Jo Masters (Tquila ANZ)
To overcome the current pandemic, many organisations are accelerating digital projects like never before. Here’s how local consultancy and managed services provider Tquila ANZ is picking up the pace during this unprecedented time.
Being quick on your feet will never go out of style in the channel, but the global coronavirus pandemic is driving a sense of urgency — something that Tquila ANZ CEO Jo Masters has strongly adhered to in recent months.
According to Masters, the provider hasn’t changed its overall strategy during the pandemic, but certain elements have quickened.
“Our strategy is the same, but the speed in which we have moved into new flexible working arrangement and technology areas has definitely accelerated,” Masters said to ARN. “We have also stepped up our hiring of senior staff and in the training of talented more junior staff into new technical areas.”
Indeed, agile movement will be needed to keep up with customer interest, as she claims Tquila has a bow wave of pent-up projects and customer demand that it needs to work through.
“The key challenge for customers will be in being able to get through 12-18 months of work in six-nine months,” Masters said. “There is a large amount of work that needs to be done that has been postponed that will now need to be delivered, alongside a whole lot of new priorities.
“Being able to get through this with remote teams, new ways of working and a different supplier landscape will be a challenge.”
As for which customers Tquila has been servicing, Masters said some of its longstanding existing customers have been “hugely supportive” in assisting the consultancy through the pandemic, as well as what she called “a really pleasing number” of new customers.
While the customers weren’t specified, Tquila has previously performed a large quantity of work for the health, aged care, government, retail and technology sectors.
The provider's offerings its customers are pursuing, according to Masters, include customer engagement services, digital transformation work, automation and cloud scaling through technologies from Salesforce, Mulesoft, UiPath and Amazon Web Services (AWS), respectively.
Regardless of what sector customers are from or what they want out of Tquila, Masters believes that agility for the provider will be key in the immediate future.
“Everything is going to be smaller, faster and reducing that time to value to the minimum possible,” she said. “Irrespective of industry or function, the priority will be seeking partners who are skilled, flexible and fast to move.”
But, at the end of the day, all the speed in the world doesn’t help if your business doesn’t know which way it’s going — something that Masters also keeps in mind.
“What was true before the pandemic will be true after it," she said. “You need to be a values driven organisation with a clear direction and the best talent in the market.”
