The On-Demand Enterprise

25 years ago, renowned author William Gibson said that “the future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Over the ensuing decades, technology has transformed the daily lives of millions, but that quote is often interpreted to mean that inequalities in access and availability have prevented those advances from reaching ubiquity. As broadband, WiFi, and affordable smart phones spread, so will the future that is carried on the backs of these technologies.

The explosion of on-demand consumer services in recent years is proof the future has arrived. Services such as Uber, Instacart and Postmates, just to name a few, have transformed the way that millions of us interact with the businesses and people around us. I now have access to transportation, food, movies and anything else in my hand in an instant, allowing immediate indulgence, whenever I want, from a single device.

It’s easy to forget that the first wave of on-demand indulgence was the ability to find any piece of knowledge or information, whenever and wherever we pleased, as a normal activity. If I can’t find information from experts on how to repair my bathroom sink or roast a chicken via Google, there are also millions of how-to videos on YouTube that will teach me instead. 

Despite these on-demand innovations redefining entire industries around us, the enterprise is still stuck in the past and not part of the on-demand future. I can summon a car ride from my phone in minutes, but I still have to wait around all day for the ‘cable guy’ or speak with a bank teller for some basic tasks.

Founders and investors have been talking about the “Consumerization” of IT to refer to both the trends of adopting consumer product-like user experience in enterprise software as well as the consumer product-like selling motion of allowing individual knowledge workers, designers, and developers pick their own technologies. The on-demand enterprise is the next phase of consumer influence bleeding into the enterprise. It refers specifically to meeting user expectations of near instant satisfaction of knowledge requests, issue resolution, and real time communication. More importantly, it goes beyond the consumerization of IT to the consumerization of enterprise workflows, business processes, and workplace experiences. 

The enterprise market got a first taste of on-demand with the arrival of cloud computing a decade ago. When Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched in 2006, any developer, anywhere on the planet, was able to provision a virtual server via the internet in just minutes. As a result, an entire generation of developers grew up ‘cloud-native’ without ever experiencing racking a room of servers, installing software via CDs, or needing to learn about complicated network-attached-storage devices.

This on-demand expectation revolutionized the developer landscape with cloud services like Twilio and Stripe but it hasn’t expanded beyond it yet. It’s time for the new wave of companies that deliver the on-demand enterprise, and uproot every enterprise function and line of business like HR, IT, legal, sales and support as well as every vertical from financial services to health care and construction.

What Is The On-Demand Enterprise?

The on-demand enterprise applies to any company which leverages technology alongside its operations to deliver intelligent, immediate interactions to both their employees and the customers they interact with.

On-demand enterprise employee services are a good example of an opportunity in this space. Such an innovative service would allow instant access to information, providing employees and partners real-time data that in the past was too complex to deliver. Another example would be a service that allows a user to automatically make a previously complex action simply such as asking IT for a new computer without having to fill out a tiresome help ticket.

On-demand enterprise customer interactions also could benefit from upheaval. Automated assistance, through the use of machine learning, could help customers reach a resolution faster, without needing to wait for a human to respond to a support ticket. Better yet, intelligent escalation would help customers move interactions between channels or up the chain more efficiently, or return a product without having to talk to a support agent.

From the employee or user perspective of these new systems, the on-demand enterprise is about enablement at its core. The on-demand system should enable the employee, equipping them with the information and tooling they need to succeed at their jobs beyond what was previously possible on their own. Modern, on-demand enterprises don’t rely on excuses when something can’t get done — they instead offer tools that turn their front-line representatives and managers into heroes.

On-Demand Requirements

These on-demand services need to support two basic functions: information and action. Employees or customers need on-demand applications to access information or request action. In either case, the on demand enterprise makes sure the customer and employee issues reach resolution, guaranteeing user satisfaction.

The on-demand enterprise must support communicating in a multi-channel world so that users can interact with the company via voice, text, chat, email, video, or even through social media channels like Twitter and Facebook.

