Jason Boyd: 0:02
Employees are expecting a lot, let’s face it. They’re expecting the technology to work. They want it to be as good, if not better, than what they have at home. And those expectations are harder and harder to keep a hold of every day.
Michael van Rooyen: 0:14
Today I have the pleasure in interviewing Jason Boyd, who is the Regional Sales Leader of ANZ for AppSpace, and we’re going to be talking all things around workplace experience and all things that AppSpace does, as well as some of the challenges that that industry faces. Jason, welcome. Hello, michael, thanks for joining me today. Before we get started, do you mind starting with a bit of your background and what led you to your current role as the regional sales leader of AppSpace for ANZ.
Jason Boyd: 0:43
Yeah sure, I was brought into AppSpace from a good friend of mine, actually somebody that you may know as well bloke by the name of Greg Yellis the Mist, mr Mist. So he was actually given the opportunity to have a look at this and he thought it was the right opportunity for me. I was currently at Telstra at the time and had been there for 11 years, and it was probably already time for a bit of a change. And I initially looked at it and thought, no, this isn’t really. I don’t really understand this. You know I’ve gone from selling all these things with Intel Studio to focusing on. You know why would I just go and sell digital signage? And then, when I actually started looking at the opportunity, I realized it was so much more.
Michael van Rooyen: 1:15
Wow, wow. Okay, and for people who might be listening or not familiar with AppSpace, do you mind just covering at a high level AppSpace’s overview? You know what their mission is and vision, and particularly in context to the workplace and the experience in the workplace.
Jason Boyd: 1:30
Sure. So AppSpace was founded in 2002. My current head office is out of Tampa in Florida. I was originally out of Texas and the heritage is digital signage and that really is where our heritage was. We’ve got 3,000 odd customers. We have about 150 plus of the Fortune 500. We have a fantastic list of customers here within Australia and really it was COVID that helped us sort of expand and explore other opportunities. One of our customers, linkedin, actually had all of their workers at home and they come to AppSpace and said we want a platform to be able to bring their 12,000 staff back into the office and we had a product in the market for them about three or four months later and since then we have now millions of customers on there every day. Really, our vision is love where you work and that really comes through in everything that we do. We’re very customer centric, really understand what the customer needs and enable our platform to give them the innovation that they’re looking for.
Michael van Rooyen: 2:24
Right, right, it sounds counterintuitive, but when you started talking about COVID I thought, oh, that could be a bit of a problem for the company, right, because you’re very digital signage focused, and that’s a really good point, right? How do we bring that experience to the office and make it a hub for creativity, design? So, just from a portfolio point of view, and certainly not to make it too marketing focused, you know the digital signage where you start off, and I even think when I was dealing in the digital signage space, you guys acquired or absorbed all the Cisco stuff. Cisco had their own platform. From memory I may have misled that you were closely with Cisco in their portfolio.
Jason Boyd: 2:57
We did back in the day. Yeah, it was called Nexus On Demand and a lot of that was primarily Cisco focused. Yeah, without making this too much of a sales pitch, we are the only unified workplace experience platform in the market, right? And what that actually means is we bring the workforce management side and the workforce communications together in one tool, which is our employee engagement app. So it’s the place that users go and book a space like a desk or a meeting room, or we have visitor management as a module, as well as reservation services. So I think things like catering. But where we’re starkly different is that digital media that’s being shown to people that might only be in the office two days a week. We go and deliver that into the employee engagement app, whether it’s their phone, the PC or enterprise messaging tool.
Michael van Rooyen: 3:39
Okay. So if I think about that from a use case point of view, rather than having to have the employee at the office to see that special message about an event or a promotion, whether the customer be there now can get that experience on their workspace app or the app that they’re using to engage with the business away from the office.
Jason Boyd: 3:56
Absolutely. People get to consume the messaging the way that they see fit.
Michael van Rooyen: 4:00
That’s really cool because we used to rely on that to be the kind of the wallboard, the digital signage promotions. In the time I’d looked at a few voice systems. There was always the contact centers that could quite a bit of that signage about promotions and ongoing. But that’s clever to be able to do it from anywhere. So really pushing that out to wherever people are to be able to have that engagement with the business.
Jason Boyd: 4:19
We have a lot of customers that have a strong frontline worker number. We have a strong frontline worker number. We have a lot of people that have a hybrid work strategy. So how do we get that important messaging to them wherever they are?
