Introduction to e-management

Introduction to E-management:

Introduction:

The COVID-19 pandemic remarkably impacted businesses throughout the globe, including Modawa Medical Company. Business leaders and managers revisited their strategies to overcome the COVID-19 impact and work smoothly in a pandemic situation. Similarly, being a global manager of Modawa Medical Company, the whole company's strategy is revisited to make significant changes to restore its operations, performance, communication, and working effectively. The Modawa Medical Company is a global company with its presence in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. The key focus of the company is retailing sales along with digitizing their business (Bartsch, 2020). The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic considerably impacted the company performance and operations. However, the company is now conscious of it, and the global manager initiated developing a detailed strategy to overcome these problems and issues to boost the performance. Therefore, being a global manager, it is important to develop a strategy aligned with the company mission. The Modawa Medical Company's mission includes sustaining a quality management system, utilizing the latest scientific innovation, best partnership, and talent, recruiting a talented mindset to deliver high-quality standards. The overall mission and vision are kept in mind while developing a strategy to achieve present and future objectives.

Limited options for Modawa Medical company to deal with the pandemic:

Therefore, to effectively deal with the pandemic, most of the physical gatherings and events are canceled by shifting all these to the alternative option of digitalizing. However, the best channel of Modawa Medical Company for business is in-person events and physical conversion that are greatly affected due to the pandemic situation. The company has limited options, such as organizing online meetings or events and a one-to-one person meeting to efficiently continue its business operations. Because the company's key priority is its retail sales that require events and gatherings for its promotion and sale. However, being a global manager, it is important to deal with the pandemic and to minimize its impact on business by adopting the best alternative solutions. The best available alternative solution is to explore the potential of online events and meetings such as zoom meetings and digital conferences. Moreover, these virtual platforms or events are now considered as the most successful alternative solutions in achieving its objectives.

Level of technology urgency Modawa needs to sustain its performance:

The businesses strive to address the issues related to the pandemic situation by deploying solutions with a revised scope. However, the Modawa Medical Company mostly follows the traditional outsourcing, deployment, and consulting that's why it needs to implement a new level of technology urgency to maintain its growth and performance. The organization needs to shift most of its physical activities and processes to the remote working environment that requires a revised setup based on the digital process. A new integrated digital management system will be implemented that can successfully manage different teams from its retail chains from other countries. This digital innovation and transformation reveal various opportunities for Modawa to move towards a better level of performance. It can also be noted in the global competitors that they modify their business mostly towards more consumerized and mobile. So, Modawa needs a new level of technology urgency to sustain its performance; although they adopted digital solutions, it needs to be revised to align according to the pandemic situation (Soto-Acosta, 2020).

Digital capabilities required by a global manager:

The transformation from traditional to digital setup requires digital capabilities to deal effectively and appropriately for better performance or to create value. Businesses are digitizing into three main areas, such as business models, customer experience, and operational processes. However, being a global manager, it is important to effectively overlook all these three areas of digital transformation. Therefore, the business must be competent enough for the transformation because it needs bold vision, customer awareness, integrated systems with insight, organizational alignment without errors and omissions, and premium technology application to stand out for competition within the marketplace (Solberg, 2020). Therefore, the following are the leadership capabilities that are important to adopt being a global manager of Modawa in the digital world.

· Cognitive transformation:

It means thinking differently to conceptualize all possibilities within a digital world. Additionally, it also states that taken decisions quickly despite having all information. Further, it also covers the concept of thinking divergently to search out for innovative solutions.

· Behavioral transformation:

Acting differently in a virtual world according to changes occur in influence and power. It also helps in collaborating with different teams across the world with ease. However, it requires investment and trial and errors to reach the right things.

· Emotional transformation :

It covers the way a manager or leader reacts; it requires a different way to react to different environments and risks because the digital world is too broad, and each platform has its own properties and requirements. Being a global manager, it is important to have emotional flexibility for changes and must be confident about it (Abbatiello, 2017).

Type of virtual management characteristics:

Therefore, after the digitalization of business, the global manager needs to implement the virtual management characteristics to carry out things effectively and smoothly. It is vital for the global manager to accurately incorporate these things and timely, such as communication, attentiveness, and trust. Furthermore, the global manager should clarify the employees' roles, norms, and goals to achieve. Moreover, it requires to encourage collaboration and commitment. The global manager is also required to form different virtual teams. Such as networked teams, functional teams, offshore information process development teams, service teams, parallel teams, and project development teams to distribute work according to their job responsibilities. These virtual management characteristics are important for success (Morley, 2015).

