Mood of the Boardroom: Technology — a godsend under Covid

Zoom or Team meetings have become the byword for managing teams working from home and doing business during Covid-19 lockdowns.

Even "drinks" after work to keep staff morale up at week's end.

This is just the sharp end of a technological shift that was already underway before the pandemic began.

The Herald's CEOs survey asked business leaders to rank the importance of various technologies to them in the light of the lengthy pandemic.

Particularly, to assist businesses continue to ensure productivity gains; not just in the face of the pandemic but the resultant very tight labour conditions.

The reliance on mobile computing and Cloud computing has also stepped up. Fletcher Construction CEO Peter Reidy says they will be pushing into digital construction methods with their clients and key stakeholders to improve field productivity and drive project delivery efficiency.

"As a technology company we see first-hand, every day, how transformative digital technology can be," explains Spark CEO Jolie Hodson. "We use a range of modern technologies at Spark from — 5G to IoT, cloud computing and AI — and we continue to digitise and automate our own services over time. We support businesses big and small on their own digitisation journeys and help them to achieve significant productivity improvements from doing so. This is only going to get more important as we recover from Covid-19, which has accelerated the shift from physical to digital, and as we need to find smarter ways to work to address climate change.

Digital trade is in fact booming along with other e-commerce trends.

Access Economics has produced figures showing when borders shut in early 2020 as Covid-19 hit, 5-8 years of projected digital transformation was crammed into the first eight weeks of lockdown as people worked from home. "The digital transformation driven by Covid was painful at the time," says a property management head. "But it has had a silver lining.

"The change readiness of both the team and customers could never have been replicated under any other circumstance. Our team and our investors' showed an extraordinary willingness to embrace ways of working I could not otherwise have launched in a year of solid talking.

"Never waste a good crisis, no matter how many grey hairs it gives you. The key now is to maintain at least some of that openness to change and collaboration, while giving people some semblance of stability."

Tower CEO Blair Turnbull says his firm is increasingly leveraging all of the technologies. "Covid has been a catalyst for some, e.g. Teams, but the balance were largely a natural progression of technology and business evolving."

Others said digital transformation was a core strategy with advisory firms relying on it to improve their business outcomes.

Mainfreight boss Don Braid says the global logistics company is currently introducing automation via advanced robotics into warehouses in Australia, the US and Europe.

"Cloud computing is a given." adds Skellerup Holdings David Mair. "Advanced robotics is usually a dream — there is a process standardisation mechanisation; automation and only then robotics.

"Ultimately robotics is the deep learning software applied across a number of mechanical automation arms.

"We are looking for the answer to something by buying robots. They are not mechanical people; that's so 80s"