Digital tools at my daily work
I work currently in OP Group as a customership specialist. I help customers in my customer portfolio with daily banking services, investing and loans. I use several different digital tools daily at my work and I help customer to use our online services also. Our team members works in different places so the communication between us happens with Teams and WhatsApp. Also our weekly meetings with the team and all staff is organized with Teams. We use WhatsApp only with not work related matters because of security issues. To organize and keep track on my own work, I use OneNote and Outlook calendar and sometimes Excel. We also have our own business systems, Intranet and Yammer in use. In Yammer we can connect and engage with specialist from different units across the whole OP Group. I would say that Teams is the most important tool for me, because we can arrange nowadays meetings with customers also in it.
I don’t use social media platforms at my work, but OP Group is figured in Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube
New tools of Social Media
Social Media can be a very powerful tool for digital marketing, but companies should also attend, monitor and participate to the ongoing conversations. Companies need to be awake in Social Media or otherwise it can easily turn to a bad thing in the form of bad reviews and trolls for example. Different sites need skilled operator who is a professional in communication. With the use of Social Media companies can make their work visible, gain market insight and influence positively to the picture customers get. Social Media can also offer important feedback from customers and even bring in new customers. If irritated customer is complaining for example about bad service in Social Media, company can possibly change bad experience to good by acknowledging the issue.
The list of different Social Media tools is endless and new ones are coming constantly. I admit that I’m not active Social Media user because I think that I don’t have enough time to do as thoughtful posts I would like to and I have started to think more what kind of picture I want to transmit about me to the world. Social Media helps people to connect, share information, network and it offers entertainment. Downside of it is for example cyber-bullying, general addiction, generating unrealistic expectations, FOMO (Fear of missing out) and privacy concerns.
I acknowledge the benefits of Social Media and visibility it gives, but I am still lagging behind. At work the story is different and I am more motivated to learn new tools especially if it makes my job easier. I am open to try new tools and it was nice to find out more about new tools. Here are 5 new tools for me:
Open Badges are the world’s leading format for digital badges and they are created and issued to recognize competencies, skills and achievements of their earners. Institutions can create, design and specify criteria for earning badges and earners can easily verify their skills with badges. I chose to look more into this tool because it was completely new for me and interesting. In my opinion this tool could be used to more easily search needed talent to different projects, to help employees search help from right person in their organization and also to strengthen employee commitment. This is a concrete way to show employees that their competencies are valued. Downside of the badges might be that also other companies can recognize talented employees and persuade them to change workplace in this time when it is important to retain top talent. Badges needs to be also created which means more work for companies.
I had heard Slack also before, but I wanted to know more about it. Slack is same kind of platform for team work as Teams. It brings all work communication to one place when it is easier to stay organized and collaborate with others. It is hard to tell which one is better for working, because I don’t have any experience about Slack at least yet. You can find more about pros and cons between those to platforms from post here. According to that information I would say that Teams is more suitable for my work still.
Todoist is a simple task management and task list platform where you can keep up with different projects. Todoist can be used to personal tasks management or at work with the whole team. At first glance i would say that Todoist could help me to manage my calendar, keep up with tasks and make sure I don’t forget to do anything. Now the information about what I should do is scattered to different platforms and it would be great to see them from one place. Todoist websites also say that the data is SSL encrypted, so it should be safe. Too detailed task lists can cause stress to someone, but personally I enjoy to tick boxes when the job is done.
I think that in banks we could cooperate with Mobiilivarmenne which is similar identification system as banking codes. People need to have banking codes before they can start using Mobiilivarmenne. After it is activated, you need only your phone number and personal pin-code to log-in services. Mobiilivarmenne as an additional method to login could improve safety. If Mobiilivarmenne get into the wrong hands, you don’t have to necessarily close your banking codes. This saves you a trip to bank office.
OP Group had earlier paper magazine which is not published anymore. With Issuu we could make a new digital version of it. Issuu is a digital publishing platform where you can transform PDF’s into digital content which is easy to share. Op Group publishes topical articles in OP Media, but with Issuu it could make a digital edition of articles which might be valued more among some users than just a website. Magazine made with Issuu could be embedded to OP Media site easily, but of course making online publication adds costs.
Elements of successful use of digital application
From customer point of view, I think that different digital applications should be easy to use, functional and customizable to some extent. You should be able to easily log-in to the service which you are using and find all functions from there which you most commonly need. Security and privacy issues are also very important, because it’s always better if you can be sure that your data is safe from criminals. Some support pages and instructions could be also good, if you run into problems.
From company point of view, in my opinion digital application is successful when you get positive feedback from users and they use application often. Successful application also increase the effectiveness of company, gives chance to influence and gain customer insight.
Self-evaluation
This section of course got me exited about new digital tools which I haven’t heard before. There is a lot of selection in applications how companies and people can organize their work and tasks. Social Media is part of our lives daily and it was good to stop thinking about my one use. Although I am not active there myself sharing information, I still spend time in different platforms daily. It could be nice to take a break sometimes from there and see what happens. Overall this course has awaken my interest to get more information about different digital tools and services. I have used these tool successfully without thinking but with a bit better familiarization to different tools and services could help me to get best out of them.