I’ll never forget Tangier. The centuries-old melting pot looks like an Impressionist masterpiece — white-washed buildings, deep blue sky, vibrant orange tangerines, and turquoise ocean waters as far as the eye can see. The town is a mix of the unique cultures of more than 30 diverse nationalities, so viewpoints in this north African city are as varied as the residents themselves. When it comes to things that really matter, even this most unlikely assemblage of stakeholders typically manages to reach consensus.

Google and Accenture also know all about managing communities of experts: executive sponsors, IT subject matter leaders, consultants and suppliers. In a recent survey, the idea was to determine what’s important to global business leaders implementing digital technology. The two technology giants amassed survey data from more than 300 technology decision-makers, perspectives of more than 50 IT Council members, and the latest published research from at least 10 different external reports. The companies’ survey read-out report — the group’s consensus as to what is important — is scheduled to be distributed in advance of the Modern Computing IT Council’s MCA launch announcement in September 2021.

A Decade of Effort Followed by a Year of Upheaval

While technologists had previously worked for more than a decade to advance the adoption of digitization, automation, globalization, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Google and Accenture survey revealed just how quickly the global coronavirus pandemic pushed even more changes. The technology world compressed the time frame and watched a much different landscape emerge. Remote work increased by 173 percent. The adoption and implementation of digital communication and collaboration tools accelerated in 85 percent of businesses. Organizations invested nearly 3x more in new cloud technology that supports digital workspaces, and 70 percent of businesses planned to increase this type of spending in the near future. Research revealed that 55 percent of all workers prefer remote work at least three days per work. But that’s only the beginning.

The Importance of Infrastructure and Culture

Survey data uncovered the fact that today’s discussion needs to be about implementing the right infrastructure — an integrated backbone of digital workspace technology from one supplier. The conversation should be about choosing product offerings that meet your business’s needs, deliver a great employee experience, make IT management seamless for technologists, and accommodate industry mandates. Implementing the right infrastructure means working with customer IT teams and tech partners to constantly evolve digital infrastructure that evolves with the needs of both IT professionals and users. New digital solutions must address the challenges that business disruptions, increasingly more sophisticated security threats, industry mandates and market evolution bring.

The next major change to be made is a cultural one. Suppliers that are long time purveyors of digital solutions understand that unified solutions (meaning all the component parts are available from one vendor) that have been proven in thousands of successful global deployments stand the best chance of surviving the rigors of changing technology and the changing needs for work tools that discerning employees demand. Having the right infrastructure is only way to ensure meeting both technology and cultural needs.

The third essential piece of the puzzle is the emergence of hybrid and remote work models. Not all employees work in the same way. Similarly, not all businesses operate in the same way. Hybrid work models give business leaders the option of offering workers a choice in where, when, and how they work. These choices in work styles give the members of the community the personal and cultural freedom they need to do their best work and contribute most efficiently to the greater good of the business.

Click here to see the survey read-out.