Tag Archives: Europe

Why Now Is the Perfect Time to Rethink Talent and Leadership

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Startups and scaleups worldwide are facing a make-or-break moment with coronavirus, a health crisis with vast and unprecedented economic consequences. Each entrepreneur is in a unique situation, whether they’re well-funded, planning their next funding round or struggling through the uncertainty.

As a result, founders are turning to their VCs and mentors for support and conversations are, unsurprisingly, centred around cash. In the UK, while £81m has gone to startups that haven’t received investment previously, there’s been a 31 percent decrease in deal numbers compared to the same period last year—so it’s a pressing issue.

But cash alone only presents half the story. As startups seek advice on how to weather the storm and find positives in the situation, the conversation broadens. To survive this period of instability, growing businesses should look toward the key cornerstones of success: talent and leadership. After all, the best founders never waste a crisis and now is a good time for them to refocus.

The vision could be great, the founders innovative and cash readily available, but without strong leadership and world-class talent, businesses can’t continue to thrive in this climate. How to look after and manage teams during this time, as well as understanding what staff cuts to make and how, are important considerations that startups are looking to VCs for support and advice on.

A conservative approach. 

Any business plans that organisations had in place ahead of the pandemic are now likely to be irrelevant. Businesses need to start from scratch with a clear view of their burn rate and shouldn’t be afraid to rip up the rule book and abandon existing plans. Startups already doing this have looked to renegotiate their office rents, contracts with providers and suspended online advertising, for example.

Reducing such costs is sensible in a challenging fundraising environment. Deals have slowed down and the Pitchbook European VC Valuation Report points toward a decrease in early seed rounds. New investments certainly have stopped and great companies always get funding, but many investors are focusing on how to support their existing portfolio. The crisis isn’t over yet and, with further outbreaks still possible, now is the time to be conservative. Continue reading →

The Digitization Imperative

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  By Ram Charan

The Covid-19 crisis isn’t behind us yet, but companies have to start putting the economic pieces together for their business to not just survive but also build a new future. At this point, there are three priorities most companies should act on with great haste: employee safety, cash management week by week and a digital connection with customers, suppliers and ecosystem partners. Missing any of the three could seriously jeopardize the continuity of the business.

Companies that are not already on their way to being digital have to realize the urgency. It’s not just digital giants like Amazon that threaten their future. It’s also legacy companies that are becoming digital. In the pandemic, they’ve been able to adapt more quickly. And, under normal circumstances, they can gain share very fast.

Maybe you’ve come to terms with the fact that you must become a digital company. But you’re convinced that this is not the time to act. You have to realize that waiting for stability is a luxury you can’t afford. Really, there is no need to wait.

Talking to a number of CEOs, I have learned that there are myths about what digitization costs, how much cash it will use, and how long it will take. Business leaders don’t think they can show a clear return on their investment. Besides, they’re convinced that people in the organization will resist it.

Well, that’s no longer the case. You can now pick the most urgent, most critical tasks—the ones that will help you get cash, increase revenues or connect with customers, suppliers and ecosystem partners—and achieve them in bite-size portions. You can see benefits in weeks or months, not years.

 

Here are some examples:

• Dynamic pricing. It is a necessity when uncertainty is here to stay.

• Collection of receivables. The collections process is critical to liquidity.

• A continuous connection with customers. You will need this to help you pick up how their behavior is changing, how demand is shifting and what the voice of the customer is. It will help with forecasting, with impacts on inventory and cash flow.

• A single source of data. Data-based decision-making, whether or not it’s automated, is now an imperative. But it is difficult to use data for decision-making if it is spread across many silos; it is highly inconsistent, and managers don’t trust it.

A number of small vendors now exist that can do projects like these for you in less than 90 days for less than $400,000.

Make your own list and take one or two tasks at a time. Then, reach out to small vendors (UST Global and Altimetrik are two I’m familiar with). Define your tasks clearly and precisely, just as you’ve done with outsourcing, facilities construction or other turnkey projects.

You might not realize that digital giants like Amazon all began using digital technology for one task at a time. They used small vendors—and still do—because they are fast, they cost less, and they take the project to completion. They become partners in operationalizing it. You focus on what needs to be digitized and why, and how it will create revenues, cash, margins, customer satisfaction or speed. The vendors focus on giving you the relevant digital platform or digital apps.

When it comes to organizational resistance, that is unlikely to exist anymore. If someone does resist, you have to deal with it right away.

One more thing: don’t be put off by terminology and tools with which you’re not familiar, like algorithms and big data. Algorithms—the mathematical rules by which data is processed—have been around for hundreds of years. Roughly two dozen of them are used for common tasks and are readily available.

So, take the mystery out and take on small turnkey tasks that can build your business and ensure its continuity.

Source: Chief Executive

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6 tips for remote hiring success

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By Sarah K. White

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only shaken up business as usual, sending large portions of the workforce to work from home, it’s also pushed companies to hire from home. Recruiters and hiring managers are now faced with the task of vetting candidates remotely, a challenging prospect for many organizations and roles, especially for technical interviews or for establishing a culture fit. While there are obstacles to this “new normal,” some companies have found positives in the new hiring process.

If your company is one of the many that will be hiring virtually, even temporarily, moving forward, here are six tips to help smooth the transition and ensure a strong candidate fit.

