ISG Provider Lens™ Future of Work Solutions - Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Solutions - Global 2024

Modern technologies use AI to enhance solutions that address the future of work needs

Digital Employee Experience

Although the COVID-19 pandemic years are becoming distant memories, the changes it brought to how we work remain. Many global organizations tried, in vain, to reinstate the old ways of working with their Return-to-Office (RTO) policies. These policies face stiff resistance from the workforce, who have experienced the pros and cons of working remotely and understand that they can deliver quality output without physically being in the office. End-user technology, encompassing all the devices, applications and tools needed for work irrespective of location, has become a key driver in ensuring a successful hybrid work strategy. Ensuring an uninterrupted end-user technology experience is at the forefront of the list of priorities of enterprise IT teams. The enterprise IT teams should ensure that the  devices and applications that employees  use while working in a remote or hybrid environment are always up and running. There should be an automated resolution of issues associated with the end-user technology IT assets. If any issue requires reaching out to enterprise IT, it should be resolved immediately.

Digital employee experience (DEX) solutions have assisted enterprise IT organizations with these objectives for quite some time. Regardless of size, many global enterprises now realize the benefits of monitoring, measuring and managing EX with digital technologies. DEX solutions provide a quantifiable measure of EX that can be leveraged by enterprise IT organizations to assess the health of their IT estate. For large global organizations, identifying and discovering various IT assets, including devices and endpoints, in their complex environment is tedious. Similarly, they need help identifying their software and application licenses and ensuring their usage. Modern DEX solutions address this need by providing fullscale visibility into IT assets by covering devices of all types and providing software license optimization capabilities.

DEX solutions also measure the performance of the endpoints and devices and can identify the right time to retire a device or send it for a refresh or refurbishment. These features assist IT teams with planning, budgeting and
implementing green IT initiatives focused on sustainability.

Another critical aspect of DEX solutions that appeals to modern IT organizations is their ability to auto-resolve  incidents before they occur. Many DEX solutions use analytics and automation to perform root cause analysis (RCA) and identify the cause of an issue. They offer a library of automated incidence resolutions that can be used to reduce IT tickets and optimize IT support costs.

The growing usage of AI has led to the vision of zero or near-zero service desks, where IT teams may not have to invest heavily in personnel to support issues. This is tied to the concept of autonomous IT, where machines can predict, identify and resolve issues independently. Enterprise IT organizations are also increasingly adopting AI capabilities to enhance their IT estate observability. AI adds value to DEX solutions by providing multiple options to improve and expand functionalities. It enhances the AIOps capabilities by supporting continuous monitoring and observing of IT infrastructure, analyzing data to detect anomalies, predicting potential problems, automating  repetitive tasks and continuously learning to improve efficiency and reliability. Leading DEX providers are deeply integrating these features into their solutions. IT teams must utilize these upgraded technologies to improve employee services, optimize cost and operations and enhance their overall business value.

This report evaluates key DEX technology providers that stand out in their abilities to support the growing need of enterprise IT organizations for technology-led experiences.

Connected and Collaborative Work

The future of work emphasizes technology solutions that support unified communications and effective collaboration among employees in a hybrid or remote setup. As global employees work from their preferred location, effectively managing work becomes increasingly important. Organizations that have a distributed, remote and hybrid workforce
are expected to adapt to a faster pace in completing tasks and resources that are everchanging in availability. Given the constant evolution of project priorities and workforce transitions across organizations, ensuring an accessible and productive work experience is critical. A clear and adaptable work plan with defined tasks and activities is the first step to enable effective collaboration between team members and departments. Organizations looking to optimize work planning should consider adopting a collaborative work management platform, a unified process to plan and execute work with activities and tasks using the available resources.

The era of virtual workspaces has resulted in efficient collaboration and rapid completion of tasks and projects. Organizations will have to reevaluate their collaborative work management platforms to examine whether traditional workflows include the advantages of modern systems. According to ISG Research, by 2025, one-half of organizations will invest in work experiences and prioritize work management technologies that optimize time for task and activity execution. Organizations with a structured work approach for supporting a productive and agile workforce can  respond to sudden demands and provide precise planning to assure the customers. Preparation using a well-equipped work management platform can be a key differentiator in the marketplace.

Modern unified communication collaboration (UCC) and productivity solutions integrate features to support modern collaborative work canvas solutions that visualize complete work management and offer centralized access to all components and related content. This leads to blurring lines between work management and the work itself. Technology providers from diverse domains can provide such a connected and collaborative work environment. While
traditional project portfolio management solutions have a head start in this space, technology providers from UCC, content collaboration, office productivity applications and enterprise applications also offer capabilities to address the needs of modern, connected and collaborative work.

Most work management solutions offer specialized solutions for managing projects across complex business functions such as marketing, creative content development, IT and general business operations. Providers that stand out now focus on tailored product solutions designed for industry-specific use cases.

AI offers significant opportunities for enhancing connected and collaborative work, improving individual and team productivity and efficient management. These solutions can boost individual productivity, while teams can leverage AI to improve project management endeavors. With AI, modern project managers can analyze the current state of various projects, identify risks, optimize resource allocation and derive insights from diverse data sources and content types.

This report evaluates key connected and collaborative work solution providers that stand out to support the increasing need for modern work management and collaborative work canvas.

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