Member Article

Bedroom to Boardroom Technology

Mick Keeble is head of managed services at Perfect Image – a North East-based IT services consultancy. Here he talks about millennials in the work place, and how what was once bedroom tech has become technology of the boardroom.

Millennials. It’s a word that’s branded around in marketing an awful lot at the moment. Trendy 20-something-year-olds leaving university and taking their first step on the career ladder, all with a mobile phone in their pocket, a laptop under their arm and a tablet in their hand.

But while this demographic maybe a marketer’s dream – tech-savvy, switched on and with a need to have the very latest gadget on their person – this group of people will soon be making waves in the boardroom, which in turn will have a big impact on business.

When referring to millennials, researchers and commentators use birth years ranging from the early 1980s through to the early 2000s. So today, this group of people are aged somewhere between their mid-thirties and approaching their early twenties. This cohort has grown up having IT lessons at school, games consoles to play, email and instant messaging to stay connect with friends. They’ve used services like MSN messenger, MySpace and DropBox to create and share data – whether its music, photos or even school assignments.

The basics of this technology – connectivity, shareability and flexibility – was once the technology of the bedroom; millennials were using these services and platforms in their own home, for their own personal use. Now, however, as this demographic makes its way into the work place, the same basics of technology is being expected in the boardroom.

Think about it – we’re creatures of habit. It’s human nature to revert to type, to the things that we know and are comfortable with. So if 20-something-year-olds are used to using cloud computing at home, it’s only natural they’ll expect to be able to use it in the workplace. Of course, there are huge differences between the likes of at-home tech like DropBox compared to the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS), but the principles are still the same.

Often cloud computing is something that scares more mature senior business leaders and decision makers; they feel like they need to be able to physically touch the server, see the cables and watch the lights flashing to know that their IT systems are working. At the moment, these people have an option: to either move with the times and the technological developments, that no doubt bring about real business benefits, or stick with what they know (remember that thing about reverting to type?) and keep their tech locked up in the bricks and mortar of the data centre.

However, over time, what seems like these new and sometimes scary technological developments will no longer be an option, they’ll be the go-to solution – the seniors of tomorrow will need no convincing about the business benefits these technologies can bring. As these people work their way through the business and up the career ladder into positions of leadership and decision making, they’ll be expecting to see developments of the tech they once used in the bedroom as an integral part of the boardroom.

To find out more about how Perfect Image can help your business implement and integrate technologies for the future, visit: http://www.perfect-image.co.uk/

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Perfect Image .