A little under a year ago, businesses around the globe were forced to send their employees home in a bid to keep them safe from the deadly Covid-19 pandemic.
By Greg Gatherer
Those that could were forced to adapt to remote work. In many cases, they had to do so after careers spent in the confines of an office.
Even with vaccinations rolling out, it’s unlikely that there will be a mass return to the office. According to a December survey from Future Forum by Slack, 27% of knowledge workers say they’d never (13%) or rarely (14%) work from their employer’s office in an ideal world.
Nearly half, meanwhile, expect their employer to make permanent policy changes to expand remote working post-pandemic.
There are, however, disadvantages to this. People working remotely are largely totally disconnected from their organisations. They may be hanging on by the odd Teams or Zoom call, or living their day through their email inbox.
As such, organisations are under pressure to provide their employees with the best digital experience possible that drives digital collaboration and engagement between work colleagues.
A digital experience platform (DXP) allows an organisation to do just that.
Understanding DXPs and their benefits
Put simply, a DXP is a digital integration platform, designed to simplify the digital transformation process for organisations. The platform allows businesses to digitise business operations and deliver a consistent experience across all channels.
That’s important for the world of work because employees in all industries are leaning on digital tools to get their work done faster, but much of that efficiency is lost as employees spend time jumping between systems or searching for information among all their applications.
A DXP can help organisations recapture this time with a modern, user-friendly intranet that brings these tools under one umbrella customised for the organisation’s brand, with a host of out-of-the-box tools designed to create open, efficient communication in large, complex companies.
While intranets have always been important to the digitally-transforming workplace, a DXP allows organisations to go beyond an intranet and build a completely digital workplace. It does so by providing features which include:
- Robust support for global teams;
- Fully-integrated CMS;
- User profile and web analytics;
- One seamless platform;
- Completely customisable;
- Rapid mobile development; and
- Secure access to corporate intellectual property.
A DXP also allows organisations to build a microservices digital architecture, which can help address two key problems with working remotely:
- The first is that it’s much more difficult to measure employee productivity in a digital workplace. A unified digital platform, in the shape of a DXP, can help unify all lines of business workflows by integrating them into the employee experience. All tasks, projects and time spent on activities can be accessed through a single view and measured with the analytics engine residing in the DXP. This can increase individual productivity and simplify the employee workday by allowing them to focus on what matters.
- The second is a feeling of disconnect, which can lead to low employee morale and high turnover. By baking an employee engagement platform into a DXP, organisations can help employees feel connected to the company as a whole, as well as to their specific teams (such as helpdesk, finance, field services etc).
Additionally, DXPs allow for easier collaboration on tasks and projects as well as the chance to upskill by providing access to knowledge management and learning portals.
The changing workplace
In today’s rapidly evolving workplace, where the average large firm uses 129 software apps, those features are increasingly important.
Being able to support official, yet two-way communication, create a user-centric intranet experience that helps get work done, and digitally transform business operations is a vital part of being able to quickly scale to a remote workforce any time you have to and keep them productive outside of the office.
While organisations were already gaining awareness in this regard, some may not know just how much digital transformation is needed to achieve these workplace conditions or what tools are available when it comes to doing so.
With workers unlikely to return to the office in anything like the numbers they once did, it’s vital that organisations embrace DXPs.
Greg Gatherer is an account manager at Liferay Africa