Elly Yates-Roberts |
This article was originally published in the Summer 2018 issue of The Record.
Tell us about GainX. What inspired you to start the company?
I started GainX because I wanted to help big businesses drive greater returns on their transformation spend. I was in Canada when Blackberry imploded, and I saw the profound economic impact it had on a vibrant community. As the pace of technological change increases and the lifetime of larger companies decreases, there’s potential for that effect to multiply.
I decided to solve an almost impossible problem – to create an enterprise software platform that leverages advanced network design theory with machine learning, to see into every corner of the company in real time.
What key forces are driving change in
the market?
Organisations are facing three non-negotiable forces of change: The Age of the Network, digital disruption, and artificial intelligence (AI). Other forces, such as Brexit or regulatory changes like GDPR, have high costs today but they will resolve over time. The three non-negotiables will only accelerate, causing serious disruption to the global workforce and economy and these shifts will not only impact businesses but their customers as well. In this new economy, customers are going to have very different expectations than they have today and organisations must be more agile and responsive to meet those needs.
How can GainX help organisations succeed in the Age of the Network?
In the Age of the Network, businesses will be forced to do more with far less people – but much larger networks. To navigate this continuous cycle of change, it is imperative that they have visibility into their networks and can measure, see and assess how strategic and non-strategic information is flowing.
GainX helps organisations to both predict the success of their strategic transformation and manage it. For example, if you want to be more agile or customer-centric, our software can predict where that will not occur in your organisation due to your cultural and operational ‘clay layers’ as well as where you can accelerate adoption. This means you can proactively manage change and see returns on your transformation strategy, faster.
One reason why companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook are so successful is that they can both design and direct information flow across billions of people. GainX lets you do that inside your own organisation. The result is that you become far more agile and responsive to change.
GainX elevates and accelerates business transformation – whether it’s digital transformation, rolling out Office 365 and Microsoft Azure, doing a merger or acquisition, or restructuring your workforce. The result is millions in savings in just the first year.
What issues does digital disruption raise?
As humans, we can no longer simply sense or see the pace of change in the market to respond competitively. With quantum computing breakthroughs, it is expected that the speed of information flow will become 100 million times faster in the near future. Wow.
The complexity of this disruption makes prioritisation nearly impossible. What do you focus on today? Every company will have different answers depending on where they are and where they want to be.
Our platform uses AI to help executives take fast, but smarter decisions. GainX puts intuitive, responsive tools into the hands of executives and frontline managers, simplifying the complexity of prioritisation and decisions. Because GainX software can measure impact on operations, projects, talent, culture – executives can prioritise the best wins for the company without introducing hidden risks or costs.
What key challenges and opportunities does AI bring?
Although AI and machine learning will create many new jobs that are great for our economy, between 400 million to 800 million jobs are predicted to be displaced in just 12 years. Regardless of how you look at that – it is a tsunami of change that will impact our economy, our businesses and our customers. My concern is that the grocery bagger, the cab driver and the accounting clerk might not want a digital job – and if we do not find a way to help them matter in this next economy, the consequences will be dire.
This is just one of the important aspects of transformation that GainX helps organisations with – assuring people understand why they matter to your business and our economy. With advanced network design theory, AI and exceptional UX – everyone can easily see where they are in your network, and why it matters to them and to your business.
What makes your partnership with Microsoft such a success?
Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, is clear about having a growth mindset – and you see it in every aspect of his strategy. Today, Microsoft’s desire and ability to wrap itself around strategic partners is unprecedented. They are happy to work closely with both the customer and us, using their size and strength to remove any barriers customers may have leveraging the GainX platform in a joint approach to digital transformation. We help the organisation drive a greater return on its transformation spend by giving it the visibility and deep analytics on information flow, people and projects. Microsoft brings the most secure cloud platform in the market and world-class enterprise software – it is simply the best at what it does.
Together with Microsoft, we provide our customers the technology, strategic direction and the roadmap to move successfully into the New Economy. We’re now selling to tier one banks, for example, in as little as 45 days. I’ve worked in enterprise software and technology for nearly 20 years – this combination is the most powerful thing I’ve seen in business.