Michael van Rooyen: 4:30
Right and in the customers you’re engaging with. What are they coming? The most pressing challenges they have about the modern workplace today?
Jason Boyd: 4:35
Yeah, it’s a great question and there’s so many different questions that are posed off that. Operationally, how do we get contact with people? You know the human connection, ultimately, is really important. We know that face-to-face and being in the office is great for productivity, it’s great for personal morale. Feeling like they’re part of something bigger is really quite important.
Jason Boyd: 4:55
We have a strong customer concern around digital assets and a lot of those being wasted by not being utilized enough. It’s really important for us to understand that the application needs to add enough value back to the users, otherwise they simply won’t use it. We probably hear this term every day earn the commute. We’ve got a lot of customers that have workspaces that either are not fit for purpose based on the changing mechanisms of the workplace, or there’s just simply not enough people coming in. Then we also have a couple of customers that are on the absolute opposite end and they are really pushing our platform because of the number of transactions that are hitting our system every day, because there are so many people coming into the office or there are more people than desks.
Michael van Rooyen: 5:34
Right. Right, if we just look at their workspace, how it’s changed as well and this may have been happening a little bit pre-COVID was people were normally allocated a desk and they set up for themselves Hot desks has become the key thing here, right. So efficiencies, less floor space, common workplaces that’s why you need the kind of the tools to drive that book a room, book a desk to sit at, and we always know that one of the challenges, no matter where I’ve worked customers, government and even our own space, you know, getting a meeting room sometimes is a real challenge. We see this even with Wi-Fi. Right, there was no investment in Wi-Fi. Now everyone expects the same sort of connectivity mechanisms they had at home from the NBN upgrades and working at home.
Jason Boyd: 6:12
right, there’s a number of problems from an employee perspective that we see. A they used to have their own desk with their photos of their family and their dog. They might’ve been lucky enough to be close enough to a bar fridge and now they’ve lost that. They’re coming into what’s seen as a cold cubicle, potentially if the space isn’t worked out properly for them. The other problem is a lot of our employers are sort of mandating that their employees need to get back into the office a couple of days a week If the technology isn’t there to enable them to A guarantee their spot when they’re coming in or, b know where they’re sitting and know who they’re sitting with.
Michael van Rooyen: 6:48
That can also lead to quite a large friction with them. Yeah right, what’s the current state of the workplace technology market and what are the most significant trends that you’re observing from your engagement with customers, your partner community and, obviously, your own business globally?
Jason Boyd: 6:57
There’s a number of things there. I think we’re really starting to see a shift to proper consulting early up. So if there are businesses moving, it’s a great opportunity to understand so those meeting rooms might be used. They might have a very high capacity every day, but they might only have three people in a 10-person meeting room. So being able to understand how those meeting rooms are being utilized, how the spaces are being used, how does collaboration zones versus private space work, understanding the dynamic of the workplace so they can build effectively for the future that’s really one of the things that we’re seeing is a really big trend. There’s such a high number of businesses that are moving in the next 36 months. It’s really important to have those results from the consultants, being able to have the analytics from platforms that give real-time data rather than just hearsay.
Michael van Rooyen: 7:47
Yeah, and you mentioned companies moving. Is that because lease renewals or new fit-outs? What do you mean?
Jason Boyd: 7:52
Definitely it’s renewals. So we’re seeing that a lot of our customers are going from larger spaces in, say, a, b or an A-minus style sort of grouping into A’s to A-pluses. So they’re going into more expensive areas within the greater CBDs but they’re obviously a lot more expensive. So they’re trying to get more bang for buck but they’re trying to have an exciting workplace that is quite inclusive, might have subsidised baristas. It’s got a beautiful outlook. So location, location, location is as alive and well today as it ever was.
Michael van Rooyen: 8:24
Right, fair enough. Fair enough, and it would be fair to say that the pandemic really accelerated many of those changes you know. Off the back of that, what are the kind of other lasting impacts that you’ve seen on workplace technology and employee expectations?
Jason Boyd: 8:39
Employees are expecting a lot, let’s face it. They’re expecting the technology to work. They want it to be as good, if not better, than what they have at home. And those expectations are harder and harder to keep a hold of every day. The security implementation side of things as well making sure that people can get in securely, secure access to things is quite important. With our platform, we enable a bunch of ecosystem partners, third-party vendors effectively to enable the workflows that the employer wants, but, on the flip side, making it as easy for the employee to be able to get from A to B as possible.
