Watch: Innovation Spotlight – Moneypenny’s Pete Hanlon

For the Innovation Spotlight series, Moneypenny’s very own CTO, Pete Hanlon, discusses how he thinks tough times produce the best innovation from businesses. 

He also talks through some of the novel ways Moneypenny helped clients over the past year.

How do challenging times help businesses innovate?

“Challenging times brings out the best in all of us. Or put it this way, if you don’t adapt, that’s going to be a problem.

“The recent pandemic has meant that companies have had to change the way they communicate.

“Companies have adopted video communication technology such as Teams to help stay in touch with employees and clients, and really think about operating in a completely different way.

“They’ve had to work from home in environments that were not set up to operate the way they wanted to.

Being able to adapt to unexpected events is where companies really shine.

How did Moneypenny innovate during the challenges of 2020?

“We introduced technologies such as Digital Switchboard for example to help more businesses get through the pandemic.

“We offered that for free as a way of helping companies when that happened.

“At the moment we’re looking to implement really deep integration into Microsoft Teams which allows people to transfer calls directly from Moneypenny directly to Microsoft Teams, just using somebody’s email address, not even a telephone number. So we can just send a call to somebody.

“We can use Teams to allow customers to manage hunt groups and we can keep all of the employee details up to date simply by keeping the email up to date, so the emails follow them around.

“We can send calls to people’s computers, to their phone, to their desktops.

“And that thinking and that new innovation has really come off the back of the pandemic.

“So it’s really important that businesses adapt when they have to, and think outside the box around new solutions and new ways of solving problems.”

What’s your one innovation tip?

“The one tip I would really give to people who are trying to improve their product offering is:

Measure as much as you can, and really understand your product in detail.

“Only go out with a minimum viable product to try and get some feedback as early as possible, so be as lean as you can.

“Get something that works in front of people, but only put the minimum amount of effort in to understand if it’s successful.

“And if it is successful, and the metrics you’re measuring are telling you it’s successful, then invest in it.”