If you stumble upon one of your employees playing Candy Crush, Words with Friends or Angry Birds, your first instinct may be to get angry yourself.
That’s not necessarily the right reaction, according to Mike Shinn, operations manager for IMS Technology Services‘ systems integration group—at least, not if that employee is a programmer.
During a panel discussion at NSCA’s Business & Leadership Conference, Shinn suggested that, when searching for the next solution for their customers, integration firms ought to tap the resources working right under their noses. He says integrators should try to put their automation programmers in a position to potentially develop apps and software that address their customers’ demands, rather than waiting for an outside vendor to solve those challenges.
“Knowing what kind of games your programmers play is important because they should be focused on what they like to do in their free time and how they can bring it into their job,” Shinn said. “They should be focused on app development. When you tie the work to people’s passions you get to be that one-minute manager.”
“[Programmers] should be focused on app development. When you tie the work to people’s passions you get to be that one-minute manager,” said Shinn.
The idea, of course, is not to let employees waste time playing games while on the clock, but to recognize how they think and to inspire them to marry the ways they like to interface with technology to programming aimed at developing innovative solutions for customers.
“My company is focusing on looking at the way that users are interfacing with the systems we install,” Shinn said, eluding a question about what specific apps IMS Technologies is developing.
While some members of the audience looked a little confused, others were on the same page. One audience member offered that programmers at his integration firm are focused on creating software for a customer portal.
Another said his firm’s programmers are dealing with customers that don’t want any portal or any interface. Instead they want to walk in a room and have things happen—lights go on, presentation equipment launches, etc.—through voice activation or sensors.
As customers embrace the Internet of Things concept, he said, there’s an expectation that a room should be intuitive.
Customers and end users are beginning to fall into the Gen Y or Millennial range, pointed out another audience member, which he said is leading to de-emphasizing interfaces. He talked about a project in which the customer’s young CEO wanted no interface in his boardrooms. Now employees walk in and everything turns on; they walk out and everything turns off. He added that for the employees that don’t necessarily embrace intuitive technology, they can simply pull out a tablet to use as an interface.
Gen Y and Millennials are only the beginning, Shinn added, and customers will continue to push integration firms for intuitive solutions. “Gen Z is graduating college in a year or two,” he said, before sharing a story about McDonalds designing a kiosk concept for restaurants and testing it on high school students. “Students thought it was cool but couldn’t understand why they [would need to touch a kiosk] and can’t just use their phones.”
While the trend may push programmers to create better, more intuitive solutions, it also positions integration firms to strengthen their relationships with customers. “Data sales is the big win here,” Shinn said.
This year we put in a rule that if a new customer doesn’t want the service we’re not going to do it [the project],” says Advance Technology’s Simopoulos.
Reporting information back to customers has become extremely important, according to panelist Mike Boettcher, CEO of Advanced AV. “It needs to be weekly or almost weekly,” he said, explaining that the requirement can be a cultural challenge for some integration firms.
“What’s the average age of your engineers? A bunch of analog guys isn’t a good match.”
It all ties back to selling service, an elusive goal for so many integration firms, added panelist Rob Simopoulos, president of Advance Technology. “Our customers have no tolerance for technology having downtime,” he said, adding that continual communication and data reports are a good way to reinforce that his company is solving issues before they cause down-time.
“I feel we are doing a disservice to the customer when we deploy a project but don’t also deploy service agreement,” Simopoulos said.
“When we have customers that have our service model they love us. For us it’s just a culture change and we’ve made the change and we’re living in a world where projects aren’t as important to us as the service. This year we put in a rule that if a new customer doesn’t want the service we’re not going to do it [the project].”
With good programming appearing to be keys to successful management of service contracts and customer-facing technology, it does seem to pay to keep those programmers happy. Whether or not you should look the other way when they’re playing Fruit Ninja, that’s up to you.
