From smart working to “distributed work”: a reflection on the dynamics that are overwhelming us

In recent times, the social changes that are taking place are causing upheavals in the consolidated paradigms of the working organizational methods.
In this framework, the possibilities offered by collaboration tools are consolidating new trends in terms of working methods, also due to companies struggle to find resources and skills in some geographical areas as well as globalization, not only as market expansions but in terms of employment, too.

The above-mentioned conditions make possible, for several years now, to develop distributed work, or its “subset” which has recently become very famous with the term “smart working”.

Nevertheless, only the impact of an “epochal” phenomenon such as the Covid-19 outbreak, which lead to the recent lock-down on a global scale because of health reasons, makes possible to accelerate the process for adopting this working method. Indeed, in a much shorter time than what was conceivable even just 3 months ago, distributed work is turning from being possible, to temporarily desirable, till definitively indispensable in all those situations/industries where physical presence it is not necessary.

Based on this, we are getting used to decide day by day, circumstance by circumstance, how and where we want to carry out our daily work.
By the way, distributed work is not simply working remotely. It means organizing a solid mode for collaborative work where everyone is able to fully perform its functions while being organized in virtual working groups that collaborate from multiple areas and according to different operational modes.

Ultimately, this is an approach that goes beyond the concept of work organized in individual “silos” carried out remotely, in favour of a globally distributed context where collaboration among the corporate stakeholders becomes the pillar of the organization.
Thus, the technology available to companies becomes the means, the enabling tool, to be able to achieve this paradigm.

In conclusion, the key to win this challenge for the future, which has now become present, and be able to effectively respond to the change is embracing innovation with conviction and determination. We don’t have to be scared about the events we are experiencing. We have to adopt a positive vision and turn adversity into an opportunity to re-think about the organization: it is important to prioritize the implementation of Digital Transformation programs and start modelling companies and organizations on business processes relying on adequate infrastructures capable of enabling, promoting, supporting and making persistent (= resilient) this transformation, that must be able to be implemented in a gradual and scalable way.

“This is where solutions like RuleDesigner come in” affirms Gianfranco Biguzzi, CEO of the company.

“RuleDesigner is, for over a decade, entirely web-based and, therefore, operating on common browsers. Its peculiarity is that of bringing together in the application effective tools for the execution of relationship activities and the traceability of asset-related information with tools to support collaborative work in a simple and distributed way.

In detail, we can say that RuleDesigner is an enterprise collaborative platform that enable, promote and support social collaboration amongst the company teams in order to make business processes in the domain of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Business Process Management (BPM) efficient.

Before the lockdown, RuleDesigner could appear almost a “luxury”, an advanced product that companies could grant themselves guided by virtuous reasons rather than by real necessity: actually, they were driven by vision, by the need to keep things in perspective, by advanced digitalization. And they have been rewarded. As a matter of fact, with RuleDesigner they were able to continue their work, almost without impact, even during the coronavirus emergency when people had to suddenly convert to work from home.

Organizations that use RuleDesigner are ready to consolidate this distributed working method, making it an integral part of their corporate organization and not a temporary remedy for an emergency.

On the other hand, organizations that remained tied to legacy systems or that rely on common client / server type applications, very common in the PDM and PLM area for example, suffered severe limitations in the operations and productivity of people during this current times”.