Michael van Rooyen: 9:12
Yeah, fair enough, off the back of that, jason. Why is enhancing the employee experience you just talked about? Employee expectations are so high. Why is it more critical now than ever, and what strategies do you think are the most effective in achieving this? And maybe, how does AppSpace help in that area?
Jason Boyd: 9:29
So we’re more disconnected now in a very connected world. So from our perspective, the human connection is everything that drives what we do. So the ability to be able to get information that people actually want they want to feel connected to the workplace even if they aren’t there the ability to be able to get more eyeballs onto our platform to that information, that important messaging that either the corporate or the local sites are creating, is really important. People want to feel connected and if they are going to be working from home be it for family reasons or geographically they’re too far away from the office to be in there every day. They still want to feel like they’re a part of something. So we at AppSpace sort of look at it from I love the mantra of the front desk to the front line. So the messaging should be the same for one and one for all.
Michael van Rooyen: 10:15
Just thinking about that a bit further. You know we have a population that was working in offices that we’re used to, as you said earlier, like you, you know photo of the family and the dog, etc. If I think about covid making people work at home and then I think about the new generation coming to the workforce, that kind of missed that period, do you see customers struggling with that, even trying to get the new generation to come to the office because they like being single, they like being connected but not actually interacting with people? Are you seeing that the ability to attract them to the office is actually a different mindset, because people perceive that the new generation don’t want to engage. They kind of want to be behind a screen and at home potentially. But maybe you see a different lens on that from the customers you engage with.
Jason Boyd: 10:56
I wish I did A lot of customers say to us that the newer generation would. If they do come into the office, they will have meetings at their desk rather than going and utilizing that expensive meeting room space that they should be. So, generationally, we’re seeing that they definitely still want to be connected, but they want to be with their direct cohort, so they are using platforms like ourselves to ensure that the employee experience for them is with their closest friends or the people that they want to connect with, which actually, ultimately, is quite important anyway.
Michael van Rooyen: 11:27
Right, yeah, fair enough. Moving forward, then, what are the technological innovations you believe will have the biggest and most significant impact on the future of work, and why?
Jason Boyd: 11:37
So I know you’re probably sick of hearing it right, it’s a catch cry that everybody has these days, but I think AI for us is definitely and for a lot of similar businesses is going to be really important. The ability to automate trying to find a meeting room or being able to have a car park or a locker or some of these other tools that people need when they’re getting into the office the ability to have that automated and make it as frictionless as possible is certainly one of those transformational things that we’re seeing a fair bit of. There’s a lot of general automation innovation around some of the ecosystem vendors that we have as well that really enable that end-to-end requirement for a customer. So it’s really. Appspace may be seen as one part of the overall solution. It’s certainly not the end-to-end offering.
Michael van Rooyen: 12:23
Yeah, right, if I think about that, you touched on a really good point, which is making it frictionless, right? Because the reason you make more excuses for people to not come in that’s what you’re trying to point on there, right Is that if people have a bad experience, they can never get a meeting room. I can’t find a locker. It just obviously knows what room you’re in what room you booked, all that sort of stuff. What are you guys doing and thinking about and what are organizations’ concerns around security and privacy of the employees and data in that space?
Jason Boyd: 12:55
Yeah, that’s critically important to a lot of customers. You know we have a lot of the large enterprise, government and educational customers here within Australia and you know security and cyber concerns are paramount to everything that they do. We have technology in the background that enables that safe passage for customers into our platform, which is really quite important the ability to cut services that, for whatever reason, if we’re connected to a building management or if we’re connected to Wi-Fi or if we’re connected to other sensors, if there is any degradation in that service, it’s important for us to be able to be aware of that as well and be able to cut and reenact services where possible.
Michael van Rooyen: 13:34
Right, right, okay, so you want to be able to protect them. Safety also make sure that the data is secure. You know and treat them so that people can’t eavesdrop on them, know their movements, that the mechanisms are in place there.
Jason Boyd: 13:46
Absolutely. We restrict the personal data that we save, as an example, and we also have a number of stringent processes in place that are agreed with the customer around what data that we do retain and the reasons why we do that that we do retain and the reasons why we do that. And there are different platforms that we allow for, which enables customers with different risk appetites to select one product over another.
