Workplace Tech Has Forgotten The End User

Dan Demers wrote in?Forbes?in 2019,?“Instead of streamlining and simplifying, technology has become a constant?game of one-upmanship.”

There’s no denying that technology has become exponentially complex. To many, it feels like we’ve become “dumb” when lightbulbs and refrigerators have become “smart.” While having to open an app to turn on a light seems like an unnecessary inconvenience, the truth is that the extra step to set it up could make usage more convenient. (Voice activate it? Clap on? Put it on a timer?)

Is the challenge of learning to set up these “smart things” worth the additional convenience? It really depends on people’s “digital dexterity” and penchant for technology. While consumers have a choice to opt into smart things (phones, lightbulbs, refrigerators, appliances, etc.), the user does not get to choose in the workplace. History tells us that over time, those smart things will win in the end.

There are?6.64 billion smartphone users?in the world today. That’s almost 84% of the global population. Factoring in children and the elderly, it is fair to say that, despite the seemingly difficult hurdle of getting used to these new gadgets, almost everyone came to the conclusion that they were worth it. In fact, Vinny Ricciardi, a data scientist at the World Bank, found that smartphones were actually?more popular than the toilet.

Enterprise Technology: It’s Complicated

Just like the smart things we use in our everyday lives, the technology we use at work has become exponentially complex. However, unlike consumer tech, we don’t have a choice to opt in or out of the technologies our companies put into place. People in all professions, from fast food work to accounting, must navigate overly complex technology to do their jobs, and yet it seems that tech really has forgotten the end user.

Simplifying enterprise technology has become a business priority and even a career opportunity for many. A quick search on LinkedIn shows that there are around 14,000 people with “digital adoption” in their profiles. As of this year, Gartner, Forrester and IDC all officially cover the digital adoption platform (DAP), which will be explained below, as its own category with at least one dedicated analyst. There is clear evidence that making peace between humans and technology is only going to grow.

In fact, here are a few existing technologies that are helping to bridge this gap.

Digital Adoption Platforms (DAPs):?These platforms exist as a glass layer above digital products providing customized guidance to the end user with the goals of increasing technology adoption and improving user experience. DAPs can make technology easier for people to use with better UI and automation while providing organizations with data insights and the ability to deploy solutions to user errors or confusion directly on the screen.

Single Sign-On (SSO):?SSOs, as the name implies, offer the ability to log in across the enterprise tools from a single point of entry. These solutions have become a critical component of getting work done digitally, as it has become increasingly difficult for employees to remember all of their usernames and passwords and to keep up with changing them every six months.

Unified Communication Systems:?These systems connect employees to each other, streamline inter-organizational communications and enable remote collaboration. Whether it’s video, audio or instant messages, employees need to be connected and able to collaborate from anywhere and at any time. These communication systems simplify a vital component of work in any industry—collaboration.

Project Management Software:?This technology category strives to make digital work simpler and easier for both the individual and connected teams by giving everyone on a project a central place to organize tasks and collaborate.

Focusing On User Experience Will Drive Business Outcomes

Somewhere in the race to be?bigger, faster, better, stronger,?tech has lost sight of the end user. The ultimate goal of technology should be to make human beings’ lives better, easier, safer or richer. If any software or hardware doesn’t do one of these things or enables another technology to do so, what exactly is the point? Focusing on the end user will pay off in user happiness and efficiency, as well as contribute favorably to a company’s bottom line.

Reversing the trend of overly complex technology means simplifying it. Taking a holistic approach to improving the user experience at work means zooming in and out of an employee’s day-to-day. Zooming in, an SSO, for example, connects individual employees to their work securely. This simplifies their access to all of their technology tools and intellectual property. DAPs, likewise, can be put to work to continuously improve and simplify user experiences by enabling UI improvements across applications directly on the screen with in-the-moment customized guidance and automation.

Beyond adopting new technology solutions, companies can look to simplify the user experience for employees by taking a critical lens to their enterprise tech stack. Are all of these technologies contributing to either the company’s bottom line or to the employee experience? Are there redundancies among the vast technology investments the organization has made? Measuring technology adoption and process efficiencies are great first steps in assessing what you’ve already invested in and what you’re actually getting out of these technologies in order to maximize their value.

At the end of the day, technology must work for us, not the other way around. With the right technologies and a focus on the employee experience, organizations can reverse the trend of overly complex tech in the workplace. There is peace on the horizon for the worker and her enterprise technology, but the road ahead has no place for one-upmanship.

This article was originally published in Forbes.