The way virtual teams will work together:

Therefore, firstly as a global manager, the employees are divided into different types of groups, as mentioned above. Further, each team is assigned specific tasks and goals to achieve by working together. These teams are further interconnected through an online platform or internet application that helps them share information, communicate, and take help from the required time in case of any problem. Being a global manager, I will incorporate the Tandem or Pragil applications to create a virtual office that will help me in managing them effectively. So, in that way, virtual teams will work together on a single platform.

Tools using for communications and task management:

Communication is a crucial element for success; a successful communication process ensures the success of the organization. Along with this, task management is significant for the completion of tasks efficiently and timely. There are different software available to maintain an online communication platform between different stakeholders, such as employees to the manager, customers to experts, and so on. For online communication, the best and most relevant tool will be utilized for virtual teams communication at Modawa Medical Company; for example, Flowdock and zoom meetings are the best tools. However, for task management, the Task Management Software will be used for effective tracking of tasks and its completion. Task Management Software is an effective tool mostly used by virtual businesses for their task management functions. Therefore, these two tools will be used according to the virtual team application to maintain uniformity and relevance. Modawa Medical Company is communicating with various stakeholders in a different way because of the nature and type of stakeholders, so these software are effective for all types of communications.

How you will manage delivering the new changes within a short time in different locations in terms of language, cultural, time, political, and economical differences?

Effective management keeps all the key things and thinks in a broad way by considering all elements. Being a global manager of an international business that is also spread internationally requires smart working and critical thinking to be successful. While developing teams for transforming the business into a digital environment, this thing is also considered. Each business unit in each country has its own teams similar to the home-country teams along with the same responsibilities and goals. So, all different locations' teams are assigned for similar tasks and goals to modify the assigned project according to its own language, time, cultural, economic, and political situations to get better outcomes. That's why the team development helps to manage and implement the new changes according to their demographic characteristics in a short period of time. Successful businesses emphasized more on team developments for both national and international locations to manage things effectively and accurately in a short time by just managing it smartly (Rao, 2016).

What are techniques that you will be using to create a strong team with a high level of teamwork?

Teams are significant in today's businesses because they highly contribute to organizations and do things in a creative and effective way. A team performs quickly and smartly by sharing ideas for doing things in a creative and simple way. The productivity of teams is greater than individual performance. However, teams are only productive for business when they are develop effectively and accurately. Inaccurate formation of a team impacts the productivity of the organization. So, being a global manager of Modawa Medical Company, it is important to create a strong team by considering the following points:

· All team members must have shared goals.

· All team members must have their own defined roles

· They have shared skills and knowledge

· All must communicate equally

· Members should Possess characteristics like mutual respect, punctuality, optimism, and have a can-do attitude.

Therefore, to generate a greater level of teamwork, it is important to manage the team in a strategic way (Koppett, 2013). As a global manager, I will use the following techniques to ensure a greater level of teamwork:

· Setting targets

· Leading accordingly

· Daily task evaluation and team rewards for the highest performance team

· Schedule team meetings for discussion

· Team activities to make them motivated or encouraged

· Ensuring effective communication

What are the advantages and disadvantages of managing a virtual team?

A virtual team has its own advantages and disadvantages; however, being a global manager, it is important to enhance the advantages and overcome the disadvantages. Virtual teams' advantages are that they are cost-efficient, easy to scale, a healthy balance between work-life, all-time availability, a global talent pool, it removes the geographical barriers, and it ensures transparency. However, the disadvantages are effective employee engagement, network issues at different geographical locations, lack of attentiveness, environmental, or background disruption. Therefore, the virtual teams are working in different locations and environments; that's why most of the time, some employees lack a silent and formal location or environment that disturbs the whole team. Similarly, the virtual teams depend on the network, and in most of the team meetings, the network issues are reported by a few employees.

What type of conflicts might occur between members? When it happened, how will you solve it?

Therefore, sometimes conflict arises between team members that exploit the team working environment. However, there are two types of conflicts that commonly arise between the team members, which are the following:

· Substantive conflicts that are related to the assigned tasks, goals, and resources allocation.

· Emotional conflicts are related to the employees' feelings, thinking, and personality, such as jealousy, envy, insecurity, personality problems, and so on.

