Harmonizing technology - Packaging Innovation › wp-content › uploads › 2016 › 05 › ... · 2016-06-22 · A brave new world Moleskine, the luxury stationer whose products

Harmonizing technologyHow successful digital systems combine best-

in-class software with best-in-class integration

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You might have heard of or even use IFTTT. It’s a consumer or small-business platform based on a relatively simple concept: ‘If This (happens) Then (do) That.’ The application, described by PC Magazine as “the ultimate automation service for small tasks between internet-connected services”, is similar to the rules options long used by email software to manage messages… but the ‘recipes’ you can create using IFTTT can be applied to pretty much anything you can connect to the web, from your office lighting to your invoice management.

This is the future. The level of integration possible using services like this offers great advantages over the use of multiple, non-communicative systems. It substantially reduces the volume of data and work, and removes many of the risks that come with natural human error. To many, this kind of integration is what defines a digital business.

In today’s increasingly cloud-centric world there are innumerable ways to handle communications, storage and workflow. To ensure the best outcomes for brands, a framework that helps tie these together and enables the free flow of information between them makes good business sense. By adopting a balanced combination of technology and teamwork, modern brands can avoid the downsides inherent in isolated platforms.

For those working in branding, if your current technology makes life more complicated – if it’s more barrier than boon – you’re not alone. But you can help make it better if you can get all your software talking and working together.

Heads in cloudsYou might use readily available cloud platforms such as Dropbox or Google Drive for file sharing as well as your own servers for central data storage. Or maybe you have a marketing solution like Marketo that needs to speak to a customer relationship management (CRM) system such as Salesforce.com, information from which in turn needs to feed through to your finance system.

Is it possible for all of these systems to understand one another, reducing the replication of work and helping your organization become more efficient? The short answer is, ‘Yes’. But to get them doing so requires planning, a commitment from your teams to respect what that means, and some important groundwork.

Bridging the gapWeb developer Marc George of Keep Studios explains: “There are a number of different formats commonly used for structuring data. All modern programming languages have libraries designed to read and write these formats which, for a programmer, makes the process of potentially transferring the data trivial.”

The job of interpreter falls to bridge or hub programs that operate in the background.

Cloud storage - Dropbox

Google Drive

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A brave new worldMoleskine, the luxury stationer whose products centre on traditional writing equipment, might be the last brand you’d expect to be pioneering digital integration. However, Zosia Swidlicka, brand communications manager for Moleskine America, insists: “An appreciation of good design, authentic experiences and shared moments is not limited to any one medium. That’s why Moleskine, since the beginning, positioned the notebook as a companion to technology, rather than its nemesis.”

She says consumers are seeking to bridge the gap between analog and digital. Moleskine aims to help with this.

“We’ve seen our brand lovers navigating both platforms throughout the day – snapping their hand-drawn creations, keeping a notebook next to their laptop. But this behaviour is no longer limited to the use of the two tools interchangeably. Our observations have shown us that there is a huge appetite for the use of both physical and digital mediums simultaneously.”

Thanks to recent innovations, and building on the success of partnerships with technology companies – perhaps most notably Evernote – Moleskine, with its new Smart Writing Set, will provide immersive environments that offer the necessary space for idea generation and creativity together with the connectivity and speed needed for collaboration and development.

We need to think carefully and seriously about how having lots of connected things could change everything.Ian Foddering, Cisco

Moleskine positioned the notebook as a companion to technoogy, rather than its nemesis

By adopting a balanced combination of technology and teamwork, modern brands can avoid the downsides inherent in isolated platforms.

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An integrated futureNext, take Slack. Its service pulls together all kinds of messages to and from groups of coworkers or individuals. According to figures published by the company in 2015, Slack already had 1.25 million users each day, with 370,000 of these opting for paid accounts. (Pretty impressive, considering the service became publicly available only in 2014.)

Slack is known for its usability. One important element is the ‘wizards’ it uses to guide novices through the system, making it easy to integrate other, usually cloud-based, applications.