The on-demand enterprise requires intelligent service. This means a user can access data or file requests via self-service workflows but the on-demand enterprise will intelligently escalate support of the user through automated assistants (ie intelligent chat bots), or routing the user to an expert or authority within the company that can answer the request.

Finally the on-demand enterprise is predictive and proactive. Data and machine intelligence will allow these new applications to be contextually aware of every customer, employee, and user across time, across channels, and across contexts. Eventually these applications can predict and proactively help customers and employees by anticipating their needs.

The On-Demand Enterprise Is Arriving Now

Just a few years ago, the on-demand enterprise was a pipe dream. Thanks to rapidly-changing consumer expectations, we are seeing this become a reality in 2019. The combination of cloud, smart phones, and machine intelligence put these tools in the hands of enterprises for the first time. For example, machine learning enables the automation of complex, but essential, daily office tasks without investing in supercomputers. With these tools, the enterprise is able to move beyond a slow ‘batch’ experience into a real-time, always-on feed of activity, available instantaneously. 

Every business function in a company will become on-demand. The first change we’re seeing is the transformation of the customer relationship with the world’s largest organizations. Companies like Gladly are reimagining the customer support experience — traditionally a slow succession of support tickets — into a new customer-centric relationship in which representatives are able to create tailored resolutions for customers in a fraction of the time.

Customers can reach global brands that use Gladly’s software, like JetBlue and Tumi, on whichever channel is most convenient, regardless of whether that’s a text, phone call or email, and have a single, unified conversation across all of those channels. Consumers are darting between apps all day long, from Telegram to iMessage, then Twitter and back, so support should be able to keep that conversation going, too.

Blend does the same for mortgage and consumer lending, transforming it from a slow, in-the-dark experience into a on-demand one. The Blend platform powers the mobile and online mortgage application processes for some of the largest financial institutions, such as Wells Fargo and US Bank, removing the pain of going to a physical branch or filling in complex, endless paper forms. Additionally, it empowers lending officers with tooling in the same vein, speeding up the process that took 3–6 weeks into just days, and one day become nearly instantaneous.

Internal enterprise tooling stands to benefit from the same transformations which will turn a company into an “On-demand Workplace.” An on-demand workplace turns internal IT and HR help desks into real-time, AI-powered solutions, removing the days-long wait for help in situations where employees need instant answers. Instead of filing tickets for hardware help, or asking HR for advice, employees can get answers immediately, or escalate to the right resource in the company without needing to hunt for them. Spoke is leading this on-demand workplace revolution. Spoke allows employees to use Slack, email, or text to access office information or make requests of the company by intelligently routing the requests to the right department within a company. On-demand consumer companies like Doordash, Allbirds, and StockX are Spoke customers and also becoming on-demand workplaces!

Until now, navigating internal information was a ‘hunt and peck’ process, but in an on-demand enterprise, it becomes an instant, relevant conversation with an intelligent system, saving both time and money for the company, as well as allowing employees to become more efficient at their jobs.

The Beginning Of A Revolution

Technology is turning our daily lives into on-demand experiences, and we’re coming to expect the same from every aspect of our lives. The enterprise is ready for transformation, dragging it into the on-demand economy, but we’re only at the beginning: the landscape is full of opportunities to bring new solutions to the table and change the way we work for — or interact with — large, complex organizations.

The question that remains unanswered is which companies will reap these rewards and gain the millions of consumers and employees who desire something better, on-time, in the ways that are most convenient for them. The on-demand enterprise will transform the largest organizations in the world in 2019, leaving behind those who aren’t able to adapt.

If you are an entrepreneur in the space or want to share feedback around this discussion, I can be reached via LinkedIn, Twitter or jerry.chen (at) greylock (dot) com. Disclosure: Greylock invested in Gladly, Blend and Spoke, and I am on the board of all three companies.

For more, Spoke CEO Jay Srinivasan shared a blog on The On-Demand Workplace and recently released a research paper on the expectation of employees in today’s modern workforce.

Thanks to Elisa Schreiber for help on this blog.