage automation and machine learning wherever possible. Businesses that do this have shown both reduction in time to money as well as improved margins.”
Automation means outperforming the competition
According to McKinsey, faster, more automated organizations outperform others by a wide margin on a range of outcomes, including profitability, operational resilience, organization health and growth.
Efficient and effective systems are the route to creating a positive employee experience. We’re talking data, accessibility and automation, not the warm and fuzzy feel-good stuff (although of course that’s important too!)
PWC lists the important factors for a positive employee experience as ‘meaningful, personalized, user-friendly and digital.’ You might recognize these: they mirror the experience most of us want when we are customers. And, just as this affects which company a customer buys from, it’ll impact which company an employee works for.
This list speaks to us here at DataXstream as we have elements of our solution which tick all the boxes:
- Meaningful – our platform grew out of integration consulting. We are an embedded platform that provides a seamless integration for SAP customers that saves as much as 30% of their anticipated upgrade cost.
- Personalized – our platform enables configuration with existing order processes.
- User-friendly – as a direct overlay for SAP ECC or S/4, OMS+ provides an easy user interface and leverages the flexibility of a customer’s existing sales and distribution models; it removes integration time and costs, reduces a 40-click process to an average of 5 clicks and provides an intuitive dashboard providing quick and easy access to customer documents, notes and live transactional data.
- Digital – as an SAP Endorsed App Partner, we leverage data in the existing SAP ERP and overlay a user-friendly interface for fast processing and access to real-time data.
Future-proofing your workforce
According to economists, a tight labor market is expected to extend to 2030 at the least. Coupled with the fact that many organizations changed their habits during 2020 to be more digital (something which will now never reverse) and you have a burning platform to focus on your employee experience. Building fit-for-purpose systems and implementing processes that assist people to do their jobs, rather than having them fight through manual solutions and red tape, is the way to gain competitive edge and attract the right talent to your team.
At DataXstream, we will continue to expand our intelligent automation and machine learning capabilities into our processes to further increase efficiency. This reflects the appetite for more modern processes that comes from a greater proportion of the workforce having grown up in the digital age.
They expect touch-friendly screens, automation and streamlining – they do not have the patience for legacy systems.
We feel that our future direction was foretold during the pandemic. Over a two-year period, nearly all sales reps and managers had to rely on virtual selling, and much of that workforce had to learn it on-the-fly as the pandemic unfolded.
This virtual element has proved to be a lasting tool for distributors and suppliers as customers quickly showed that it’s a format they prefer to utilize for either the entire buying process, or at least part of it.
Hostetter noted McKinsey research that found 40% of B2B sales organizations added hybrid sellers over the past two years and that it’s forecasted to be the second most-prominent B2B sales role over the next three years.
Our digital world is here to stay and firms that embrace it will edge ahead both in sales competitiveness and in talent attraction and retention.