Discover the Digital Workplace · Discover the Digital Workplace This whitepaper provides an...

Discover the Digital WorkplaceThis whitepaper provides an overview of the current developments which are raising the call for the Digital Workplace.

AUTHORChristoph Herzog

CONTACTT: +49-(0)761-20703-605E: [email protected]

POSTAL ADDRESSUnited PlanetPostfach 173179017 FreiburgGermany

COPYRIGHT: This document is in all its parts protected by copyright. All rights are reserved, especially the right of translation, presentation, reproduction, and duplica-tion. Regardless of the accuracy of the text, images, and programs neither author, publisher nor translator may take judicial or other responsibility for possible errors and their consequences.

The naming conventions, trade names, product designations, etc. reproduced in this work may, even without special desig-nation, be trademarks, and as such may be subject to legal regulations.

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2. New Work – The workplace as strategic capital. . . . . . 7

2.1. Goodbye to the classic office . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.2. Work takes place where employees are productive . . . 8

2.3. The digital watershed – Here comes generation Z . . . 9

2.4. Collaboration as a success factor . . . . . . . . . . 10

3. What is the Digital Workplace then? . . . . . . . . . . 11

4. Is the intranet now redundant? . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

5. Five steps to the Digital Workplace . . . . . . . . . . 13

6. Return on investment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

6.1. Profitability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

6.2. Measuring the success factor . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

7. Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

8. About United Planet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

5

1. Introduction 2. New Work – The workplace as strategic capital

During his practical research activities, social philosopher Frithjof Bergmann developed the concept of New Work. He works on the basis that gainful employment will continually decrease because of, among others, the technological advance. The values of independency, freedom and participating in the community are becom-ing more and more important. More and more, people are doing work, “that they really, really want” (Bergmann). With this background, the workplace itself is becoming a strategic factor for companies.

Young talents at the beginning of their working life are incredibly familiar with devices such as smartphones, tablets and laptops. They don’t just use these to interact with family and friends – also during work time – but also to accomplish their work. The borders between work and free time are becoming blurred and not just in terms of time. Even tools known from private life used to exchange in groups have found a place in the working world under the buzzword “social collaboration”. Technical progress enables all sorts of industries to develop larger and larger networks - between employees but also with customers; and customer experience is still the greatest factor for corporate success today.

For companies, who want to develop a competi-tive edge, the workplace should therefore:

• Simplify everyday work processes and make them easier on the eyes

• Provide employees with optimal access to all of the information they need

• Improve communication with customers

• Attract talents who find an optimal environment for their projects here

Businesses need to understand which factors are creating the radical changes in the work-ing world. And how to handle those to create a comprehensive Digital Workplace.

2.1. Goodbye to the classic office

The modern workplace’s potential is develop-ing constantly. It’s in the process of supersed-ing the rigid and classic picture of work, with its static locations and times. Up until now, it was usually necessary to set up an office for a specific employee with specialized hardware and software solutions. However, this process is going into reverse: employees are searching for workplaces, which are equipped for specific work processes. In the future, this means that various working styles will exist in parallel with one another.

As well as by the technology, this development is especially being driven by social and organiza-tional trends, such as the use of own devices and services (“Bring Your Own Service”) in particular by younger employees. These digital natives also work outside of the office. The distinction between work and free time, as well as between career and family, is becoming more and more blurred. This then leads to new reactions at the technological level – such as in the question of security when using private devices. It is therefore the task of companies to make sure services and devices are secure here. A slightly polemicizing, but still true, statement at the Freiburg software convention, Portal Visions, in May 2016 was therefore:

“Anyone who doesn’t provide employees with appropriate software has WhatsApp

and Dropbox on-site.”

This means that companies can’t afford to lose sovereignty over the design of their IT infra-structure. To do that, they need to meet the growing requirements of their employees so that they don’t revert back to (potentially unsecure and illegitimate) solutions of their choice – cue “Shadow IT”.

