November Edition 2020

31 » » Scalable workforce. With salaries being one of the larger ‘fixed’ costs for a firm, many will be asking the question as to whether it is possible to deliver the same service with a smaller permanent workforce. This would mean access to a pool of flexible, qualified resources who could be employed on a contract basis to augment permanent teams. A number of these principles are technical in nature and are likely to accelerate themove fromon-premises tocloudsolutions.As thesesolutions are already mature and functional the simple move to a cloud platform is unlikely to directly impact the experience the client receives. Some of the other principles, however, do provide some interesting challenges. Relationships and perception Professional services businesses have always leveraged the relationship as the key mechanism for obtaining business, particularly when providing services to an organisation. The aim is to identify the contact, develop the relationship, demonstrate credibility, engender trust and, as a result, undertake work. Following this, the same process is used to expand both the range of servicesprovidedandthefrequencyofengagement.Whatdoes relationship development look like in a world where personal contact cannot take place in quite the same way as it used to? Having got used to working remotely and through video chat it’s clear existing relationships can be maintained effectively this way. Where it is necessary to form a new relationship, though, it gets trickier. Without the sort of understanding that develops through personal interaction, such calls tend to focus much more on the business reason for the meeting than the subtext. Again, while this superficially sounds like a good thing, it is the non-verbal communication that makes people human and the subtext that helps build the relationship. While the future will be different from the current situation, it’s unlikely to go back to being the same as the past given the likely responses already mentioned. With flexibility being the key driver for firms in the future, that is having the ability to support everyone in the office five days a week or everyone out of the office for five days a week, it is probable that individuals will be able to pick a balance that works for them. There will, therefore, be