ALVAREZ & MARSAL
multiply that by thousands of employees – boom , all of a sudden you ’ re talking about millions of dollars in time savings . Even something that ’ s a 5 or 10-minute task for end users can scale up to be over a sevenfigure benefit to the company right away .
“ While AI gets all the fanfare right now , I still believe that most companies who haven ’ t gone through a transformation can see much bigger cost savings and cost avoidances by automating all these little internal things first .”
It ’ s in this spirit of ‘ watching the pennies ’ that A & M ’ s IT function runs an innovation award , which recognises team members who find new ways to eradicate inefficiencies and boost productivity in the workforce . It increases engagement with the company ’ s technologies , and ensures rank-and-file staff are aware that every little improvement is part of a much bigger picture .
To this end , A & M has begun deploying custom mobile applications to allow staff easier access to information they need . One of the recent innovations is a mobile application called People Directory . It allows colleagues to look up coworkers in different offices or different countries , and filter and sort details including staff level , business unit and more . People Directory replaced manually created PDFs full of pictures and hierarchies that were necessary before .
And the company isn ’ t going to stop innovating there : later this year , A & M intends to roll out a mobile-based self-service password reset application which will not only reduce the time spent by IT resources but also speed up the reset experience . “ It ’ s a big part of our strategy ,” Zung concludes , “ of listening to how our people work and helping them out . 106 August 2023