Engaged employees are therefore, based on a definition of the market and opinion research institute, Gallup, those who “work with pas-sion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward” (Gallup 2013: State of the American Workplace).

The business world is on the move – it’s becoming more mobile, more global and faster. And this isn’t only since the buzzword “digitalization” has grown in importance. Yet still, it’s precisely this digitalization which is pushing the tempo once more.

The change from an industrial society to a knowledge society requires innovations in the working world. For knowledge work-ers, who represent a considerable section of employees today, collaboration in teams has become the new standard. New tech-nologies are zeroing in on making collaboration, communication and knowledge exchange easier.

A new generation is entering the work market: young and well-trained but also with the highest demands on their workplace. The so-called “Generation Z” desires greater freedom when it comes to how, where and when they work.

Companies that can deal with these trends successfully and want to make the most of them, require a strategic approach. The question is: how can a workplace be designed and organized so that it meets the modern demands as best as possible? What does work look like in the future? The initiators of the press roundtable “IT Meets Press”, which took place in Munich in February 2016, aren’t the only ones to see the Digital Workplace as the answer to this question. And this answer should be made reality as soon as possible. It’s significant that the Chief Editor of the German magazine “Computer Woche” (Computer Week), Heinrich Vaske, summarized the event with the title “Digital Workplace – it’s about time businesses actually got started” (http://ow.ly/1aXg300koNm).

This whitepaper provides an overview of the current developments that are raising the call for the Digital Workplace. Furthermore, five steps for successfully introducing the Digital Workplace will be presented as well as the important topic of how success can be measured. Only the correct strategic approach increases pro-ductivity, promotes employee involvement and makes businesses attractive to the new generation of talents.

76 Whitepaper – Discover the Digital Workplace

For many companies, the mobile workplace is already a part of daily life nowadays. It is char-acterized by the widest variety of end devices. At first glance, it doesn’t matter whether these devices belong to the company, a service pro-vider or an employee. At the same time, mobile data access, regardless of location and time, is the condition for this. The challenge here for companies is particularly to safeguard both their security as well as convenient access to data. A high level of user-friendliness (usability) is required in order to enable efficient working. That’s why the technology needs to be highly available, and easy to use and administrate. As well as the technological basis, a holistic view of the workplace is also important so that employees can work without being tied to a specific location.

2.3. The digital watershed – Here comes generation Z

In the Austrian newspaper “Der Standard” (The Standard), there was already talk about “Gen-eration Z” several years ago. Christian Scholz, Business Studies Professor at the Saarland Uni-versity, wrote at that time that most of those born after 1995 would forge “even more loyalty to their sneakers brand” than to their employer. At the latest now, these are surging into the work market and are putting personnel managers to the test.

The coming generation of employees is better versed in all things technology than any previous generation. According to Scholz, they are mainly driven by a desire to be recognized – they’ve grown up with the hunt for “Likes”. This leads to the members of Generation Z acting more as lone fighters and defining themselves with their projects. The connection to their employer is at best weak. These young jobholders are incredibly

familiar with technology, are open to new ones and understand them quickly. But they also ex-pect that precisely those tools, which they need to connect and interact well, are available to them in the workplace, just like they’re used to from their private lives. They are used to structured user interfaces which can be used intuitively. For this reason, they are also quick to become “digi-tally impatient” if their digital work environment doesn’t meet up to their expectations.

If companies want to win this talented, dynamic, but also demanding, workforce for themselves, the provided workplace must be adjusted to their practices. This means that the modern workplace has to facilitate social interaction and networking and ensure convenient access to valuable information. Furthermore, the mod-ern workplace has to come to an accommoda-tion with greater flexibility in terms of time and place. Productivity has a new meaning for the members of Generation Z. The Digital Workplace provides businesses with all the tools they need to facilitate this even more.

» Digital natives come with great understanding of, but also great expectations on, technology

Shockingly, a global study by Steelcase showed that only 13% of employees world-wide are highly engaged. Even more alarm-ing, more than one third of those questioned from 17 industrial nations stated that they weren’t engaged at all (Steelcase 2016: Engagement and the Global Workplace).

