Compelling human stories needed if staff are to fully get behind new technology, forum hears

By Peter Davison

30 October 2023

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Laurence Kiddle

Financial outlay on technology is not enough on its own to secure buy-in when it comes to technological transformation in businesses – managers need to be “evangelists” for change.

This was the message from Laurence Kiddle (pictured), who leads the technology and transformation services team at Evelyn Partners, the leading integrated wealth management and professional services group, at a technology panel discussion in Bristol.

The event, held at Evelyn Partners’ Bristol office, was part of the Bristol Technology Festival and explored the latest developments shaping the business world, including artificial intelligence and digital transformation.

It was chaired by Evelyn Partners’ Paal Proeitz and also featured Phil Pentland, sales director at Soroco, whose Scout AI model helps organisations to streamline and automate their business processes, and Lianne Gatti, UK managing director of performance management platform LucaNet.

Laurence said that compelling human stories are needed if staff are to fully get behind the introduction of new technology and processes.

“When it comes to any large-scale tech transformation project, the people who are driving it need to become evangelists who have a human story that will carry everyone through,” he said.

“For example, a client of ours who is a finance manager in a medium-sized business told me that, thanks to the introduction of new technology, he was now able to leave work earlier and pick up his daughter from her gymnastics class at the end of each month.

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“This is applicable to AI, which grabs a lot of the headlines, but also to augmented and virtual reality, which are also becoming increasingly important in business.”

“Technological change is moving at breakneck speed and businesses need to keep up to remain competitive,” added Paal Proeitz.

“M&A is one of the big catalysts because it is unsustainable to have two business systems running simultaneously under one umbrella.”

By Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country.

An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts.

Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.