Technology is Redefining the World of Work
Advanced computer capabilities we carry in our pockets, knowledge-based workforce productivity skills, new ways for large corporations to partner on joint projects—from oilfields to retail stores, technology is transforming the world of work. In this interview, Dan Levin, COO of online file-sharing and cloud-based content-management service Box, discusses with McKinsey's Barr Seitz some of the ways companies are managing — and profiting from — the changes. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation.
The three big tech trends
We're now carrying around in our pockets incredibly capable computers that can run sophisticated apps and do a lot of heavy computational work, even though they're very small. So that's the first piece.
The second piece is the integration into those devices of connectivity and other capabilities, especially connectivity. The fact that a cellphone uses a cellular data network to talk to the World Wide Web, and thus is connected to the outside world, is huge. But the advent of other peripherals that can be built into or easily added onto these teeny little devices is also huge.
The third thing is that cloud-delivered enterprise applications that can be accessed over the web and don't require access to a VPN1 or a firewall have just radically improved accessibility of these technologies from mobile devices. So you put those three things together, and they're driving a huge amount of change.
The emergence of 'knowledge' workers
The people at McKinsey think work is evolving from being a place to being a mind-set. It's evolving from something one does during a fixed period of time to something that a person does almost all the time, from something that was separate from one's life to something that, for many of us, is integral to our life.
I also think that work is going from something that's physical to something that's about information, creation, and utilization. There are hundreds of millions of people around the world — people who are repairing aircraft engines, people who are working in retail stores — who are now knowledge workers. Technology is enabling them to work in a much more interesting way than they used to.
A quick example is guys on job sites in the Bakken oil field in North Dakota. It used to be that if something broke at a wellhead and the manual for it wasn't handy, it could take weeks to find somebody who knew how to fix it, get the documentation you needed, et cetera. Now these guys can pull up the information on every piece of equipment at the wellhead instantly, using a mobile device over a cellular network. On the one hand, it's more productive because the well gets back into productivity quicker, but it's also better for the employee — nobody wants to sit around waiting for the manual to show up, especially at –30 degrees in North Dakota.
How companies are using tech
We have data that suggest that especially for mobile knowledge-worker populations, the productivity increase can be very significant, on the order of 10 percent or 20 percent.
Here's one excellent example. One of the largest companies that rents construction equipment in the US moved from a paper-based process to an iPad-based process for their salespeople. In the old world, those salespeople spent four days in the yard renting equipment, and every Friday in the office keypunching all the paper they'd collected over the course of the week. In the new world, they literally saved that entire day every week by using forms on iPads to enter all the information electronically, rather than keypunching it after the fact.
The three big tech trends
We're now carrying around in our pockets incredibly capable computers that can run sophisticated apps and do a lot of heavy computational work, even though they're very small. So that's the first piece.
The second piece is the integration into those devices of connectivity and other capabilities, especially connectivity. The fact that a cellphone uses a cellular data network to talk to the World Wide Web, and thus is connected to the outside world, is huge. But the advent of other peripherals that can be built into or easily added onto these teeny little devices is also huge.
The third thing is that cloud-delivered enterprise applications that can be accessed over the web and don't require access to a VPN1 or a firewall have just radically improved accessibility of these technologies from mobile devices. So you put those three things together, and they're driving a huge amount of change.
The emergence of 'knowledge' workers
The people at McKinsey think work is evolving from being a place to being a mind-set. It's evolving from something one does during a fixed period of time to something that a person does almost all the time, from something that was separate from one's life to something that, for many of us, is integral to our life.
I also think that work is going from something that's physical to something that's about information, creation, and utilization. There are hundreds of millions of people around the world — people who are repairing aircraft engines, people who are working in retail stores — who are now knowledge workers. Technology is enabling them to work in a much more interesting way than they used to.
A quick example is guys on job sites in the Bakken oil field in North Dakota. It used to be that if something broke at a wellhead and the manual for it wasn't handy, it could take weeks to find somebody who knew how to fix it, get the documentation you needed, et cetera. Now these guys can pull up the information on every piece of equipment at the wellhead instantly, using a mobile device over a cellular network. On the one hand, it's more productive because the well gets back into productivity quicker, but it's also better for the employee — nobody wants to sit around waiting for the manual to show up, especially at –30 degrees in North Dakota.
How companies are using tech
We have data that suggest that especially for mobile knowledge-worker populations, the productivity increase can be very significant, on the order of 10 percent or 20 percent.
Here's one excellent example. One of the largest companies that rents construction equipment in the US moved from a paper-based process to an iPad-based process for their salespeople. In the old world, those salespeople spent four days in the yard renting equipment, and every Friday in the office keypunching all the paper they'd collected over the course of the week. In the new world, they literally saved that entire day every week by using forms on iPads to enter all the information electronically, rather than keypunching it after the fact.