Against this backdrop, employee satisfaction becomes capital. Businesses should use this to set themselves apart from competi-tors. If one examines the factors that drive employee engagement, then it’s clear that implementing suitable technical solutions leads to more satisfied employees. Ultimately, this leads to happier customers and greater company success.

2.2. Work takes place where employees are productive

Mobility and flexibility are the focal points when it comes to how the working world can be organized in the context of a holistic strategy in the future. A multitude of employees can (and is going to) perform their allotted work in dynamic environments. It doesn’t matter if they’re in the office, at home or on the train on business. The employees have even more say as to which devices should be used for this and how and where they actually provide their work. With the Digital Workplace, content can be provided to the various devices on the basis of a uniform platform.

» Factors that drive employee engagement

At work, myopinions seemto count

I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right

The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job isimportant

Freedom fromobstacles tosuccess at work

Ability to meet workchallenges effectivelyAvailability of resources

to perform well


3. What is the Digital Workplace then?

2.4. Collaboration as a success factor

The way we work today requires employees from a variety of different interest groups to interact; both within as well as outside of the traditional organization. The Digital Workplace must therefore account for the many, complex relationships between employees and also to customers, suppliers and other business partners.

A modern work environment contains communi-cation and collaboration elements which facilitate integrated and seamless working. These systems, which can be summarized using the term “social collaboration”, enable the users to interact and correspond with one another and to create con-tent. At the heart of this is the collaboration of people in teams, projects, or groups in a virtual space. Here, they can share documents, exchange knowledge and work solutions out together. And all of this across departments and locations.

The Social Collaboration Expert, Frank Hamm, describes the increased value of this interconnec-tion, which is facilitated by the Digital Workplace, with the words:

“Social collaboration facilitates a flexible and goal-oriented collaboration meaning that em-ployees (and therefore the company) can react and activate implicit knowledge.”

According to the enterprise 2.0 guidelines of the Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft (Federal Association of Digital Economy), “a company’s use of its own social software especially [serves] […] the creation of dialogical, transparent and inclusive processes that facilitate an organiza-tional and managerial culture with whose help previously hidden efficiency, knowledge and innovation resources can be made useful for improving the company’s performance.” By using social software, not only is the collaboration of the employees improved but also the company’s productivity.

Social collaboration helps modern companies to (re)act flexibly. Collaboration and knowledge exchange are playing an increasingly important role as the pressure from the market to be in-novative is growing. Social software provides the ability to incorporate suppliers and partners or gather colleagues’ knowledge if creativity and innovative thinking are required. With regards to the increased employee demands, the social element of the Digital Workplace also comes with clear benefits: It enables cross-hierarchical and cross-location communication at eye level.

» Structure of the Digital Workplace

The Digital Workplace is a digital work environment. Here, employ-ees find all of the information and processes they need to work successfully. They can share their knowledge quickly and with ease, acquire help and information from colleagues and feel at home in the central working platform – regardless of where they are and which device they are working with. The Digital Workplace facilitates employment involvement and satisfaction by providing the right information to the right people at the right time.

The Digital Workplace pursues an entirely integrative approach: Data from all implemented software systems are brought together on a central platform. Every employee is provided with their own personal dashboard which provides them with exactly the func-tions and information they need. No more, no less – preventing an otherwise imminent information overflow.

Solutions, which can be merged together in the Digital Workplace, are, for example, CRM, ERP or even specialized applications such as for the Human Resources department. Using connectors, the Digital Workplace is linked to the underlying IT infrastructure. The complexity of the integration is cleverly hidden to the end users so that they can simply concentrate on their tasks.

But with that, the Digital Workplace is not just a “nice thing to have”. To meet the continually increasing expectations of custom-ers and employees, it’s becoming more and more necessary. The growing requirements demand more agility and innovation from businesses. The free flow of information in the Digital Workplace has a positive impact on precisely that: A cross-company system of “sense and respond” leads to improved services and ideas for new products.

