Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2015: Envisioning the Digital Workplace Future
The future of working is digital. It's the theme running throughout Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2015. But how do we get there, and what technologies will facilitate the digital workplace? Gartner VP and Distinguished Analyst Matthew Cain delved into what his firm believes are the top technologies in his presentation, "Top 12 Emerging Digital Workplace Technologies to Transform Your Business." And they may not be what you think. Read on to see what they are.
October 7, 2015
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The future of working is digital. It's the theme running throughout Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2015. But how do we get there, and what technologies will facilitate the digital workplace? Gartner VP and Distinguished Analyst Matthew Cain delved into what his firm believes are the top technologies in his presentation, "Top 12 Emerging Digital Workplace Technologies to Transform Your Business." And they may not be what you think. Read on to see what they are.
Software that proactively delivers customized information based on an employee's implicit and explicit activities.
"It’s a recommendation engine," Cain said. "Based on your selections, it offers up suggestions. It's all over the consumer space, so we wondered, Why don’t we have this in business today?"
Such an engine could help connect employees with information and expertise they need to help do their jobs better.
An IT-sponsored effort to enable employees to exploit a variety of data analysis tools.
"This is about structured information—having more personal analytics available to you," Cain noted. "And with the democratization of big data analytics, I believe a sea change is happening with analytics software. It's a great opportunity to begin to allow citizen data scientists in a company."
An IT-sponsored service to enable employees to package and deliver content in new and novel ways.
Seems a little out of place, right? But myriad new forms of parsing information should be viewed as an opportunity by IT to engage employees in thinking about information dissemination in a different light.
"How can we use all that great information to convince, cajole, educate, sell to people? There is an enormous world of new ways to convey information. I am suggesting the IT organization sponsor a production studio and break us out of Powerpoint jail," Cain said.
Technology that blurs the line between the physical world and digital or simulated world, creating a sense of immersion.
"We are on the edge of immersion on the consumer side," Cain noted. "Now we're coming to see it in organizations now in conference room technology. They are information presence vehicles—multi-screen, multi-device, multi-user swipe technology." And, he added, Google Glass lives on as Glass for Work, offering applications for any place where a hands-free work environment is optimal.
A physical work environment optimized for employee agility and engagement.
It's a German word that translates to "office landscape," and it's a bit socialist in its idea of eliminating hierarchy and having a open seating environment. And it's happening now: Companies that once had a 1:1 ratio of employees to workspaces now are moving to 2:1 or 3:1 ratio.
"Design the workplace to encourage serendipitous interaction," Cain suggested. And along with that, IT should be taking responsibility for ensuring success all workers, regardless of where they are physically.
A personal network of beacons, sensors and actuators.
So let's make that network work for us in the corporate world.
"We're starting to see situations where you walk into a building and it identifies you, looks at your schedule and readies a workroom for you," Cain said. Or, as you enter concierge lobby of a Genius Bar, your trouble tickets automatically are called up for the attendant to see.
"This can create a lot of opportunity for agility and efficiency," he said. "If we are asking employees to go on journey of digital business, wouldn’t it be great to have an IoT workforce?"
The ability to transcend organizational boundaries to generate ideas, solve problems and assemble teams from a broad population of employees.
"This is an ongoing business process issue we have," Cain said. "In this case we have technology that has been completely unexploited, and that is enterprise social networking. That's because no one is active and sponsoring the enterprise social networking."
IT, he said, should be raising its hand and taking control. "Also, we know Q&A sites are great idea generators." Some companies now are crowdsourcing projects and letting employees "bid" on their participation. "It's a great way to find talent in your organization." Ideajams, hackathons, collaborative war rooms … the list goes on.
An adaptive software assistant designed to perform a wide array of personal tasks.
"Virtual personal assistants (VPAs), smart machines, smart advisors driven by natural language processing and big data … the time is right," Cain said. "People are getting more comfortable with VPAs and we're seeing a progression of use."
The technology started as "hear me," answering queries. Now it has moved into "know me," in which it makes suggestions proactively based on previous actions. Next will be "be me," in which it will do things on your behalf without your direction.
"We think these are going to take on more responsibilities over time and we will program them," Cain said. "So, for instance, if you're in sales, you can tell your VPA to look on LinkedIn and find sales prospects, schedule the meetings, assemble the materials and brief you on the prospects before you go visit. They are making people smarter."
A personal collection of Internet apps and services used for personal and professional purposes.
Currently 50 percent to 80 percent of employees are using personal applications for work purposes, Cain said, and this will only increase. Plus, the average tenure of job is four to five years.
"Chefs use their own knives. Mechanics use their own tools. Now more knowledge workers are going to be showing up with their own tools as well," he said. "You need to be prepared as an IT organization to support that. Right now it's not really being addressed."
An IT-sponsored service to enable employees to develop and integrate applications.
"We want to create and empower citizen IT development. Who knows more about what needs to be done with integration than the user?" Cain noted. "There is more IT literacy than ever, so let’s start to take advantage of that."
A fully mobile suite of communication and collaboration services that can adapt to any business circumstance.
"Currently many collaboration tools can be embedded into the sales process, so this is a great opportunity. There are some great ideas and new technologies out there, and we want to encourage companies to use if it makes business sense."
An educational program to help employees acquire a wide variety of digital literacies.
Skills and professional development long have been the purview of many different organizations in a company, but mostly human resources. "But if you look at what is happening with higher ed, there has been a revolution in the way people are learning," Cain said. Couple that with an emergence of learning modules, bootcamps and other forms of learning, and companies have lots of opportunities to offer employees training and development that doesn't involve a classroom setting and role-playing (ugh, kill me now).
Plus, he said, "You're not training just on how to use the technology, but also how do I become a better collaborator, a better team leader?"
An educational program to help employees acquire a wide variety of digital literacies.
Skills and professional development long have been the purview of many different organizations in a company, but mostly human resources. "But if you look at what is happening with higher ed, there has been a revolution in the way people are learning," Cain said. Couple that with an emergence of learning modules, bootcamps and other forms of learning, and companies have lots of opportunities to offer employees training and development that doesn't involve a classroom setting and role-playing (ugh, kill me now).
Plus, he said, "You're not training just on how to use the technology, but also how do I become a better collaborator, a better team leader?"
The future of working is digital. It's the theme running throughout Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2015. But how do we get there, and what technologies will facilitate the digital workplace? Gartner VP and Distinguished Analyst Matthew Cain delved into what his firm believes are the top technologies in his presentation, "Top 12 Emerging Digital Workplace Technologies to Transform Your Business." And they may not be what you think. Read on to see what they are.
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