Australian-based operational management and consulting firm Enlighten has been helping businesses worldwide deal with workforce challenges in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The transition to a remote workforce model has caught many businesses off guard, however they must recognise the importance of workforce management in a new world that demands different approaches and solutions.
One company that Enlighten has been working with is United States-based custodian Northern Trust. The Chicago-based firm needed to transition to a remote working model to meet demand for asset servicing and valuation services, particularly during COVID-19.
Enlighten worked with Northern Study to deploy software that could identify existing underused workload capacities and to redistribute them to staff with capacity in different parts of the world.
Northern Trust president of asset servicing Pete Cherecwich says, "Times have changed. Our measure of success is productivity and the ability to manage capacity, systems and the workforce all at the same time. We expect increased demand for workload management data in future."
Enlighten says that the software's ‘Single Source of Truth' ideology drives regular reporting operational capacity and workloads, addressing multiple facets of management through insightful analysis at a single comprehensive point.
It also assigns tasks to spare resources within its existing systems. It uniquely supports enterprise needs by offering data around available resources, and further contextualising that with accompanying profiles and skills. According to Enlighten, the additional insight enables quick, tailored strategies for managing highly specialised tasks.
With knowledge of workload capacity, high-level decision makers can reorganise job tasks to maximise output. For example, if the volume in Asia is too high, the jobs get assigned to the US staff instead.
"Geography is no longer a limitation, especially in the remote working space, when technology can swiftly redistribute work capacities and schedules across borders. The crisis has tested the resilience of most businesses and highlighted the higher levels of sophistication that technology requires,” says Enlighten CEO, president, and co-founder Tony Tregurtha.
Enlighten expects that technology trends will continue to centre around the remote workforce and its needs.
“The future will see higher demand for resilient and robust operating systems that can transfer activities between sites, functions and individuals and provide visibility on work priorities in times of crisis.
Furthermore, Northern Trust also predicts that outsourcing will increase over the next year.
“Times of crisis have forced organisations to re-allocate their resources, and this has seen a dramatic shift toward outsourcing trading desks to save costs.