Today, technology is transforming the way we work, thanks to exponential digital innovations. In order to meet the employee’s expectations of always staying connected and having the freedom to communicate from wherever, whenever, and however they choose to, IT is expected to understand and support complex needs on a day-to-day basis. Under the current pandemic circumstances, employee welfare has been put under the lens as several businesses have had to switch to the “New Now” by adopting remote working solutions.

In the world of instant access that we currently live in, companies have spun new digital workplaces to provide remote employees both the right tools and platforms.  This has not only enabled easier collaboration and coordination but has blurred the lines between the physical workspaces and the place where all of the action happens.

As the difference between the professional and the personal lives of people become increasingly vague, digital technology is taking over businesses in an unprecedented manner.

To meet the standards of evolving employee demands, the top imperatives for every organization’s CIO are:

The Customer Imperative: Responding to change is one of the main focus areas. Without a dynamic environment and flexibility to adapt, all stakeholders involved are likely to suffer. Clients couldn’t care less why something is not working – they simply need it to work, whereas IT needs to know why technology isn’t working appropriately. For this, they need tools to perform sentiment and behavioral analysis, prioritizing customer issues, performing root-cause analysis as well as issue resolution. Also, the inclusion of digitalization not only speeds the process of client deliverables but also promotes transparency which further strengthens brand loyalty and consumer trust. Additionally, with the industry inevitably moving towards automation, resource management, and optimization through the implementation of proactive resolution mechanisms has helped save costs and increase productivity. Common use cases include :

• Automated Incident Management
• Real-time Event Correlation and Alerts
• Solution and Application-based SLAs, and
• Centralized operations

The Employee Imperative: Adopting a more productive approach to work is a C-suite imperative. Seamless digital integration will help inculcate guiding governance, high risks, and improved compliance that will help maximize the benefits of connectivity. Data gathering and consumer insight is another extremely crucial aspect of digitization that helps align the workplace strategy focus with the existing information management. Moreover, by enforcing a culture of continuous growth through employee training and development programs, they can be taught to harness the power of digitalization to their advantage. According to Forbes, “87 % of CIOs believe that digitally empowering their employees can drive at least 5 % additional revenue growth over three years.”

The growing lack of IT uniformity has made it increasingly difficult to manage IT environments, which, in turn, hinders business agility. Potential security gaps may be indicative of a growing threat with respect to the shift to remote work. Enterprise-grade security enables businesses to protect against fraudulent activities and leakage of confidential information to ensure that private calls and meetings remain private and crisis management does not become a concern due to lags and digital interruptions.  To mitigate these issues, companies are implementing solutions for

• End-User security awareness and compliance
• Self Service: free IT resources to solve common problems
• Self-Healing: for Performance Issues/Troubleshooting and access management
• Collaborative Tools: for video and web conferencing

The Competitive Edge:   Acquisition and retention are currently the top emerging risks faced by organizations around the world today. But to our benefit, we have numerous opportunities to make the most of our digital footprints. A holistic digital strategy can open up doors to innumerable events to communicate, collaborate, and connect through, messaging, crowdsourcing, mobility, and others. An alarming 63 % of companies cite talent gap issues as a key concern for their organization, as indicated by Gartner. To overcome this, companies can consider initiating training programs for end-user security awareness, adopting advanced security policies such as two-factor authentication, and others. 

Another good way to maintain productivity includes cloud-based solutions and automation that has solved the problem of “need for speed” for remote management, making the storage and handling of data assets possible. With such exceptional technological advancements at our disposal, personalized experiences without compromising on security in a collaborative workplace is now achievable and a reality. Four ways in which digital workplaces have an edge for talent:

1. Strengthening recruitment and retaining talent can be made possible by developing an exceptional work environment. Heightened job satisfaction and improved efficiency are by-products of empowering employees with the right tools at the right time.
2. Instant access to information increases agility and work flexibility of employees which therefore results in improved productivity
3. Providing innovative work environments improves staff experience and therefore leads to higher customer satisfaction.
4. Virtual work environments allow employees to flexibly connect and collaborate not only reducing costs but also accelerating the chances of increased revenues.

Organizations always strive hard to deliver quality and outstanding customer experience. Hence, it is vital to have the right physical infrastructure at each location. If connections are balky, applications are non-responsive, and network access is slow; they collectively affect both the employees, prospects, and customers who are engaging in real-time. The right combination of technology and a trusted technical partner as part of a unified team can deliver the culmination of individual action into collective power. But to achieve extraordinary results – together, the right infrastructure is a must. For instance, by adopting hybrid cloud architecture for a speedy process of making resources available, and creating a highly secured infrastructure for businesses available, we can improve the scalability, information sharing, accessing, and make it much more possible to deliver a modern experience to employees as well as customers.