Digital transformation of the workspace

IT managers and business owners need more alignment to provide services that help increase responsiveness

The digital revolution has led to a whirlwind of transformational projects within organisations and outside them. Be it one's lifestyle or work style, ways of working are evolving at a fast pace, and changing the landscape of enterprise communications and collaboration.

What's happening in the organisation today?

More than ever before, individuals have access to powerful technologies and have embraced digital in both their personal and professional lives. This phenomenon impacts individual expectations in their roles as both customers and employees. Today, customers want connectivity, personalisation and interaction, which in turn is spurring companies to embrace digital solutions, such as blogs, forums and social media across the customer lifecycle. Examples include chat facilities in customer service centers or personalised customer information through mobile apps. Similarly, employees expect the same level of functionality at work as they have at home or enjoy as customers, which in turn is forcing organisations to change the way they work. Moreover, flexible working conditions are also particularly important for the millennial generation.

How are workspaces going digital?

Today, organisations and processes are more dispersed and complex. Companies encourage collaboration between teams to break down silos and urge employees to work in tandem with global counterparts to improve agility and be more innovative. Technology is the most important enabler to enhance this collaboration between dispersed individuals.

In the past, in an effort to build collaborative workspaces, many companies have been consolidating their messaging infrastructures. Data centre and server consolidation initiatives, as well as standardisation of messaging systems, have come a long way to create an infrastructure that is globally consistent. Closed group enterprise social networks are also gaining popularity, facilitating communication within teams and across functions or geographical regions while allowing employees to be autonomous when sourcing expertise across the organisation. Instant messaging has seen a tremendous growth within large corporations over the past couple of years. According to the report by Radicity Group, enterprise IM currently accounts for about 13 per cent of worldwide IM accounts, and by 2016, will account for 19 per cent of worldwide IM accounts.

IT-controlled instant messaging services offer a more secure and integrated environment, but are unfortunately still primarily limited to communications within an enterprise. So how is IT managing with the new work style?

With everything evaporating into the big complex cloud, and rise of trends such as BYOD (bring your own device) and CYOD (choose your own device), people are carrying their own devices like laptops, tablets and smartphones to the workplace, and IT organisations of enterprises have been forced to create solutions to accommodate such trends to remain an attractive and collaborative workplace which is flexible for both employee and employer.

IT managers and business owners need more alignment to ensure they understand business needs and provide services that help increase efficiency and responsiveness, while ensuring adherence to IT strategy. To ensure alignment between business and IT, it is imperative for the IT department to actively communicate challenges, choices and solutions for technology adoption with the boardroom.

The digital revolution is indeed a formidable opportunity for companies to transform as they evolve to meet the challenges of today's complex technology landscape. But it could also be a threat if not tamed: the changes in ways of working need to be addressed with viable unified communications and collaborative solutions to become a source of competitive advantage.

By Bala Mahadevan, CEO, India, Orange Business Services