This article was co-authored by [Martin Sokolowski](https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-sokolowski-5018a51a), Vice President, European sales and [Stuart Fry](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartf1), Chief Revenue Officer at Halian Innovation and technology can be a source of anxiety. For years, many have argued that collecting data and using technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) removes the human heart from a process, replacing intuition and instinct with unfeeling information and cold, hard numbers. We believe that, when gathered and leveraged in the right way, it actually does the exact opposite, empowering every community, business and individual to reach their full potential. While it’s true that tapping into the true power of data allows an organisation to make the most of its resources, the ultimate goal of these technologies should be to drive passion, happiness and fulfilment in human beings. It can be as simple as giving people the kind of interview experience most likely to resonate with them, or as deeply meaningful as helping us identify those most at risk of being admitted to the ICU after experiencing COVID-19 symptoms – more on that to come...
Why is this the moment for digital transformation?
Whilst the health crisis and its immediate economic damage to business activity will eventually pass, it has highlighted the need for almost all organisations to commit to digital transformation to remain relevant in an ever-changing world. It has also shown us how scarce resources can be used to effectively, collaboratively, and simultaneously build an agile and motivated workforce for the coming decades. This is what we call the Future of Work - a recognised term that, in part, denotes the changes wrought through the growing impact of technology on work, the workplace and the workforce, from the digital skills gap to the move to automation and the acceleration of underpinning tech. Against this rapidly shifting landscape, we face many of the same challenges as our clients. Over the past year, we have started to implement our own programme of renewal based on artificial intelligence, data analytics and flexible staffing models to take advantage of the world-changing opportunities ahead.
Your “Partner in Possibility”
Our purpose is to help businesses and people fulfil their potential in the digital age. This is what we mean when we talk of being your “Partner in Possibility”. Our rebrand has seen us transform many manual processes and make the leap to an agile, data-driven company, partnering with leading-edge technology providers to deliver transformative solutions to our clients. Focusing on high-growth areas, we find the best talent for our clients and deliver services to help solve complex world challenges. We aim to work swiftly and at scale, with a high degree of collaboration and agility. Tapping into wider global trends, we offer: - Smart Services (IT outsourcing & managed service teams under SLAs) - Tech Talent Services (IT consulting & talent acquisition services) - Search Services (IT & related domains of Finance & MedTech for direct hiring) The beauty of our new model is that it can be customised to the needs of our clients with laser precision. To enable this, we’re digitising everything, from our marketing campaigns to our contactless e-business cards. Our newly implemented and AI-driven CRM has simplified our front office activities and we are rolling out new HR and Finance systems that continue to optimise and integrate our business. Our ultimate aim is to create collaborative eco-systems between Halian, our clients and our partners that enable new ways of working and crystallises the potential benefits of digital transformation. We haven’t always been a data-driven business. Halian was founded by Jon Halpenny and our current CEO Levon Antonian back in 1996 – that’s where the name Halian comes from! We went from hiring IT contractors, to implementing important technological infrastructure relating to the Y2K and dot.com era. Using our joint staffing business and tech sales experience we nailed down our own unique business model. We were ableto build on our early success in the UK to expand throughout Europe and eventually, the Middle East, which revealed itself to be a completely untapped market just after the financial crisis in 2009. Today our Middle East business is 350-strong, covering the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This year we are celebrating our 25-year anniversary, a worthy milestone in an industry that is in constant flux. So, what does success look like to us and our clients now?
What does our rebrand mean for our clients and the people they work with?
Data is one of the most incredible tools we have at our disposal – and yet, it remains astonishingly underutilised. We all know that collecting the data is the easy part; it’s extrapolating theuseful insights from that data that can be challenging. With a staggering amount of new information flowing in all the time, this task can seem overwhelming - leading to what we call “analysis paralysis”. We don’t know how to do it right, and so we stay still and do nothing. This is the area we have been focused on - using our unique experience, proprietary methodology and our AI-based sourcing platform to create tools, platforms and dashboards for our clients across continents to help them understand what their data is telling them - and, most importantly, take action based on what they have learned. We believe we’re now approaching a point where the implications of this are incredibly exciting. A good example of this, we recently signed a deal with a venture capital firm to support their work with thirty start-ups, which they are looking to expand to more than fifty. We have created a bespoke front-end dashboard for them that monitors key metrics on all the companies in terms of budgeted headcount, open positions, time to hire, average salaries, candidate background, and so on. Elsewhere, we are in a long-term partnership with a major European Institution providing smart services. This includes a recent successful migration of their data centre infrastructure into a private cloud solution. This software-defined data centre (SDDC) approach has dramatically increased operational resilience and will provide an agile platform for further transformative changes. We are not reporting for the sake of it. Whatever their vertical, having access to this data shows our clients where they are performing well, and where there is room for improvement - benefits that can be passed onto people on every stratum of the business.
Data-led, human-centric
The implications of this human-centric approach to data are staggering. What we’ve discovered is that you can fine-tune the delivery of data to be hugely topical. A particularly purposeful example of this, we recently partnered with a large healthcare organisation to create a three-month anonymised data project, revealing the demographics most likely to be admitted to the ICU after experiencing Covid symptoms. The impact of this? Staff can know exactly who is likely to need the most urgent care and attention as soon as they turn up at the hospital, saving resources – and potentially lives. What could be a more human benefit of using data than that? Advanced data and smart services are the future of business – and the world at large. We hope that Halian is going to be at the forefront of collecting data to benefit humans, using the data knowledge and the skillsets that we’ve got internally to be able to deliver this kind of value to our customers. Visit the [Talent Voices page](https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/talent-voices/articles#topic/country) for more Talent Voices Articles, or comment in [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-work-embracing-advanced-data-smart-services-power-stuart-fry) with the hashtag #TalentVoices
