Digital Workplace, a new model for the corporate work environment?
Cisco Digital Workplace, or how to optimize the digital work environment.
Digital Workplace refers to the digital work environment.
This is the digital environment at work, from which each employee can find all the tools for extended communication (chat, video, screen-sharing systems), document production, e-mail management, or collaboration tools enabling them to exchange and share information.
An essential question: how does this digital workplace transform the employee experience?
You’ll find plenty of media coverage in this article, which tackles a complex yet inescapable subject, as it relates to digital transformation more generally.
Let’s start with Gartner:
Cisco's Digital Workplace of the Future
A somewhat… “radical” approach, but in keeping with the ambition set by John Chambers, who has spoken out on the subject on numerous occasions:
We highly recommend watching this landmark keynote by John Chambers.
It shows the depth of a visionary who has led Cisco to the top, and has no intention of stopping there.
There’s no better introduction to the challenge of digital transformation, or entering the “digital age” as John Chambers puts it.
To get to the heart of the matter, here’s a quick video overview of Cisco’s latest solutions, covering the various facets of the Cisco Digital Workplace.
A true generational transition
The share of each generation will change dramatically between now and 2020, accelerating all the processes currently underway to transform the working environment.
Cisco has completely redesigned the working environment to take account of these major changes in the company’s workforce.
Technology is not everything, but its adoption is a prerequisite without which any transition or evolution is doomed to failure.
No "customer experience" without "employee experience
Even today, most companies operate with customer experience-based business models, sticking to this credo.
But for digitally savvy companies, integrating collaborative solutions and implementing a Digital Workplace, there can be no customer experience without an employee experience.
The advent of digital technology within companies is a strong signal of a paradigm shift.
As John Chambers describes it, the wide potential of digital applications represents both a great opportunity for change, at least in terms of culture, and a real digital transformation challenge for companies wishing to reinvent their digital working environment.
They will do so to gain in performance, which will have the effect of :
- Improve productivity by automating routine tasks and further developing collaborative tools for better and faster decision-making.
- Increase efficiency and cohesion among employees.
Implementing a Digital Workplace platform considerably simplifies work, making every employee’s tasks easier and more efficient. - Recruiting and retaining the best profiles
- Reduce operating costs
Cisco’s Digital Workplace is based on the following principles:
- Aligned with your business imperatives for greater relevance
- Designed to work together for a faster return on investment
- Backed by Cisco for peace of mind
- Flexible and highly secure to limit risk
- Designed to be scalable according to the ecosystem
Increase efficiency through collaboration by providing the right space for each activity
Teams can become increasingly efficient through collaboration and the sharing of the best digital communication tools.
The aim is to provide employees with the best collaborative working experience through the new organization of the work environment.
All these developments have undoubtedly had a positive impact on customer relations, and therefore on thecustomer experience.
Digital Workplace transforms the customer experience , which has not been forgotten in the process of integrating the employee experience.
Theemployee experience goes hand in hand with thecustomer experience.
Tomorrow’s businesses will provide far better customer experiences and new opportunities for interaction with the massive use of tactile and permanently connected digital media.
The effectiveness of these companies will be measured by their ability to provide their customers with the right media at the right time, in the most appropriate way.
Its scope of action
The role of the Digital Workplace is multi-dimensional: it refers to the full action potential of the ecosystem of platforms set up by companies and serving their employees and collaborators to :
- Work
- Collaborate
- Communicate
- Developing services and products
There can be no growth without the power of a team working in the right environment with the right collaboration tools.
That’s why the Digital Workplace is not the prerogative of a single, specialized department, but involves multifunctional cooperation between all departments within a company.
Here are the main possible activities:
- Web Conference
- Intranet
- Instant messaging
- Teleworking
- Communities
- Document management
- Project management
- Brainstorming
- Office automation
- Training
Cisco and Elit-Technologies offer a wide portfolio of solutions to turn your company into a digital workspace, including WebEx web conferencing to make your meetings more interactive.
Make your employees reachable at all times with instant messaging and presence offered by Cisco Jabber.
Personal telepresence systems such as DX70 and DX80 can also be deployed to make it easier for your staff to telework, and give them a better work-life balance.
Gartner’s Hanns Köhler-Krüner spoke on the subject at the 2015 Gartner Digital Workplace Summit.
On the safety front
While today’sworking environment is undergoing an inevitable transition to digital technology and its application universes (Cloud, mobility, collaboration via social networks…), this transition to digital brings with it transformations that are not without risk, and even represent real challenges for companies undergoing change.
An intranet solution, for example, no matter how effective and easy to use, remains invulnerable.
The same applies to other solutions, which are frequently threatened by viruses, malware or Trojan horses.
This is where Cisco’s security model comes into its own, placing security at the very heart of all its solutions to ensure the complete security of the digital working environment. Security is therefore becoming a major concern for businesses, which need to implement the right tools.
The security measures to be taken into account concern :
- Protecting traditional networking
- Protecting Wifi systems
- Protecting wired infrastructures
- Securing the network
- Data security
- Securing peripherals
Today, more and more companies appreciate the challenges of the Digital Workplace, while at the same time recognizing the risks they face.
Conclusion: perfect adaptation of the working environment has become essential, in complete safety.
Let’s end on a lighter note with this video from Cisco, which gives us an overview of the various situations encountered by teams and requiring perfect adaptation of the working environment.
