The Year that Zoomed by By Andrew Birch, Solution Architect at Binary Consultants
Let’s get this out of the way up-front, right now. If you told me that I
Starting with the pros – holding meetings virtually rather than
never had to do another Teams (or Zoom) call ever again, I would be
in-person can make scheduling a lot easier as all you need to do is
overjoyed. The sense of relief and elation would last for quite some
find a time when everyone is free, rather than a time where everyone
months, especially if they were all to be replaced with travel and
is free and is able to get to the right place.
meeting people face-to-face, in-person. Having done none of that for over a year now, doing business “the old-fashioned way” would be genuinely refreshing.
We saw this as a big benefit very early on when we found we could suddenly work with two or more clients in the same day, rather than scheduling a day at a time on-site. I say initially, because our diaries are just as constrained now, perhaps even more so, than we
Teams/Zoom Fatigue is real
were when we were travelling to site, but I’ll get to that later.
Whatever you call it, six to ten hours of video calls in a day (which is
The downside for everyone, I think, is that easier scheduling
the “new normal” for our little team) leaves you drained in a way that
combined with far less face-to-face contact has led to more meetings
face-to-face meetings of equivalent length simply don’t.
overall. I’m going to shamelessly quote a line from Jurassic Park at
We’ve all noticed it, and we’ve all resolved to make space in our
this point which I use quite often:
diaries away from our webcams. Yet we open our agenda for the week
“Everyone was so busy wondering whether we could, no one stopped
ahead, only to see something like this (image blurred for privacy):
to ask whether we should …”
Headsets and webcams are here to stay (for a little while at least) People seem to be holding many more meetings, whether formal or informal, via Teams and Zoom. And I suspect many wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t quite so easy for everyone to attend (on the assumption that they definitely won’t be anywhere else but the kitchen table). This, I think, will be a largely self-solving problem. When the world does finally start to open up again and restrictions are eased, scheduling will once again become more difficult, and those less crucial Teams/Zoom meetings will quickly die away, probably to As a professional services company you’d expect our diaries to
be replaced by the kind of interaction we had before all this started.
be pretty full. Our time is, after all, what we sell, so to us an empty
What I think we will be left with is a new way to meet “when it
diary is as bad as seeing a planned shift with only 30 tonnes on it.
makes sense”. This might mean, for example, that the monthly sales
However, look closer and you’ll see how much overlap, double (or
meeting no longer requires reps to take a day out to drive to the
triple) booking, and back-to-back meetings there are.
office (saving time and travel costs). I’m sure there will still be plenty
Do not be fooled by the hour for lunch! This is just a buffer for
of in-person meetings, however, we’ve now realised that things can
morning meetings to overrun into. If I’ve learned anything in the last
be done differently. I don’t think for a minute that the headsets and
year or so, it’s the importance of having a “hard-stop” on Teams
webcams are going to be permanently consigned to the cupboards
meetings otherwise you can simply kiss your day goodbye.
any time soon.
A blessing and a curse
Good news for the environment
Another thing I’ve noticed is that our clients, i.e. feed mills, have even
In March last year we saw an urgent desire amongst our customers to
busier schedules. And these aren’t just the regular meetings they had
remove dependence on paper in processes; this was, quite obviously,
in-person before, but entirely new meetings made possible by the
because the paper was no longer in the same place as the people
power of remote working and the fact that people can now, literally,
trying to process it!
jump from one meeting to the next without even leaving the kitchen table. I’m going to say this is both a blessing and a curse.
I’m very pleased to say that the trend has continued and, if anything, is gathering pace. Across the industry people are looking
Feed Compounder May/June 2021 Page 25
