Bobby Arbuthnot joined the NUG board in 2019 and serves as the Portfolio Solutions Chair.
Before we ask you about your role on the NICE User Group Board of Directors, will you tell us about your current job responsibilities?
I work for Unisys as the portfolio owner for the Global Service Desk services that operates within Unisys Digital Workplace Services organization. I specifically own the service desk area for the solutions portfolio – innovation and automation initiatives, products, services, tools - things we are doing in that area.
What path led you to Unisys?
My background starts with multiple roles and responsibilities within Fortune 50 organizations including The Home Depot, Perot Systems, and Dell Services for more than twenty years of experience in technology. These roles and responsibilities were working across functions, including delivery leadership, project management, quality assurance, customer service management, and deal governance. At my most recent stop at Armor, a security as a service organization targeted to the cloud, I had a number of responsibilities during my tenure including director of client experience, product marketing, and launching a new product release. The experience at Armor paired with the aforementioned time in Fortune 50 companies provided a strong foundation into joining and driving major initiatives here at Unisys.
Tell us about your experience using NICE solutions.
As I jumped onboard Unisys we have an outstanding Digital Workplace Service portfolio team that was already in flight on several engagement points with NICE. The first focal point was standing up NICE CXone as a foundational cloud contact center element within our Unisys Digital Workplace Services – powered by InteliServe™. With the CXone up with our first client we have progressed into a two year project modernizing to our DWS InteliServe and will be completed before EOY 2020. In this same period we have also completed a migration upgrade to the cloud-based NICE Workforce Management from the original on premise NICE WFM solution point. We also deployed and leverage NICE Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Our AI ops team utilizes NICE RPA across DWS client services and internally within our Unisys environments. If you had the opportunity to join in the 2019 NICE Interactions event you might have caught me speaking to both the CXone and RPA implementations and learned experience.
What do you like best about the NICE User Group (NUG)?
One of the main reasons I was intrigued to join was to stay on the forefront of what’s coming as far as future items… what’s the roadmap, how can we help influence it. We view NICE as a core strategic partner and wanted to strengthen the relationship. We have a unique perspective in that while we are one entity at Unisys, we support 100+ clients across managed services that each have their own business, which gives us a lot of views as to how the solutions work with different businesses.
Tell us a little about you, personally.
I enjoy traveling with my wife and my family. We love warm places – like beaches. I had the opportunity to check a bucket item off the list when I visited Bora Bora and French Tahiti. I’m a certified diver and have snorkeled and dived with whales. I enjoy fishing and digital travel photography. I try to capture the memory of what I see on our trips so when we get to look back on the pictures we can recall the stories around it.
What advice would you like to offer to those just starting their careers in technology?
Start early. Look for opportunities to get involved in internships – paid or not. Explore the many different types of work within Technology. Technology isn’t just fixing computers any more. It can be customer and user experience angles, cognitive intelligence, pervasive automation, machine learning and more. Use those opportunities with your internship and explore those angles. Internships give you real work experience which is very valuable to proceed forward in your career.
How has COVID-19 impacted your business?
At a microlevel looking at our team – we were already working remotely within our global portfolio footprint, so not a significant change there. It did change things for us in terms of traveling and supporting face-to-face conversations with clients. There was a great deal of activity that went towards our team contributing to our business operations as we shifted to a BCP delivery service being extremely remote. We’ve done some case studies on how fast we moved to have closer to 98% of our operations team remote and being able to manage our service desk operations.
What do you like most about doing business with NICE?
One of the things that is best about NICE is how NICE looks forward to where the commercial side of the markets are going and plans for the future. It’s very interesting to see where NICE is driving its solutions, how it integrates its solutions, how the consumer is expecting items and services to be delivered and how you are aligning with that.