Being a global manager, it is important to resort to such kinds of conflicts that arose between team members. A manager or leader must be neutral in making such a decision to resolve the issue effectively. Secondly, it is important to address the conflict early before it intensifies. The substantive conflicts can be best solved by making a neutral decision among the team members over the issue. However, for solving emotional conflicts, I will develop rules and principles that will be solved accordingly because this type of issue is quite sensitive and significantly impacts the employees' productivity. The team members having emotional conflicts will also be brought for consultation or counseling to avoid it in the future (Landry, 2009).

As a manager how you will manage the outsourced projects?

Managing the outsource project, is a little bit difficult because of a lack of awareness about their working and performance. However, it is important to consider the key points while outsourcing the task: the partners reliable, their previous performance, and past experience of the outsourcing project. Secondly, after getting satisfied with the partners, provide them complete information about the project along with the business goals and objectives behind that project. As a global manager, I will consider planning the project with the party in more detail. Along with this, it is important to devise a communication process with them to get informed about the project time-to-time. Further, it is important to ask for project performance reports after a specific time period. Following the above-mentioned techniques will help me as a manager to manage the outsource projects efficiently and accurately.

What techniques that you will apply to encourage and motivate your team for improvement?

It is very important for a global manager to encourage and motivate its teams continuously for improvement because they are key stakeholders whose productivity and working affect business performance (Khairova, 2020). However, I would like to use the following techniques to encourage and motivate the employees for improvements:

· To motivate and encourage the teams for improvement, communication plays a substantial role. It is important to communicate every day about teams' performance and working to identify their strengths and weaknesses by giving effective feedback.

· Rewards and bonuses play a significant role in encouraging and motivating teams to improve their performance.

· Moreover, as a global manager, I believe in offering opportunities for teams to improve their performance along with self-development. Because such kinds of opportunities motivate and encourage teams to improve themselves.

· Last but not least, providing a healthy and pleasant working environment also encourages teams to improve.

Conclusion:

A global manager is just like a leader who is responsible for each aspect of its organization management. For a global manager, it is important to adopt leadership traits and skills that are closely relevant to the nature of businesses and their operations. Moreover, it is important to adopt a management strategy that addresses all the perspectives of the organization ranging from developing strategy, making decisions, developing teams, ensuring communication across different business locations, and motivating and encourage teams for better performance. Therefore, the current digital transformation affects the business functions and its working that requires new changes that are aligned with this transformation.

So, it is important for managers to adopt such skills and traits to successfully manages the digital transformation of business. Because virtual management is far different from physically office-based management. The virtual management of teams, employees, and business operations requires more flexibility and quick responses as compared to the traditional management system. However, these things can be effectively managed if managers wisely utilize the online tools and software according to their business nature or type. Virtual management requires smart work with strategic or innovative thinking. So, being a global manager of Modawa Medical Company, I will successfully manage all tasks and operations because I learned and adopt the traits and skills that are required for this digital transformation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

References:

Abbatiello, A., Knight, M., Philpot, S., & Roy, I. (2017). Leadership disrupted: Pushing the boundaries. Rewriting the rules for the digital age, 77-85.

Bartsch, S., Weber, E., Büttgen, M., & Huber, A. (2020). Leadership matters in crisis-induced digital transformation: how to lead service employees effectively during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Service Management.

Koppett, K. (2013). Training to imagine: Practical improvisational theatre techniques for trainers and managers to enhance creativity, teamwork, leadership, and learning. Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Landry, G., & Vandenberghe, C. (2009). Role of commitment to the supervisor, leader-member exchange, and supervisor-based self-esteem in employee-supervisor conflicts. The Journal of social psychology, 149(1), 5-28.

Morley, S., Cormican, K., & Folan, P. (2015). An analysis of virtual team characteristics: A model for virtual project managers. Journal of technology management & innovation, 10(1), 188-203.

Rao, M. S. (2016). Collaborate to build effective teams to achieve organizational excellence and effectiveness. Industrial and Commercial Training.

Solberg, E., Traavik, L. E., & Wong, S. I. (2020). Digital Mindsets: Recognizing and Leveraging Individual Beliefs for Digital Transformation. California Management Review, 0008125620931839.

Soto-Acosta, P. (2020). COVID-19 Pandemic: Shifting Digital Transformation to a High-Speed Gear. Information Systems Management, 1-7.

Khairova, S., & Khairov, B. (2020, May). Efficient Techniques for Leading Teams: Building and Improving Teamwork. In 6th International Conference on Social, economic, and academic leadership (ICSEAL-6-2019) (pp. 19-27). Atlantis Press.