Michael van Rooyen: 14:08
Yeah, fair enough, and that is really becoming data-driven and you did touch on this a bit earlier in the discussion around being able to use that data effectively. What’s the utilisation look like, what are the movements? And then I guess, if you overlay that with building data security data, you really can come up with this great digital footprint on the utilisation. And then your point about AI is going to probably just accelerate even more. Right To be very efficient in usage user patterns and get the best for the business out of the facilities. Exactly right.
Jason Boyd: 14:38
I couldn’t have said it better. A lot of that data is also given back to the customer to be able to utilize and manipulate the way that they want. Every interaction with our system is handled and enabled for the customer to be able to download and be able to manipulate the way that they want. Data is king, let’s face it. So without the information it just becomes hearsay. It becomes a manager walking around saying there’s not enough people into another manager saying there’s too many people in being able to understand the effects of what Mondays and Fridays have and be able to change the leadership perspective around. Say, for example, if you’re having team off sites, have them on a Monday or a Friday. Don’t have them on the Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, when more and more people are going to be in the office, being able to bring those off sites also back in as well. So you’re bringing people in on a Monday and Friday rather than having them squeeze into those other three days.
Michael van Rooyen: 15:30
It’s interesting you touch on Monday and Friday. Is that the regular pattern? You’re seeing that people are really off on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? Is that the footprint.
Jason Boyd: 15:37
There’s a term Tuesday, wednesday and Thursday so I’ll let you work out what that acronym is, and that is definitely a trend. So Thursdays are the new Fridays where we’re certainly seeing there’s a massive uptick of users that come in from a Wednesday to a Thursday, typically speaking, and Friday it certainly does drop off a fair bit.
Michael van Rooyen: 15:54
And you’re seeing the stats globally. Is this kind of a common or is this more of Australian data that you’re seeing in that context?
Jason Boyd: 16:01
I would say it’s certainly more Australian than what we’ve seen based out of the UK or Europe in general and the US, to be honest, it seems Okay, we are a little bit different here. We seem to set our own guidelines, our own guideposts, from the information that I’ve seen. But I would say, generally speaking, there would be more people in on Tuesday, wednesday or Thursday than Mondays or Fridays, but Australia seems to be a slight outlier in comparison to some of the other countries.
Michael van Rooyen: 16:24
And New, zealand, because I know you look after New Zealand. Are you seeing the same pattern in New Zealand?
Jason Boyd: 16:27
Yeah, it is Probably less to Australian numbers. To be honest, they seem to be more flatlined around the traditional sort of working week. Maybe that’s less distance, the tyranny of distance from where people are living today, depending on where they are in New Zealand, but generally speaking, that is Tuesday, wednesdays and Thursdays are high traffic numbers.
Michael van Rooyen: 16:46
Right, fair enough, fair enough. That’s very interesting statistics, isn’t it? So what you’re saying is we like a good long weekend. Is that what you’re saying?
Jason Boyd: 16:51
I’m saying that we’re working effectively and efficiently the best way that we need to. There are things that are better done at home and there are things that are better done in the office. There’s no single platform that’s a silver bullet to revolutionising the business. It really does come from leadership, positive leadership. That’s really critical.
Michael van Rooyen: 17:06
Yeah, fair enough. And then you know, just on that data point, what are we into two and a bit years back to really COVID? What sort of numbers are you seeing from an uptake? You know, if you were to guess, is uptake.
Jason Boyd: 17:23
You know, if you were to guess, is it a year-on-year growth of X amount of percent? You don’t have to give me exact number, it’s definitely single-digit. Single-digit growth back in. It’s not going anywhere near as quickly as it should. We’re seeing that it’s around the 30 percentile band, so it’s really quite low. There are certainly some customers that are outliers that have 50 plus percent. The only disagreement I would have with myself on that is where we have customers that have more people than desks. That utilization is hitting the 70s and 80%. It’s getting very high and that’s actually scarily high because you want to make sure that you’ve got a full and buzzing workplace, but not at the cost of employees being guaranteed every day to get a spot where they want to come in.
Michael van Rooyen: 18:00
And do you think that we’ll see a significant resurgence or you think it’ll kind of slowly continue to tick up and maybe flatlined, I think, the pendulum has swung far enough one way and I think people are coming back in.
