End-User Technology or Technology for End Users?

Each of us remembers when we've had a great consumer experience, and when we've had a terrible one. Whether it was above-and-beyond customer service at a favorite retailer or getting an undercooked meal at a restaurant, these experiences stick with us and influence how — or if — we engage with the company in the future. 

The same applies for end users and their experience with workplace technology. 

End users expect a seamless digital experience so they can spend more time working productively and less time troubleshooting. Yet, according to Gartner, only one-third of employees say the technology they use is productive, empowering and easy. 

Moving forward, as companies transition to a new era of hybrid work, the digital employee experience will play an especially important role in attracting and retaining top talent. In fact, 64 percent of employees agree that the ability to work from anywhere instead of coming into the office directly affects whether they stay at or leave a job.   

So, how productive are end users at home? 

A recent BCG survey revealed that most employees self-reported that they maintained or even improved their pre-COVID productivity while working from home. While that self-reporting might be surprising, the linkage between employees' positive digital experiences and productivity is not: Employees who were satisfied with their home office setups and collaboration tools were twice as likely to have reported same or increased productivity, according to BCG. 

While many workers have returned — at least part time — to office locations, it's likely remote workers will remain a large percentage of the workforce in the future. C-suite technology executives must remain laser-focused on the digital employee experience and the critical need for responsive, productive and collaborative workplace technology.

A closer look at additional key factors driving the digital employee experience

Attracting future talent with seamless access

According to Forbes, 75 percent of the global workforce will consist of millennials by the year 2025. Commonly labelled tech savvy, millennials increasingly expect and demand cutting-edge technologies that empower them to work anywhere at any time. This evolution in expectations is pushing CTOs and CIOs to prioritize end-user technology to attract the best talent.

Enabling your workforce with productive meetings

Beyond attracting and retaining talent, leadership is tasked with delivering best-in-class IT services to maximize productivity. With slow and inefficient technology costing some global companies at least 21 days in productivity each year, C-suite executives are increasingly seeking out new technologies, tools and processes that prioritize performance, stability and accessibility to help employees be more productive and focus on what really matters.

One of the key culprits of workplace inefficiency is videoconferencing technology. Today's end users have more meetings than ever before, especially those who belong to multiple teams and have coworkers located across the globe. While meetings can enable workforce productivity, they can also cause a lot of wasted time, money and end-user frustration. Have you ever sat down for a video conference meeting to realize you need to login again, enter a meeting ID or connect your device to a screen? The time spent overcoming these obstacles adds up fast.

To avoid unproductive meetings, organizations must implement conference room technology that provides seamless connectivity and ease of use, allowing end users to spend less time attempting to connect and more time collaborating with colleagues. 

Any app, any device, any location 

In order to meet workforce expectations and deliver a seamless, flexible and productive digital experience, IT must also adopt technology that provides end users access to any application, on any device, from any location.

Any application

Each end user needs a different set of business-critical applications to effectively do his or her job – from email to timesheets to SaaS applications. A personalized app catalog — where applications are easily accessed with single sign-on (SSO) — meets end users' requirements for seamlessness in their digital employee experience. 

Any device

The way we work has changed, and so have our endpoint devices. Desktops are no longer the sole device type for productive work. Today's end users want the flexibility to access business-critical apps via their mobile phone, tablet or any device of their choice. 

Any location

With the rise in remote work and the growing demand for more flexibility, organizations need to provide end users the ability to work from anywhere — their house, the airport or in line at the coffee shop — with the same seamless access to applications as if they were on site. This allows end users to efficiently accomplish tasks that once required them to be in the workplace to complete. Additionally, IT teams must deliver this while ensuring data remains secure and compliant. 

Powering workplace transformation

With organizations looking to invest significantly in emerging workplace technology in the coming years, it is key that the end-user experience remains the center of focus. We can help organizations interested in developing a workplace transformation strategy keep the end-user experience in perspective through a diverse range of capabilities and offerings designed to make this process seamless.

• Our experts can start by hosting a briefing or assessment with the individuals at your organization focused on improving the employee experience — human resources, IT, C-Suite, end-user computing practitioners — around topics like collaboration, end-user computing, dynamic personas or the overall digital workspace. Our dynamic persona assessment is a common starting point for customers who need help identifying and aligning their end-user needs, technology requirements and business objectives to develop a recommended roadmap.
• Customers can use our Advanced Technology Center (ATC) to benefit from demonstrations of multi-vendor workplace architectures, labs for mission-critical technology designs, and tech briefings on emerging and competing workplace technologies.
• Our Collaboration and Next-Gen Meetings experts can help standardize your meeting experience by integrating software and applications that simplify scheduling, joining and sharing meetings.
• During our onboarding training sessions, our Adoption Services team helps familiarize your technology administrators and end users on existing or newly implemented workplace technologies.

Additionally, it's important for organizations to understand that the end-user experience is a key step in their overall digital transformation. Engaged end users are critical for successfully powering digital initiatives — from delivering improved customer or patient experiences to launching new products. Our Digital Strategy team is a strategic partner in developing digital strategies that merge the needs of both IT (e.g., modernization, automation, accelerated delivery) and business leadership (new revenue channels, workforce attraction and retention, increased customer satisfaction).

For more insight into end-user technology, I encourage you to read our articles about empowering employees and rethinking the digital employee experience.