Thomson Reuters explains need for 'flatter, more democratic organisations'

Thomson Reuters' Kelvin Lee: good communication and listening skills between departments is vital for modern organisations

It's vital for firms to communicate properly between departments, and for different parts of organisations to listen to one another.

That's the view of Kelvin Lee, director of social media marketing for the financial & risk division of business information provider, Thomson Reuters.

Lee recently told Computing: "Beyond market data, we also sell trust, so our challenge is how can we convey trust in the brand.

"Our key priorities are the empowered customer and the fact that younger, millennial customers expect us to be on all of the digital channels that they're on, and we want to make everyone in the company, whoever they are, a voice for the brand."

Today's unified communications suites and dashboards are strongly geared towards creating a more collaborative culture and workflow, whether beneath a single pane of glass or with integrated functionality among a range of best-of-breed tools.

For these reasons, modern companies want their technology and digital professionals and teams to understand the relationships between different disciplines - coding, marketing, design, user experience, service, business opportunity, and others - and not just employ people who sit on their own with laptops.

Lee explained that it's essential to have an agreed internal and external strategy among all key stakeholders - including leadership and sales teams - and to give them all a voice within a flatter, more democratic organisation.

"It's about listening to the voices of the other departments, and there are great tools out there to help you aggregate that."

A recent report revealed that 76 per cent of organisations believe a cloud deployment will bring "simplicity" and "accelerate business adoption" of unified communications technology.

Computing's IT Leaders Forum 2017 is coming on 24 May 2017.

The theme this year is "Going Digital: Why your most difficult customer is your best friend".

Attendence is free, but strictly limited to IT Leaders. To find out more and to apply for your place, check out the IT Leaders Forum website.