Jason Boyd: 18:13
We are starting to see the numbers are increasing, certainly by the number of transactions within our system, within customers. Generally speaking, they do rise, so we keep track of that as well, just to understand how our customers are using the platform. Generally speaking, we are seeing an upward tick.
Michael van Rooyen: 18:28
Right. So it’s fascinating 30%, roughly 30%, you know occupancy. Of course you’ve got your outliers, as you said. But then you’ve got the other problem and we’ve seen this before is where everyone comes in on a particular day because they’ve been kind of told to come in Tuesday and choose the same day, and then you’re oversubscribed, right. So it’s kind of there’s no real middle ground at the moment, but it should even matter.
Jason Boyd: 18:47
And the A and B teams have had some level of success. But we’ve seen that if you’ve got A’s that want to work with as well either, so there has to be some fluidity. I suppose it can’t be too strong in a mandate.
Michael van Rooyen: 19:03
If I then think about sustainability right building management systems, air conditioning we all had this vision of well, not vision, but over many years and there’s a lot of recycles to be done. What I mean by that is refits of offices, you know, smarter lighting. We didn’t just rush out and do that. We had to wait for a new building to be built or a full renovation to be done. I’m interested in your thoughts about sustainability, because it’s a very big key topic. If I think about how many offices are still running on a timer that’s still coming on at a particular time if Mondays and Fridays are pretty quiet, it’s really not efficient, right For sure.
Jason Boyd: 19:33
It’s a critical point. Esg is key for a lot of the enterprises that we work with every day. There’s a bunch of tools that we have within our platform that utilizes the technology to actually enable this. We partner with a company that cuts power to the desk, so you know that cuts a massive percentage of each desk. So if you think of 15 watts down to a watt, just generally speaking, you know you’re cutting a 15th of the power. And when you talk about 1,000, 2,000 deaths, that’s quite important for customers with a neighbor’s rating that they’re concerned about.
Jason Boyd: 20:03
Obviously, esg principles come to light there. The cost of energy is certainly getting higher and doing something good for the environment as well, so being able to do that sustainably. We’re extremely strong with our vendors as well. So Google is an example, which is one of our key platforms. We work with them and they are very, very strong on sustainability as well. Esg for us is one of the guiding factors, I suppose, when we’re having a look at new partners and new vendors that we’re working with. What are their ESG plans and how are they assisting so that we can do things better together?
Michael van Rooyen: 20:35
Yeah, yeah, turning the conversation a little bit from particularly work space and the problems you’re solving there, I just want to talk a little bit about technology leadership. I’m keen to understand your thoughts about, as a leader in the industry, you know kind of what are the leadership qualities you believe are essential for driving innovation and navigating the challenges we have, you know, rapid acceleration of change. We have digital transformation trying to grapple with return to work. How are you navigating and driving innovation?
Jason Boyd: 21:04
Certainly from an innovation perspective, leveraging the tools, leveraging the data as well. It’s all well and good to have all the data from us and from other third-party vendors. You have to use it, you have to actually put it into practice. There’s no point just having the data and saying yep, we’ve got it. It’s actually implementing those changes is quite sort of important.
Jason Boyd: 21:22
I do think having a customer-centric approach to things is critical. Without sort of understanding from the customer’s eyes what they want to see, how they want to be able to deliver services to their customers, If we can’t put ourselves into their shoes, then I think we’ve lost the point there. I think that’s really quite critical. Generally speaking, just open dialogue, you know, being able to communicate, having some inclusivity within the team, empowering people to be able to challenge things.
Jason Boyd: 21:48
I certainly don’t know everything. I want the rest of the people within our team to challenge me to do things better. So I’m big enough and ugly enough to be able to take, you know, positive criticism, constructive criticism. So look, I love empowered employees because that diversity gives you a different perspective that I might not have and ultimately, it’s really support from leadership. We’re actually very lucky with the leadership group that we have on board. You know they really listen to what we have to say and they make some positive changes as well, based on, you know, the power of the people and sort of finally recognizing and rewarding people for that innovation as well. We do a lot of that internally, where we have awards for people that bring ideas to the table.
Michael van Rooyen: 22:27
Okay, okay. So, and some of the practical ways you just touched on is really, you know, fostering that culture of innovation, right, your technology business. How do you really foster innovation? It’s not just mandated, you’re saying. You know, guys, you’re on the front face all the time, you’re dealing with customers, you’re being customer centric, as you talked about. So you’re really encouraging that, that team effort to come up with ways to innovate, right? Um, because it changes so quickly. If I look at the future, what do you think are the future trends that you anticipate? What will really shape the workplace technology landscape, you know, over the next few years?
