Empowering the enterprise workforce – 3

Read blog 2 of this series to discover how artificial intelligence and analytics are shaping digital workplace in a post-covid world.

Advancements in technology and changing individual expectations in a post-pandemic world have reshaped the modern workplace from a fixed physical office to any space where work gets done. Accordingly, there’s a demand for higher mobility, and organizations across the globe are considering digital workplace solutions (DWS) to upgrade their working environment.

Preparing For A Digitally Mature Workplace

“The digital workplace is a business strategy that leverages an engaging and intuitive work environment to boost workforce digital dexterity — the ambition and ability to apply technology to improve business outcomes.” – Gartner.

As technology keeps evolving, it creates new markets, leading to new business opportunities and market players along with it. Owing to this, enterprises are faced with an inherent need to increase their competitive edge or risk losing their market share or customer base. To achieve this, business leaders tend to jump on the technological bandwagon quickly without preparing their organization for digital maturity. Many also tend to believe that buying the right software or service guarantees productivity. However, that’s a folly. In practice, digital transformation goes much beyond investing in new technology. Rather, it is a process-oriented journey designed to help organizations realign with the ever-changing market seamlessly, without any downtime.

There’s also a human element to digital transformation that must be considered. According to a PwC report, 90% of C-suite executives believe their company pays attention to people’s needs when introducing new technology. However, it seems about only half of their staff agrees. This gap is indicative of poor employee experience, which is detrimental to overall productivity and defeats the purpose of creating a collaborative and productive workplace.

So, instead of a piecemeal approach restricted to technology investments, business leaders must think deeply about what digital means to them – whether it is purchasing new technology to improve their service offering, enhancing the workforce for higher productivity and enjoyment, or transforming the way the organization works entirely? It is also pertinent to consider employee expectations at this stage because they are going to be the end-users of the technology. It is only after identifying the digital requirements of the enterprise workplace and business functions that leaders must approach the question of finding the right solution and service provider to satisfy their business demands.

The other challenge that arises at this stage is navigating through a market inundated with multiple digital service providers, which not only increases costs but also makes customization difficult. A viable business model that has emerged out of these complications and is getting increasingly popular is Work-as-a-Service or WaaS.

According to stats, the Global Workspace as a Service Market is expected to reach USD 8.54 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 9.7% over the forecast period 2020-2025. These figures are not surprising, though, considering the benefits of WaaS. For example, with WaaS, you can subscribe to VDI on the cloud as a service with UX, automation, and managed desktop services, including unified endpoint management, to upgrade your legacy IT infrastructure and applications without jumping through unnecessary hoops. Additionally, you get full visibility into the cost of the service offering and the ability to scale that make WaaS a game-changer in the DWS market.

Parting Thoughts: Ensuring The Success Of Your DWS Strategy
The success of your DWS depends not only on choosing the right software but also on the right vendor that understands your business objective and can fine-tune the service to meet your goals. Additionally, some other critical factors for the successful implementation of Digital Workplace Solutions are identified below:

1. Identifying critical enterprise challenges and the value of addressing these challenges to direct the focus of your digital transformation technology.
2. Choosing a business-centric model over an IT-centric model that builds upon existing systems, with a focus on employee training and engagement for increased productivity and enhanced employee experience.
3. Focus on business continuity by identifying future risks and the level of support offered by the service provider for mitigating these challenges and staying abreast of the market.
4. Besides the cost of implementation and impact on business continuity, security is the key parameter to analyze your choice of DWS. It is worth considering the potential security risks and how your service provider will help you tackle them in the future of work.

Clearly, architecting a digital workplace is the way forward for most organizations. Still, this initiative’s success depends on various factors, including workforce engagement, room for customization, and the level of security and support offered. In the next blog, we will discuss how Zensar can help you create an immersive and intelligent workplace through flexible and customized digital workplace solutions.