Demystifying Digital Workplace

Does anyone care at what stage of the preparation is their $10 pizza? Probably not, but it does take away all anxiety, efforts to find out when it will arrive but having that information offers an EXCEPTIONAL user experience.

It is not like earlier organizations were doing a poor job of enabling their workforce with all the tools, products, and technology they need to do their job. But now consumer products, services, and COIVD -19 have changed the game. Now, it is all about USER EXPERIENCE?

Let’s take one step back and try to understand the user’s experience outside the enterprise environment. To get a deeper understanding we need to analyze which are the most used services, products, mobile applications, websites, across the various domains used by people and what experience they offer.??

Let’s examine the Online Streaming Service industry's growth trends:?

One of the ways to interpret these indicators is where the consumer is going to invest their time, energy, and MONEY.? Companies operating in these industries have to speed up their innovation cycle, get laser focus on customer experience, and cater to customer’s rapidly changing demands, to capture the biggest piece of the pie.?

So how can organizations start with their “Digital Workspace” journey? I’d like to emphasize the word “journey”, as this is a never-ending process.?

The hybrid workforce model is going to stay! Now, the CIOs top priority is to enhance the overall digital workplace expiring. It doesn’t matter where in the world employees are being hired, they need to ensure each person gets a consistent experience regardless of their physical presence. The poor onboarding process, not having adequate access, lack of training, not having the proper device, will have negative ramifications in terms of cost, productivity, and overall user experience.

First, define what it means “Digital Workplace” for your organization. It helps to ensure every person has absolute clarity and understanding of your vision and mission. Also, every time some utter the word “Digital Workplace” they are all referring to the same definition.?

Second, Define your strategic vision which should be aligned with business objectives and should include elements such as overall strategy, strategic execution plan, and operational plan.?

Third, Identify your customers and personas. The deeper understanding you have about your customer, their pain points, common issues, the better off you are. For instance, if 40% of your workforce is part of an Engineering organization, then it should be your top priority to focus on identifying their pain points and addressing them.?

Fourth, Identify core key areas such as technology, data, process, organizational change capability, etc, and assess the strength and weaknesses of your organization for each of these areas.?

Fifth, Start with discovery. Identify each tool, application, product, a process currently being used in the organization, how it is being used, how frequently it is being used, who are the top users, what impact they have on the organization, and at what capacity these tools are being used, etc. Once you identify all this information and based on the areas you’ve identified earlier and the capability you need to build, you can focus your time, effort, and energy.?

Sixth, identify key areas of improvement. Some of the common areas you can have immediate improvement are the on-boarding/ off-boarding process, data requirement by various groups, reporting, streamlining access, collaboration tools, adoption of tools, identifying new tools to enhance user experience, etc.?

Seventh, Define and implement your execution process and cycle. Depending on what approach is being used by your organization OKRs, Agile, Scrum, etc. you can have various groups to prioritize the projects which can have a big impact and value addition. The outcome of each project or sprint cycle should be able to address one or two capabilities the organization needs to build.?

Eighth, Define and implement how the outcome will be measured. There are primarily two ways you can measure value addition, soft saving or hard cost saving. Surveys can be used to collect user feedback and understand the qualitative impact of the changes.. Since, experience is subjective to the person, capturing the feedback before and after implementing change can help to measure the impact.?

To transform your organization, transform your workforce’s experience.

Cheers - Satish