Bring structure to the process

Jocelyn Lai, director of talent acquisition at Duolingo, says her team had just 24 hours to completely revolutionize the company’s hiring process after the COVID-19 lock downs went into effect. Part of that included building out a structured process for recruiters and candidates to follow while the company continued to ramp up hiring.

Lai recommends establishing a quick guide for instructing candidates on how to run through their video and sound equipment ahead of time in case there are any compatibility issues and to give them a general sense of what to expect. The same goes for your recruiters, she says. Make sure everyone is using the same video conferencing software, that they have all the resources for quality video calls and that they are trained on any software or services you may use to conduct any technical interviews.

Bringing structure to the process not only helps your recruiters be effective, but it also alleviates potential added stress on candidates. Candidates may feel more anxious or stressed about a virtual interview, especially if they are new to the process. By “over communicating” with candidates, you can help them feel at ease, which will help avoid any potential performance issues during the interview, Lai says.

Re imagine the technical interview

Technical interviews can pose a unique challenge during the virtual hiring process. Engineers who are used to using physical white boards for technical interviews may have to embrace Google Docs or a third-party service such as HackerRank or CodeSignal. It’s important to take into account any potential limitations of your setup — and to consider giving candidates a chance for a do-over if they’re new to virtual technical interviews. Let candidates know in advance how you plan to conduct technical interviews — again, communication is key in helping ease anxiety and to get the best out of your candidate.

Embrace a new pace

While the current situation isn’t ideal, plenty of companies are finding positives in this new employment landscape. Orkideh Shahidi, vice president of people operations at SADA Systems, says her team had already conducted some virtual interviews prior to the lock downs, but the company’s recruitment process has now moved entirely online due to Covid-19.

One benefit Shahidi has noticed is that, with recruiters and candidates working from home, recruiters are no longer vying for meeting rooms or conference lines, and candidates also have more availability. More over, SADA hiring managers no longer have to wait weeks to schedule time to fly a candidate in for an in-person interview if they’re in another state or country.

“Candidates don’t need to rush to their cars to take a call and we don’t have to wait for them to take a day off to fly over here. It makes the interview process and the hiring process a lot faster,” says Shahidi.

Adjust your outlook on perks

Perks and benefits are big draws for tech candidates. Tech giants like Facebook, Microsoft and Google are well known for in-office perks such as unique working spaces, healthy snacks, free meals, on-site gyms and roof decks.

With new hires likely working from home for the foreseeable future, however, these perks are off the table, Lai says. If your organization leans on these perks to sway talent, you’ll need to find other ways to get candidates engaged in your corporate culture.

“Once you remove the perks, there is nothing to stand on, so it’s all about authenticity now. Now there’s another bar that companies have to hit in terms of candidate experience and it’s that authenticity piece because you have nothing to hide behind,” says Lai.

Source: CIO Magazine

8 tips for driving digital strategy during COVID-19

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By Clint Boulton

From deliverable schedules to procurement windows, virtually every IT timeline has been compressed by the coronavirus crisis. Those three- to five-year horizons for digital transformations? They’ve shrunk to months thanks to the pandemic, say some CIOs and consultants.

As is often the case, the truth is more nuanced. Big Bang transformations have been streamlined — not sidelined — in favor of short-term priorities. Having stabilized email, boosted bandwidth and battle-tested VPNs to fulfill mandatory work-from-home policies, CIOs have set their sights on innovation. Companies such as Nationwide have digitized software development to accommodate employees working remotely and to serve customers without a hitch.

The new normal

Such is the new normal for most large companies, and IT “will be in the middle of that,” according to Rick Pastore, senior research director of The Hackett Group. Mobile devices and software, cloud and other digital tools grant CIOs greater flexibility than they’ve had previously in supporting how and where employees work, Pastore says.

Moreover, objections to smart automation, machine learning, advanced analytics and other emerging technologies that require robust investments will “melt away” — if they haven’t already, Pastore predicts. Many CIOs have created new analytics dashboards to chart productivity and have built bots to digitize manual tasks. Others have changed the way they meet with business peers during the pandemic, with a mind toward preserving that method in the future. Continue reading →

Strategising Customisation and Privacy in the Digital Age

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by David Dubois, INSEAD Associate Professor of Marketing, and Joanna Teoh, INSEAD

Five golden rules to effectively balance personalisation and customer protection.

From AI-enabled chatbots to ads based on individuals’ search or social media activities, digital data offer novel ways to connect with customers. These connections can develop into intimate customer relationships that boost satisfaction, engagement and ultimately loyalty. Consider Netflix’s recent personalisation strategy, which enabled viewers of its series Bandersnatch to choose the main character’s actions throughout the episode, leading to five unique endings.

But there is a point where customer intimacy and invasion of privacy blurs. For instance, as early as 2012, Target predicted a teenage customer’s pregnancy through her historical purchase pattern data and sent her baby-related coupons, to the surprise of her own parents.

Where to draw the line between customer-benefitting personalisation and intrusion? This question is increasingly at the heart of every C-level executive’s agenda. In the digital age where data has become overabundant – 90 percent of the world’s data was produced in the last two years – corporations face the urgent need for a “data chart” defining their philosophy around the collection and use of customer data as it relates to value creation. Continue reading →