Jason Boyd: 22:56
video is definitely very pervasive out there and without high quality, whether it’s in a meeting room, whether it’s on the go, without that video connection, you need to feel like you’re part of something. If you are going to happen to be on the road, it’s really important to feel like you are part of that meeting. If you have to be virtual, if, ultimately, face-to-face is really where we come back to, that is is really where we come back to. That is where the productivity is, that’s where the employee connection is strongest. If I think about the future, I do think that automation is just going to continue within our landscape to enable the systems that we have and we see, and some of our other ecosystem vendors. The automation of getting from A to B is critical, and I know that’s probably a soft and fluffy term, but the ability to take away further and further steps to be able to get to the outcome that users want is ultimately the goal.
Michael van Rooyen: 23:49
Right, yeah, yeah, if I think about that, for a sec video is so pervasive. You’re 100% right. Do you think that we’re ending up in this position where and I’ve seen it myself and I’ve even been guilty at some times you’re on a video call but you can get distracted quite easy, you know, because you’re not in the room? I mean, this is why we got to get people back together, right? I mean, we’ve all seen it, and one of my previous hosts was talking about together, together, alone, together. You know and he was having this analogy around being disconnected, that you know more than a certain number of people in a team’s call should really be a town hall. I mean, what are your thoughts in this space? What are you seeing customers? It’s great having the video technology, but I’m just not sure if we’re that engaged.
Jason Boyd: 24:26
So I’m a bit of a stickler for our team always being on video. I really get frustrated if we have a video off. I appreciate that we all have personal lives and things can happen in the background and I can tell you some stories of some personal times where I wish I had the video off. But I think it shows more respect back to our customers. For starters, if we are at least on video, I think you can certainly be on mute because there could be whatever sounds in the background At the same time. I do feel slightly the same way about customers as well. They can be disconnected.
Jason Boyd: 24:56
If you’re on a video call and they’ve just got their video switched off, it’s hard to gauge the audience. It’s hard to know am I answering the right messaging? Am I hitting the right points that you want to hear? Am I helping you? The whole reason that you’re in this meeting is to get something out of it, unless you’re there just to be there because you have to. So having your video on is quite important. Without that, I can’t read the body language of the room.
Michael van Rooyen: 25:22
Yeah, fair enough, and it’s not like we can’t use the excuse of you don’t have enough bandwidth or you don’t have the facilities to do it, like there should be no reason not have video on right, absolutely, even on mobile.
Jason Boyd: 25:30
And we’ve got used to the technology and the bandwidth not being perfect. Now we don’t expect HD quality coming off phone. If you’re in a taxi and got used to that now, and certainly because video is so pervasive within our personal life, you know, when we bring that into the meeting room, even if it is on a 65-inch screen, it still seems to be acceptable. But nothing does take away from being in that meeting. You know face-to-face, and it’s really not just about the meeting, it’s the bump-ins, it’s the coffee chats, it’s the water cooler moments, it’s the couple of minutes that you have before and after the meeting. There’s actually half the time more critical than what you actually say in the formal presence.
Michael van Rooyen: 26:03
Yeah, and then, if I think about from taking a technology view here, are you or is AppSpace or other video vendors working really on analytics of you know, eye engagement, mood? I’m just thinking about the ability to do that right. I mean, we can face, id people, we can recognise their mood, et cetera when we’re seeing CCTV cameras and all that sort of stuff. But is anyone talking about that in the space to you know, really get a score on engagement, because that’d be a good way to actually get a watermark right to actually know if people are engaged that would be, that’d be perfect.
Jason Boyd: 26:30
It’s not not something necessarily that uh, that app space is focused around, but if you’ve got an iphone which you do they know when you’re tracking your eyes. So a lot of the vendors have that as well, because of the speaker track technology and everything that they use today. I’m sure there’s analytics there. I haven’t seen whether it’s being used yet or not.
