Hi CEO: Jennie Rassool, Bits Data
Our 1,350 members range from small start-ups with few employees to large multinational companies with thousands of employees around the world. Under the banner "Hello CEO", we gather their views on the past year, their thoughts on the future, but also lessons and experiences from a time unlike any other. Jennie Rassool is the CEO of Bits Data in Södertälje.
How would you sum up the year of the pandemic from your organization's perspective?
- We have done well. Back in March 2020, we set out principles for managing our way of working to guide and help the organization make quick decisions, with the first priority being to safeguard the health of both us and our customers. We moved away from strategic decisions to look at what we could help customers with here and now. We reduced our own costs as much as possible and reprioritized our deliveries, while at the same time announcing that we were aiming for a 0 result and discounting costs as much as we could for IT support to our customers for one quarter.
- We had to change the organization, which always had a traditional view/culture regarding working hours, by moving the workplace out and home. As an IT company, we had the technology for working from home, but the management approach needed to be changed via daily meetings to quickly get the business in order. A crisis group with safety representatives and staff representatives was set up and met daily at first to be able to constantly adapt things to the needs that arose and have the opportunity to intercept people who were not feeling well. Among other things, we chose to keep the office open to a limited number of people because everyone has different circumstances when it comes to working from home and some people felt better being able to work in the office.
How have your customers and owners experienced your transition?
- It senses the change that is underway. We don't know if the pandemic has helped us or not because it has been harder to reach out to customers, but they sense that we are a company on the cusp of change and are more adaptable even if we have some way to go. Before the pandemic, our customers were not so interested in digital meetings and trainings, but now they have had to adapt and our digital trainings have gotten a big boost in terms of participation. We regularly hold customer conferences and participation is usually 100-120 customers, but this year's conference was completely digital and we stopped counting when the number of visitors passed 500.
What lessons have you learned and what will you take away?
- We as a company and the IT services we provide need to become more adaptable, the portfolio needs to be renewed. The other important part to work on is collaboration and strengthening the relationship with our contractual partners. If we are to be nimble, we do not have time for long contract negotiations. At the same time, cars are being bought online to a greater extent and this places higher demands on dealers to move quickly. Looking inwards in the organization, we have learned that the place where the work is done is not the most important thing, but it is the type of activity. Some activities actually work better remotely. This is where we will now try to find other ways and figure out when it is appropriate to be in the office and when it is better to work from home to balance work and life.
- An interesting insight is that our digital meetings, both in the organization and with customers, are more democratic. You have to take turns, you can't talk at each other in the same way, which contributes to a more equal environment when everyone can take the same place they deserve in a meeting.
- We are a male-dominated company and it is a male-dominated industry, so we are working on the gender equality plan based on a number of activities. But the work also involves reviewing how much we invest in training among the older people in the company for an even distribution of knowledge. And when recruiting, we work from a diversity perspective and not just gender.
We have started to work on a "feedback culture". In a leadership role, it has been really important to give and take feedback especially now that we don't meet in the same way, and these meetings need to happen often. It helps to lower the barrier for different issues and can make it easier to call up a person you may not have had much contact with before.
Looking ahead, how do you see the immediate future?
- Digitalization is driving our industry tremendously. We need to be more reactive instead of proactive, because what is relevant today is not relevant tomorrow, which creates a paradox because we provide an ERP system. And a business system is characterized by stability where it must not go fast. But if we have a good base plate and do not buy large ready-made packages but instead create flexibility, we can combine the two worlds with innovative solutions.