“Emerging AR and AI solutions will enable companies to archive and reformat critical information so that employees can benefit from accessible enterprise expertise during training, and troubleshooting.”
Hi Patricia, please tell us about your journey into the technology space and how you started at TeamViewer?
My career has spanned comprehensive sales, business development and go-to-market demand generation in the enterprise software, subscription and professional services sectors. I’ve always had a strong focus on building an accretive strategic partner ecosystem.
Prior to joining TeamViewer, I spent more than 13 years at Canadian publicly listed software giant OpenText, where I led corporate marketing and global business development. I also managed global strategic alliances with key partners that included SAP, Google, AWS, Microsoft and Salesforce that delivered substantial revenue contributions. Prior to OpenText, I worked in various sales, marketing and operations roles at leading global software and consulting companies. Today, I am President for the Americas at TeamViewer, where my responsibilities encompass sales, channel partnerships, the development of new routes to market and customer success.
If 2021 was about remote working and hybrid working, what’s in store for 2022? What are the new types of working culture that organizations are exploring?
Hybrid work is here to stay, and it will have dramatic effects on the enterprise cultures and priorities. A major focus for 2022 will be finding the right balance between technology and people power to overcome challenges in a way that is cost-efficient and aligned with company goals, strategies and, most importantly, culture. Some questions that leaders will be asking are:
- Is this technology mature enough to provide stable benefits to my company?
- Is this problem better addressed using technology or people?
- In what key areas can technology best augment current processes?
- How will this technology impact the way our people interact with each other and clients?
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How can the companies smartly reduce the Shadow IT effect?
The lack of strategic purchasing during the transition to hybrid work has left many enterprises’ networks in disarray, as individuals within companies regularly took it upon themselves to download the tools and software they needed for remote working during the height of the pandemic.
A priority for 2022 will be reigning in these out-of-network services to ensure the security and stability of companies’ IT infrastructures. 2021 was a year of expansion and testing; 2022 will be a year of consolidation and forward planning. The first step in this process is assessing all assets and integrations on a given network to understand where redundancies and deadweight lie. From there, companies can begin to identify where to incorporate more efficient solutions. Employees at all levels should be a part of this discussion, as their tendency to download extraneous tools is where this all began. If their needs aren’t met, you can expect to be facing this same issue at the end of 2022.
What’s the future of enterprise collaboration tools and platforms? Why should organizations invest intelligently in these tools, and why?
One can expect companies to capitalize on the ‘one-to-many multiplier’ of collaboration technologies. One example of this opportunity can be seen in employee onboarding and training. Companies have historically relied on senior personnel within a company to onboard new employees. The downsides of this approach become apparent when a leader is remote or leaves without passing on their institutional knowledge. Emerging AR and AI solutions will enable companies to archive and reformat critical information so that employees can benefit from accessible enterprise expertise during onboarding, training, and troubleshooting. Notably, the benefits of such technology use will only compound over time as more users contribute their own techniques and knowledge.
Collaboration technologies will also act as a force multiplier for front-line workers. These workers managed to carry the economy through the pandemic, yet modernization of many front-line industries was necessary long before the emergence of COVID-19. By pairing wearables like smart glasses with AI, IoT and 5G, companies can keep their workers connected, informed and safe. Leveraging technologies for these tasks will free employees to focus on other priorities and accomplish more in less time. This already drove significant productivity in 2021 and will continue to do so in 2022.
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What’s AR/VR’s role in building advanced collaboration engagements with employees, customers and community partners?
Outside of the goods/services they sell, companies need two things to succeed: people and information. The pandemic has disrupted both of these in so many ways that the disruption of one now feeds the disruption of the other. In order to stop this vicious cycle, companies should leverage technologies such as AR and AI to bring the people and information together more efficiently. Doing so will ease the pressure on employees while making better use of the information available. Retail is a prime example of how this will play out, with retail workers leveraging smart glasses to help a customer know whether something is in stock, where it is within the store, and any other product information needed to lead the customer to a satisfying purchase experience. By streamlining information flows, companies can be more informed, agile and effective.
What are your thoughts on leveraging AI, analytics and automation for remote team management?
These technologies are essential for any modern enterprise. Companies juggling the countless tools and services developed for hybrid workers want to narrow in on the solutions that are resource-efficient and easy to use. We will continue to see new innovations reach the market, but the provision of these solutions will be a key differentiator in 2022. An example of where this is headed can be seen in remote agents that sit independently from the device. By leveraging cloud and 5G technologies, these tools can be deployed where needed without weighing on hardware and network resources. These tools also have a distinct security advantage, which is paramount as cyberattacks continue to pose a threat across industry sectors.
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Your predictions for the year 2022- what does your product development roadmap look like for the coming year?
In 2021, we began to see the true power of technology in augmenting employee efforts. The pace of this adoption will accelerate in 2022. Companies with a large human element will be the early beneficiaries, but no industry will be immune as key technologies mature and demonstrate their benefits on a larger scale.
The pandemic also continues to change how businesses deal with introducing new technology. There are still many opportunities for software to fill gaps in this hybrid world, and businesses are under pressure to move more quickly to deploy technology for a shorter time to impact. However, companies will likely be more reserved with hardware releases until supply chains calm down. This means we will see services broadening their capabilities across current infrastructures such as 5G and cloud networks.
As for our future products, we’re focused on the fourth major release of our enterprise Augmented Reality (AR) platform, TeamViewer Frontline. Building on the software from the acquisition of Ubimax in 2020 and our own AR development, the latest version now also integrates the technology of AR specialist Upskill and Mixed Reality (MR) pioneer Viscopic, which we acquired in 2021.
We are incredibly pleased to see our own product development and integration efforts of acquisitions in AR space paying off. We are now able to offer organizations the most comprehensive AR solutions platform for a wide range of use cases to drive workplace digitalization even more effectively in all industries and across the entire value chain while leveraging strong partnerships with SAP and Google Cloud.
Thank you, Patricia! That was fun and we hope to see you back on itechnologyseries.com soon.
[To participate in our interview series, please write to us at sghosh@martechseries.com]
Patricia Nagle is President for the Americas at TeamViewer. She has a storied career that spans comprehensive sales, business development and go-to-market demand generation in the enterprise software, subscription and professional services sectors with a strong focus on building an accretive strategic partner ecosystem. She spent more than 13 years at Canadian publicly listed software giant OpenText, where she was responsible for corporate marketing and global business development that included channel sales, OEM and inside sales functions, supporting a community of over 28,000 partners. Moreover, Patricia managed global strategic alliances with key partners that included SAP, Google, AWS, Microsoft and Salesforce that delivered substantial revenue contribution. Prior to OpenText, Patricia worked in various sales, marketing and operations roles at leading global software and consulting companies.
TeamViewer is a leading global technology company that provides a connectivity platform to remotely access, control, manage, monitor, and repair devices of any kind – from laptops and mobile phones to industrial machines and robots. Although TeamViewer is free of charge for private use, it has more than 625,000 subscribers and enables companies of all sizes and from all industries to digitalize their business-critical processes through seamless connectivity. Against the backdrop of global megatrends like device proliferation, automation and new work, TeamViewer proactively shapes digital transformation and continuously innovates in the fields of Augmented Reality, Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence. Since the company’s foundation in 2005, TeamViewer’s software has been installed on more than 2.5 billion devices around the world. The company is headquartered in Goppingen, Germany, and employs around 1,500 people globally.