Current studies show that on average, employees lose two hours a day due to distractions and searching for information. Therefore, the Digital Workplace also has the task of minimizing these inter-ruptions and to provide employees with control over the required information. Instead of an endless search for documents, these are found and called up rapidly using a high-performance search function. The flow of information, which employees encounter daily, can be greatly personalized. In this way, they’re not held up by unnecessary distractions and receive exactly the informa-tion which is relevant for their work and projects.


The classic company intranet is of sorts the start-ing point of the evolution towards the Digital Workplace. Originally, it was merely used as a medium for information – a digital bulletin board so to speak – and has developed over the years into an enterprise portal. This not only presents information, but enables workflows to be per-formed and work to be completed in specific applications.

Due to the constant expansion of its abilities, you could say that the intranet is needed more than ever today – provided that it moves with the times and aims to provide an optimal work environment. Furthermore, the intranet continues to be an easy to use and concrete platform to communicate change processes in companies.

To keep up-to-date with developments, the in-tranet itself also needs to take another step in its development. It is a well-trusted platform

which can be tailored to the individual needs of a company. When this platform also integrates third-party systems, partners and customers, facilitates knowledge exchange, and provides employees with every function needed for day-to-day work, it becomes the central work envi-ronment. That is the Digital Workplace.

4. Is the intranet now redundant?

CORE INTRANET

AGILE INTRANET

DIGITAL WORKPLACE

Communications,Phone directory,

Documents,Corporate information

Social, Mobile, Collaborative, Self-service, Presence, Personalised, Targeted, Translated

links to / integration with / platform for

HR, Training, CRM, Social tools, Mobile apps, Line of business apps, Expenses, Finance, Support, Customer Service, Suppliers,

External partners

» The layers of the Digital Workplace

5. Five steps to the Digital Workplace

4. EXPERIMENT, ANALYZE, LEARN

The roadmap is your plan for testing your ideas. Respond to feedback and incorporate it into your project plan. In this step, you test your Digital Work-place with a group of beta testers or only one specific department first of all. This makes the specific require-ments clearer and provides you with an opportunity to make adjustments. You should also pass the feedback on to the stakeholders involved.

3. MAKE A PLAN

Develop a roadmap. This should include the budget conditions as much as an explanation of the entire approach. The implementation plan is central here; you define the steps needed to reach the project’s end here. Furthermore, the plan should take the corresponding communication strategy into account. This help you get the needed support from management for the project.

5. ROLLOUT AND SUPPORT

After you’ve implemented the feedback from employees and fine-tuned the platform, you’re ready to roll out the platform for the entire company. Create a rollout and communication plan. In this way, the introduction runs smoothly and the employees are happy to accept the new platform. Especially at the early stages, you need to make support services readily available to help the users acquaint themselves with the Digital Workplace.

2. PRIORITIZE THE USERS

It’s important to understand the roles and functions of the users before in-troducing a system. By observing and asking questions, you can draw conclusions about user behavior and recognize possible problems. In this way, you can also recognize where there is room for improvement and which information is actually needed.

1. UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT

Find out which specific requirements your employees have. The aim here is to provide them with the best possible digital working environment. These en-ables you to really benefit from increases in efficiency. The reflection phase is the place to start: examine which processes are useful and which ones need to be improved. If something doesn’t work analogously, it won’t automatically be better when it’s digitalized. It doesn’t therefore really help to digitalize any and every process if the problem is the process itself.


6.1. Profitability

The Digital Workplace is decisively conducive to the optimization of work processes. Digitalized processes lead to an immediate saving of time. This means that resources are made available which can be utilized elsewhere. This doesn’t just concern the most expensive and scarce resource, work time, but other very tangible savings are also made possible. For example, if an auditing application with a workflow is implemented, not only can the processing time of each invoice be reduced by up to 50%, but it’s also much easier to meet early payment discounts deadlines thanks to this simpler and quicker processing.

