Understanding the rise of the Digital Workplace

BottomUp - Skills for Innovators

016 Digital Workspaces

[00:00:00] Mike: [00:00:09] Hello and welcome to the BottomUp podcast. My name's Mike Parsons. I'm your host, and we are here to share with your skills, tips, tricks for innovators, creators, designers, builders, you name it. Anyone who's out there daring to create something new. I'm excited to share with all of you the fifth and final installment of our top five emerging [00:00:34] technology series.

[00:00:35] I've been doing this now for four years, picking the top five technologies. It creates so much conversation, argumentation. I love it, trying to pick winners. You know the reason I like it so much is it forces you to think through what's going to succeed and you keep on working on this and you just get better and better and better.

[00:00:55] So we've had a lot of exciting picks so far, we've had four. Here's our final one. It's called digital workplace or said better, if you want to be customer first, you need to be employee [00:01:08] first. So, if you want to learn about this or any other of our top five emerging technologies, head over to BottomUp.io.

[00:01:16] Everything's there for you to read, digest, sign up, get the master class, get the video. You'll thoroughly love that and everything else we've got on offer there. So, the digital workplace. What on earth are we going on about? Well, the anchoring idea for this is that, if you want to be customer-first, if you want to provide all these great, amazing services and experiences for your customers, we often neglect [00:01:42] the people that actually have to build, create, and support, maintain these experiences.

[00:01:46] And that's the employee. So, this puts firmly at the top of the table, the importance of the digital workplace. So, what do we mean when we say digital workplace? Like what are we talking about here? Mike? Well, it's the tools, the apps, the dashboards, and all of the services that we use during our day to power all of the experiences that our customers' touch.

[00:02:08] So this can be workflow management, process management, systems management, application layers, all of the web [00:02:16] service connections that might service a product or a service. That's what we're talking about. It's the ability for the team to get together and deliver these products and services, keep them going to maintain the beating heart of a business.

[00:02:31] So let's cut through all the hype about digital workplace and all of that. And let's get to the three big things that really matter that you need to know. Number one, when we talk about employees and working, there is a huge boom in remote and virtual working. Not only, you know, [00:02:50] the classic freelance,

[00:02:53] global traveler archetype, but actually even within large organizations, more and more they're seeing advantages in letting their teams work remotely. Perhaps not permanently, but definitely on particular days on particular projects. Remote working is huge. I think with the 2020 virus context, you're going to see a ton more remote working.

[00:03:13] So digital workplace, which we picked way before. Any mention of a virus has now doubled down on this one cause it's going to be huge. The next one is that business [00:03:24] overall is going through an enormous transformation. I mean, a lot of the catchphrase in enterprise circles right now is about digital transformation, which is firmly not only about delivering great customer experiences, but it's also about creating employee experiences.

[00:03:43] And, like the best companies, if you really understand that you've got to nurture your employees with the tools, the apps, and the services that they use, you're only setting yourself up to be able to better deliver [00:03:58] customer experiences. And this remote working and digital transformation are two things happening on the inside of a business that are radically changing the digital workplace. But if there was to be one thing that is causing those two changes, which I've left for last, it is the huge growth we've seen in omnichannel customer experience. Even if your business is not in retail like Amazon or not in search like Google, you're [00:04:32] kind of competing with Amazon and Google. Let me explain why. If we use Amazon and Google every day, we become enabled with a sort of a defacto standard that every experience will be as quick, efficient, elegant, and seamless as Amazon and Google. So, what happens is we, therefore, transfer these expectations into other categories, other use cases, other products, and services, even if they're not retail in surge.

[00:05:03] We still expect them to be as good as an [00:05:06] experience as those from Amazon and Google. And this is the big catch. Every business now has to deliver its product and service as good as Amazon does this because our customers are using them. And here's the real flip, on the inside, enterprise technology actually has to be that level of consumer-grade too.

[00:05:29] And way too often, we forget the employee. In fact, if you look at the data, it's almost a factor of [00:05:40] 1000 times more investment, this is the one number that counts, 1000 times more is invested in understanding customer behavior than is spent on understanding employee behavior. It's crazy, but yet the employees are the ones that have to create or the magic for the customers.

[00:06:00] So there is this huge opportunity with the digital workplace. So, let's do the pros and cons here. Okay, without a doubt, if you make a great digital workplace, your employees are going to be more engaged. [00:06:14] And what do we know? If an employee is more engaged, they'll stay better, they'll do better work, and they will go, and they will advocate about working at your company and bring other good people in. I mean, that's an undeniable, huge benefit, you know, putting employees first. So. Okay, if this sounding pretty good, Mike, what's the catch? Well, listen, the truth really is the digital workplace. That employee experience is sort of an emerging field because truth be told, most [00:06:48] businesses have neglected the employee experience.

[00:06:52] And so when we talk about creating great employee experiences, most companies have never met the employee user journey. I bet you they've mapped the customer journey, but the employee is something that's been neglected. So, if you don't know the journey, it's very hard to digitize. So, it means a lot of time and effort has to go into doing things for the first time.

[00:07:16] And as we all know, doing things for the first time is a bit harder than doing it the second or third, or fourth. [00:07:22] So we're getting like-new muscle memory inside of the organization. Enormously challenging time, effort, resources. You know what, that just equals one thing, money. And we haven't traditionally had a big line item for the employee experience.

[00:07:38] And that's why if you want to be customer first, you have to be employee first. Why this digital workplace is so damn hard because it's often a first-time adventure for the enterprise. So, there you have it. Digital workplace number five of our top five [00:07:56] emerging technology trends for 2020. Just to recap, we had number one was 5G networks.

[00:08:03] Number two was a prickly one. Mass surveillance. Number three, boundless automation for the collective cloud. I mean, these are some killer, killer ideas here. The last one, digital workplace, I mean, there's so much here. So, as you decompress on some of these topics, head over to BottomUp.io. Get one of our courses and masterclasses.

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