This ease of integration is going to be increasingly important moving into the future. Companies such as Cisco have been preparing the ground for us to harness what it calls the ‘internet of everything’. This, it says, adds network intelligence that allows convergence, orchestration and visibility across previously disparate systems to the baseline of the internet of things.

In a report by Monotype, Ian Foddering, CTO of Cisco UK and Ireland, suggests this internet of everything “will send high-level insights back to machines, computers and people in real-time, enabling faster, more intelligent decision-making by both people and machines.”

How does the long-established world of centralized IT management deal with technology-savvy remote workers who no longer accept the old way of doing things?

Slack

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The move to SaaS and other kinds of as-a-service cloud computing models isn’t without its issues: things like moving from capex to opex models, deciding in which countries data (especially customer data) can be legally stored, and even switching providers. But the sheer size of the cloud revolution means authorized or unauthorized usage has to be part of everyone’s planning, from more obvious examples through to specific business needs, like integrating artwork management systems with enterprise software such as SAP.

Foddering adds that, according to Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group, some 50 billion devices will be connected by 2020: “So we need to think carefully and seriously about how having lots of connected things could change everything.”

Opportunities or obstacles?These examples shine a light on where the future of work is headed, reminding us of the need for platforms that – like humans – talk to one another. But there’s a major challenge for corporations: how does the long-established world of centralized IT management deal with technology-savvy remote workers who no longer accept the old way of doing things?

There’s a significant tension here. There are good reasons IT leaders – and those they report to – want to keep communications systems locked down. Almost every organization today has so-called Shadow IT in use. This includes everything from sales teams using company credit cards to access applications online, to IT teams renting compute power from AWS, to marketers setting up ad hoc – and unsecured – WiFi networks from under their desks. This raises questions not necessarily over ownership of data but over control.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) refers to the thousands of types of applications available to rent over the internet, usually paid for per seat per month. There are no licenses to buy, no server rooms to maintain, no versions to patch or capex to budget for. Not only are these services available to any organization in minutes but, like the Salesforce.com example mentioned earlier, they can be integrated with all kinds of other cloud-based or on-premise software.

There is a huge appetite for the use of both physical and digital mediums simultaneously.” Zosia Swidlicka, brand communications manager, Moleskine America

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Finding your balanceDespite the known risks, more and more organizations are putting their faith in cloud-based solutions. That’s especially true for internal communications. We are all relying on Skype or Citrix or WebEx (a Cisco company) for video conferencing, while tools such as Asana, Slack, Trello and Yammer aid workflows.

And although it makes sense to ensure your systems talk to one another, it’s important to bear in mind that those systems need to be the right ones. This should always be a combination of best-in-class solutions deployed and easily integrated with any other systems in the most productive manner.

The right system for a pharmaceutical company, to take one example, is one that not only goes deep into production and packaging processes but connects all parts of the supply chain, from factory to store shelf, where necessary integrating with third-party software and different cloud services.

Once the technological challenges are overcome, there’s also the cultural challenge of ensuring that team members stick with protocols so everyone is clear about what needs to be done and how. These tools are supposed to be aids to clear communications… not a means of putting additional tripwires in place.

Although it makes sense to ensure your systems talk to one another, it’s important to bear in mind that those systems need to be the right ones

Being prescriptive for the sake of it won’t make anyone happy. In reference to the examples above, does it make much of a difference if a colleague uses both Skype and FaceTime depending upon whom they’re talking with? Probably not. But does it matter if you want to host your archive via Dropbox and you’ve a rogue member of your brand communications team building a campaign and storing everything ‘off grid’? Yes, it does.

In an ideal world, how you decide which tools are used and what protocols need to be put in place should be a collaborative effort involving your legal, HR and IT people, as well as your wider workforce.

Want to know more?Talk to us at [email protected] or visit www.esko.com

But when it comes to the crunch, the main aims to bear in mind are relatively straightforward:

• Ensure you have the best foundational systems in place

• Aim for clarity of communications between them and your teams

• Provide proper training that is regularly reviewed• And remember, integration – not isolation – is key