The fact that data no longer needs to be superflu-ously managed multiple times is also conducive to making the most of available resources. In their Digital Workplace, employees have ac-cess to documents in their most current version – preventing discrepancies and unnecessary work. Reoccurring tasks, such as booking meet-ing rooms or company cars, can be performed with just a few mouse clicks. And, for example, because leave requests are no longer made on paper, the use of printer paper will incidentally be reduced.

Sleek and stable processes are created which facilitate faster, more flexible and more eco-nomical working across all levels of the company, which therefore enables the company to act more competitively and profitably.

6.2. Measuring the success factor

The Digital Workplace optimizes the communica-tion within the company and promotes flexibility and productivity. How well the success factor can be measured depends on the specific aims being pursued.

On the one hand, the platform can be evaluated afterwards to measure how well it could increase service quality and employee satisfaction. For example, members of the Customer Service department have improved access to customer data and can therefore inform and prepare them-

selves as well as possible. Customer meetings are made much more efficient, benefiting both sides. The fact that service calls and customer consultations now lead to the quicker satisfac-tion of all parties involved can be used as an indicator to measure the success of the project.

As well as this rather subjective assessment, which could, for example be based on (customer) questionnaires, tangible values can however be observed in many cases. Examples of these are: By what percentage could the internal sending of emails be reduced? How many working hours are saved per employee because information is easier to find and access? Could the utilization of resources be improved (e.g. by avoiding supply shortages or by using raw materials efficiently)?

6. Return on investmentYou’re maybe wondering if the results justify the work. With a carefully thought out roadmap, clearly defined goals and a user-oriented design, the benefits clearly tower above the challenging implementation. The question is rather: In view of the growing demands, both from the market and employees, can your com-pany afford not to establish a Digital Workplace?

Employees are expecting more and more from their work envi-ronment, partly due to their experiences in their private lives. Especially in times of shortage of skilled labor, this is not a fac-tor to be underestimated. Studies show that engagement drops rapidly when employees feel like they aren’t provided with all of the tools they need to do their job well. The Digital Workplace works to counteract this and provides an ideal work environment for each employee – regardless of when and where they work.

Increased engagement, improved collaboration and enhanced knowledge exchange facilitate productivity and innovation. This helps you prepare your company for the future.

In view of the growing demands, both from the market and employees, can your company afford

not to establish a Digital Workplace?


7. Conclusion 8. About United Planet

United Planet is one of the trendsetters in the area of Enterprise Social Networks and the Digital Workplace. With the innovative-portal software, Intrexx, we are the market leader for SMEs.

United Planet’s areas of expertise:

• Digital workplace

• Enterprise portals

• Social Business

• Intranet and extranet solutions

• Web applications

• Mobile applications for smartphones and tablets

Businesses in every industry are facing the challenge of provid-ing their employees with the best possible work environment. Employee satisfaction and efficient work processes are becoming more and more important in times of increasing competitive and innovative pressure. Especially, but not only, in industries with large shortages of skilled labor, the workplace itself is becoming a strategic competitive factor.

As well as the organizational factors, the appropriate technical environment for individual employees is a central focus when designing and developing a modern workplace. Tasks, which are becoming more and more complex, require a high level of collaboration between the parties involved for this. Improved mobility and flexibility characterize more and more employment relationships. The work’s location, time, content and scope are less predefined in a contemporary workplace in comparison to previous more rigid structures.

In order to depict this workplace model, a Digital Workplace must:

• Facilitate the collaboration and connection of the individual employees

• Provide relevant information and functions regardless of where, when and which end devices are used

• Not make compromises in any way with regards to data protection and data security

Contact

Phone: +49-(0)761-20703-605

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.unitedplanet.com


V

©2016 United Planet. All rights reserved. www.unitedplanet.com. Intrexx and United Planet are

registered trademarks of United Planet, Freiburg – Germany. All manufacturers, products and ser-

vices mentioned in this text are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies

in Germany and other countries worldwide.

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