Michael van Rooyen: 26:46
But that would be interesting. I mean it would have to be an opt-in right because people don’t want to be, but it would be an interesting data point right to actually run meetings, video meetings and again I’m thinking Loud Gen is probably there, I’m sure the data exists about even just from a personal meeting point of view. You know you get an attend score or attendee list. It’d be really good to get an engagement, not that you can do anything, but you can just know then how to focus on. If I think about new generation, you might have a team meeting and someone’s a bit quiet, like in a normal physical meeting room. At least that kind of that engagement score might help you next time in a meeting to say, hey look, you know, can I more engage with that person Like I give you probably as a manager, you might even get a better way to pass it around the room. I’m just thinking aloud to you, by the way.
Jason Boyd: 27:24
No, definitely, and even if you think about the transcribing services now that are being utilised, if you’ve got a particular person that’s been in 10 meetings and not said a word, that might also be a good way. So you know, the technology is there. Again, the data is there. It’s whether you want to be able to use it.
Michael van Rooyen: 27:42
Yeah, fair enough. And what advice would you give aspiring technology leaders who make an impact into their field?
Jason Boyd: 27:49
Certainly stay informed, stay on top of the market. It really is changing so quickly. So being involved and really understanding what’s happening from a technology standpoint, keeping across the latest trends the next big thing understanding what’s coming I think is really quite important. I personally think, as a bit of a leader, also being a little bit technical as well understanding the technology that we’re out there offering to customers. It enables us to have a more informed conversation and be able to bring that back to the customer’s needs rather than just talking about selling wares. And, I think, finally, also understanding and respecting the people within your team and elevating them as much as possible. Really, I’m just a conduit for the rest of our team to be able to perform and be able to meet with customers and enable their outcomes. So being a servant really is ultimately quite important for me too.
Michael van Rooyen: 28:43
Absolutely and, reflecting on your career, what have been some of the most rewarding experiences and what lessons have you learned from it?
Jason Boyd: 28:51
Wow. So, without sounding too cheesy, I am a sales guy that lives in integrity, so I personally really love actually seeing customers where they’ve bought our platform and they’ve got the intended outcomes from what they’re intending to get. So that really, for me, is quite rewarding. We’ve got one particular customer that had an issue where they couldn’t communicate with their team at all. They were struggling with the technology. It was a very siloed sort of technology setup that they had and through our platform we were able to remove those silos and give them one consistent experience. Through our platform we were able to remove those silos and give them one consistent experience and they went from having one person that was communicating to the group to having more than 30 people now within the customer because it’s made so simple to use. So that actually is quite rewarding as well.
Michael van Rooyen: 29:33
That is amazing. What key message or takeaway would you like to leave the listeners with regarding the future of workspace technology and innovation?
Jason Boyd: 29:44
Be bold, I would say certainly. Fail quickly. Fail fast for us and take some chances. Our internal mantra is really let’s have a look at what a customer needs and let’s find a way to be able to fulfill that, and if we can’t fulfill that, then we say we can’t. So being able to do things, live in integrity, remember your own personal values and always try your best.
Michael van Rooyen: 30:03
And one question I always like to ask the guests is tell me about the most significant technology change or shift that you’ve seen or been involved with during your career, and that can be anything outside. It doesn’t have to be workspace related, of course. It can be anything of your career, past, present, whatever had quite a few mixed answers on the side, so always interesting to ask this question at the end about what is the most significant technology change or shift you’ve seen or been involved with?
Jason Boyd: 30:27
Well, so, before actually working at Telstra, I worked for a company that we were acquired by, which is called iVision, and one of our customers at the time was NBN and I was dealing with the seventh employee for NBN. As we helped them, we built our own NBN truck that went around Australia. It was an AV truck that had a whole bunch of little video walls inside the truck and outside and they toured that around to remote Australia. We put in the network operations center and a couple of other video walls and that was a company that had seven employees and now, as you would know, everybody has the NBN and everybody lives with the NBN every day. So that was an amazing technology change to be right at the grassroots and see how they, you know, assisted from a grassroots level to assisting everyone they do today.
Michael van Rooyen: 31:17
That’s fascinating. Yeah, number seven, you would have been still, you know, at the whiteboard early stages.
Jason Boyd: 31:22
There’s not a lot of tech in there, Michael. I can say it was definitely a whiteboard and some scratch paper.
Michael van Rooyen: 31:26
Yeah, yeah, and you’re absolutely right. I mean the fundamental impact it’s made to the country and I think about everything we support then being able to deal with video consistently, being able to give a good user experience. So that is a really good one, absolutely, Jason. Look, I really appreciate the time catching up today with me. Thanks for catching up. Thank you so much for having me, no problem.
