We're Building a Human-Centered Enterprise — Here's Why It Matters

Successful culture change and digital transformation requires a people-first framework

Laurel Frazier
May 7th, 2021
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The ever-increasing complexity of our cloud infrastructure is a catalyst for rapid digital transformation efforts across industries. According to the International Data Corporation, “in 2022 organizations are projected to spend nearly $2 trillion on digital transformation.” The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated these efforts, with our recent study sharing that 93.2% of organizations report an increase in digital transformation initiatives since the pandemic began.

Digital transformation, of course, will never be a “one and done” effort. Rather, change will happen continuously as the landscape progresses. Automating core processes and building out the technology infrastructure is only one part of the endeavor. It is imperative that organizations plan for how to make adoption successful company-wide. This must include developing a culture that not only accepts constant change as an indefinite reality but also embraces innovation.

At Transposit we believe that the human operator is an inextricable element of a working system. Each enterprise can be viewed as a system, working in concert to create value. Therefore, true organizational evolution won’t be possible without the ongoing efforts of individuals. Not understanding how an enterprise’s practices, processes, and tools contribute to company culture and human work will likely ensure any large-scale transformation efforts will come up short.

Since IT and operations teams typically touch all areas of an enterprise, the office of the CIO and/or CTO holds a critical role in a company’s digital transformation efforts. They are ideal candidates to serve as change agents within an organization at large. To be successful, they must champion becoming a human-centered enterprise as a part of their impetus. Human-centered organizations recognize that technology itself doesn’t drive change, but it serves as a tool which enables and empowers people to do so.

We’ve identified three key attributes that organizations should have in order to maintain a human-centered approach to driving innovation and creating a culture adaptable to change. These attributes also serve as our own north-star — guiding Transposit as we grow and map out our vision for what’s to come.

1) Be Purpose-driven

According to a survey by EY, “Purpose giv[es] companies the agility to innovate in times of disruption and the ability to drive transformational change. In fact, 73% of executives agree that having a well-integrated purpose helps their company navigate today’s turbulent environment.” They define purpose as “a human-centered, socially engaged conception of purpose that seeks to create value for a broad set of stakeholders” and use a capital P to distinguish it from the word’s usage more broadly.

These organizations ensure their business goals, strategy, and vision all align to a Purpose. Their technology, in turn, should aid in making that Purpose a reality. This makes it easy to get buy-in on transformation initiatives company-wide, because they are in-line with the vision already championed by its ranks and its customers. Additionally, it provides both a path and guardrails for navigating the competitive landscape, ensuring short-term profit goals don’t hinder retaining engaged employees or progressing toward their long-term vision.

Our Purpose at Transposit is to build technology that makes life better for business leaders, engineers, and the people who depend on their services and expertise.

2) Build for people, not in spite of them

Human-centered enterprises prioritize building and implementing technology stacks whose core function is in support of human needs. Technology can serve humans in two ways — first, it can reduce toil and increase agility, thereby optimizing human workstreams. This may manifest through the automation of highly repetitive or menial tasks, or simply by streamlining processes, both of which free up time for higher-value undertakings. Alternatively, technology can fuel creativity, collaboration, and innovation, through actively mitigating and/or circumventing the obstacles that typically hinder these efforts. In other words, technology can support humans through the completion of those higher-value operations.

Successful digital transformation employs tools that do at least one, if not both, of these things, which ensures buy-in, adoption, and ultimately, a boost in the bottom line.

At Transposit, we believe in using technology to solve human problems. In the words of our CEO Divanny Lamas, “our platform increases application uptime and improves quality of life for engineers by leveraging human-in-the-loop automation to bring order and efficiency to incident response, troubleshooting, and day-to-day operations. Human judgement is used at key decision points during actions and processes to allow machines to be able to do what they do best: automate.”

3) Be inclusion-oriented

There is countless research documenting the benefits of inclusive, equitable, and diverse teams and workplaces, including its connection to innovation and to financial success. In addition to cultivating an inclusive culture, human-centered organizations will recognize that technology, when inclusive, is a key component to successful digital transformation.

Inclusive technology can serve multiple roles in an enterprise:

  • First, it supports growth and professional development by ensuring that their tools provide all employees the opportunity to learn, upskill, and succeed alongside the business.
  • Second, as an equalizer, by limiting institutional knowledge silos, closing gaps in ability, and encouraging more flexible ways of working that support work-life balance and more diverse recruitment pipelines.
  • Third, the reduction of human bias — greater access to data can inform decision-making and resource allocation in addition to providing better ways to measure merit and value.
  • Lastly, inclusive technology must also be user-friendly, which will aid in the ramp-up of digital transformation efforts.

Transposit is proud to be a women-led organization that is dedicated to supporting and empowering diversity within STEM fields and the broader technology industry. Furthermore, because humans sit at the center of everything we do, we approach our work with a balance of empathy and pragmatism. Each of our solutions is rooted in the aspects of inclusive technology outlined above, from supporting both low-code and no-code capabilities to allow for action and extensibility at various skill levels, to limiting institutional knowledge through automatic timelines and ticket updates, to providing greater access to human data for stakeholders making key business decisions.

We’re building a human-centered enterprise because we believe that the future of digital transformation is predicated upon people being the priority. Our goal is to support organizations as they navigate their digital transformation journey without losing sight of the humans that will make it all happen.

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