Working from home has taught us many things - and one of the big ones is just how important our ordinary human interactions have been in masking gaping holes in everyday work processes.

In the familiar office scenario, if anyone was worried about any aspect of process, they were able to have a quick conversation about it – at the photocopier, over a coffee or by setting up a quick meeting to sort the problem through. And that quick chat would remove the lack of process in question. Thus, while the processes might have only ever been 60% good, it didn’t really matter, because the other 40% could – and was – easily fixed through human dialogue.

But then came the lockdown, and suddenly everyone was remote. Straightaway, the ability to fix those problems in that human interactive way disappeared. People could no longer sort issues by looking over each other’s shoulders and agreeing quick tweaks to spreadsheets. The personal interaction was gone, and so the process-related problems around the use of personal productivity tools, Excel and the like, were blatantly exposed.

Personal productivity tools are, by their very nature, personal. So they can only work when the individuals who own them are in a position to explain them to others. And in today’s work environment, where governance is the absolute key, they contain no process to govern.

Lockdown has brought about a changed mindset and a greater willingness to fix process issues properly, instead of just sticking plasters on problems and sending them out as spreadsheets. The move from personal productivity tools on individual desks to enterprise-wide solutions promises enormously renewed capability for organisations at a time when they are so desperately needed.

When company-wide workflows break down cosy inter-departmental walls and replace them with a new visibility, transparency and simplicity of process, they cannot help but deliver the upsurge to profit margins that will be the absolute lifeblood of companies in our post-Covid19 world.

Prodigy, developed by Idea Group for the financial services industry, is one such enterprise-class solution.

This is a complete product lifecycle governance tool providing organisation-wide processes and controls - and a defined methodology to help ensure organisations meet all of their regulatory requirements. You can read more about Prodigy here: https://www.prodigyproduct.com