Shifting to a Digital Workplace? Here’s What You Need To Know!
Business Software
Cloud
Small Business
Technology
Goals of increased employee productivity and cost savings are a no-brainer in today’s digitally transformed business landscape. As Rodney Zimmel from McKinsey Digital observes, the whole point of digital transformation isn’t exactly to become digital. It’s actually to drive value for the business. And that value comes from understanding clearly how to move from a physical workspace to a hybrid or adigital workplace platform.
Embracing a digital workplace is crucial for businesses looking to increase productivity, enhance collaboration, and reduce costs. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a key accelerator of the perceptive shift to the digital workplace.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the 8 key considerations you need to make while you make the much needed transition to a digital workplace. From the benefits to caution areas, to potential pitfalls – we have the rundown.
The Covid-19 pandemic as a watershed movement: The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for businesses to shift to a digital workplace, leading to improved efficiencies, cost savings, and a more agile workforce. According to a study by PwC, companies that adopt digital workplace technology experience a 67% increase in productivity. Additionally, Gartner estimates that the digital workplace market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 14.6% from 2020 to 2027, reaching $45.7 billion by 2027. Deloitte reports that businesses can save up to $11,000 per employee annually by adopting a digital workplace platform. With the rise of automation and artificial intelligence, businesses need to embrace digital transformation and stay ahead of competition. Failure to do so could result in a loss of market share and diminished profitability.
Investment in tools and technologies: To enable a successful digital workplace, businesses must invest in the right tools and technologies. This includes video conferencing, instant messaging, project management software, cloud storage, and more. These tools enable employees to communicate and collaborate, regardless of their location or time zone. Additionally, digital workplace tools and technologies offer companies the opportunity to enhance the employee experience, leading to better retention rates and improved employee satisfaction. Access to online training and development programs, as well as digital resources and tools for wellbeing, help employees to feel valued and supported by their employers. A case in point is Accenture, which has implemented a platform called “Collaboration 2.0.” This platform offers employees a range of tools and services to simplify and enhance collaboration and communication, including instant messaging, video conferencing, and document-sharing capabilities. Accenture has reported increased productivity and employee engagement as a result of Collaboration 2.0.
The need for continuous upskilling and training: As businesses shift to digital workplaces, it’s essential to upskill and train employees to use the latest technologies effectively. This can be done through online training, workshops, and mentorship programs. Upskilling employees can also boost morale and improve job satisfaction as employees feel valued and equipped with the skills to succeed in a digital workplace. A key example to highlight this is AT&T, which created a Future Ready Employee initiative aimed at providing ongoing upskilling and reskilling to workers while providing them with new career development paths. As a result, they have improved employee retention by 14% and accelerated digital transformation.
Cybersecurity as a crucial tenet: As businesses shift to a digital workplace, cybersecurity becomes a crucial consideration. Cyber threats such as phishing, ransomware, and malware can wreak havoc on a business’s operations, leading to data loss and financial losses. To maintain business continuity, it is important to stay wary of cyber attacks that can bring business operations to a complete halt, causing a loss in productivity and revenue. Educating employees on cybersecurity best practices and investing in strong cybersecurity measures, such as password management and two-factor authentication, is critical in mitigating these risks.
Remote work as a key cost-effective driver: Remote work has become increasingly popular in recent years, with the pandemic intensifying the trend. Remote work offers many benefits, such as cost savings and increased productivity. However, managing a remote team can be challenging, requiring strong communication and collaboration tools and a clear structure for managing tasks and deadlines.
Change management: Shifting to a digital workplace requires a shift in thinking and behavior, which can be challenging for some employees. Change management is critical in managing resistance to change and ensuring a smooth transition. This involves involving employees in the process and providing them with the support and training necessary to adapt to the new reality. Training employees to get up to speed with the latest tools and technologies is key to successful implementation of a digital workplace platform. The risk of working in silos is also cut to a great degree if there is a cohesive change management plan that drives key resources toward a co
Generative AI and the future of work: The future of work is set to be increasingly digital, with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual reality playing a significant role. Businesses must continue to invest in digital tools and technologies to remain competitive and harness the potential benefits these technologies offer.
Processes and best practices: To successfully shift to a digital workplace, businesses must adopt best practices. This includes creating a digital transformation roadmap and involving employees in the process.
Create a clear digital transformation roadmap: Develop a clear roadmap that outlines your goals, timeline, process, and milestones. This will ensure that everyone in your organization understands the direction of the digital transformation.
Involve employees in the process: Employees are key stakeholders in the transformation process, and their involvement is crucial for the success of the project. Get them involved in brainstorming sessions, focus groups, testing, and feedback.
Secure buy-in from leadership: Secure the buy-in from senior leadership to ensure that the transformation receives the necessary resources and support. This will demonstrate the importance of the project and its impact on the organization’s growth.
Evaluate and choose the right digital tools and platforms: Carefully choose the digital tools and platforms that fit your organization’s needs and culture. Ensure that the tools provide the required features and functionality to achieve your goals.
Train and support employees: Ensure that your employees have appropriate training and support throughout the transformation process. Provide training for new tools and processes to improve their adoption and comprehension.
Measure the success of the transition: Regularly review the progress of the transformation using metrics that are relevant to your goals. Assess the results and adjust plans where necessary to achieve intended outcomes.
Ensure data security and privacy: Implement appropriate data security measures to protect data and comply with applicable laws and regulations.
Simplify processes and eliminate redundancies: Use the transformation to simplify processes and eliminate redundancies. This will optimize the use of resources and reduce costs.
Foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement: Encourage innovation and continuous improvement in your organization by creating a culture that promotes creativity, experimentation, and learning.
Communicate effectively: Communicate the transformation plans and progress consistently and openly with all stakeholders, partners, and employees. This will ensure that everyone is aware of the efforts and the benefits of the transformation.
In addition to this, the implementation of best practices needs to be reviewed to get a tangible measure of success. Therefore, defining key performance indicators against very specific goals is crucial in ensuring the transition is successful.
In conclusion, the shift to a digital workplace is essential for any business looking to remain competitive in an increasingly digital world. The benefits of enhanced collaboration, increased productivity, and cost savings are significant, but the transition requires careful planning, investment in the right tools and technologies, and upskilling and training employees.
Ashmitha works with InfinCE as a creative writer. She collaborates with the Digital Marketing team to deliver engaging, informative, and SEO-friendly business collaterals. Being passionate about writing, Ashmitha frequently engages in blogging and creating fiction. Besides writing, Ashmitha indulges in exploring effective content marketing strategies.
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A digital workplace is a modern, virtual version of a traditional workplace that serves as a centralized hub for employees to collaborate, securely access or share data and execute business functions from anywhere, on any device, at any time, while driving competitive advantage, innovation, and sustainable business growth.
Any discussion on the future of work is incomplete without mentioning digital workplace technologies. The modern workplace is no longer a physical space we need to go to. The rapid transition to remote work driven by COVID-19 and the increasing popularity of hybrid work models have spurred the evolution of digital workplaces.
Digital workplace software features the entire portfolio of applications, IT infrastructure, workplace technologies, and enabling services that power new ways of working and contribute to employee experience and engagement.
Digital workplace software equips employees to take full advantage of existing and emerging technologies for driving business outcomes, including digital transformation.
Simply put, a digital workplace is a virtual work environment in which your employees, scattered across diverse geographies, teams, and departments, can stay connected, access data, and do their work at any time of the day, using any device of their choice. You can enjoy the benefits of a digital workplace if you have a stable internet connection and a computing device (such as a laptop, desktop, tablet, or smartphone).
What are the Key Factors to Consider in a Digital Workplace?
Digital workplace success primarily relies on three important factors. They are:
1. People
A digital workplace is designed to meet the changing needs of the modern workforce. Millennials and Gen Z, who make up the world’s largest working population, desire more flexibility in their work preferences (eg: remote or hybrid work models). The productivity and satisfaction of people should always take a front seat when planning digital workplace initiatives.
2. Technology
Robust technology is the backbone of digital workplace software. The growth of the internet, along with the technologies that stem from it, has decentralized work. Physical space is no longer required for employees to communicate or store, access, and share information in real time. A digital workplace should incorporate technologies that help bridge the gap between people and productivity, such as cloud and mobility.
3. Management
Strong and helpful management facilitates meaningful coordination between people and technology by driving a positive company culture. Management should make workplace technology more accessible for everyone and motivate employees to take full advantage of virtual collaboration solutions. This can go a long way in improving workplace transparency, accountability, and employee engagement.
What are the Essential Components of a Digital Workplace?
A typical digital workplace is an assembly of six basic components:
Broadly speaking, a digital workplace should offer all the essential features to navigate a specific workday.
1. Communication
Communication requirements in a workplace can be both synchronous and asynchronous. Collaborating with your team members in real-time or near real-time from a single location or multiple locations is critical for the success of your digital workplace. Synchronous or real-time collaboration is enabled through one-on-one voice and video calls, meetings with multiple participants, and live chat. Asynchronous communication that doesn’t require instant action, allowing people to respond or update according to their availability, is also an important component of the digital workplace. The best example of this type of communication is email.
2. Mobility
The most striking feature of a digital workplace is anywhere, anytime accessibility which makes mobility an inevitable component of remote and hybrid work cultures. Your digital workplace should be accessible via authorized mobile devices (in the form of a mobile app or mobile website), especially when you are coordinating employees from multiple locations. Use stringent access controls to ensure that only the right users are logging into your digital workplace through authorized devices and login credentials.
3. Productivity
Popular productivity tools that help employees work efficiently, such as word processors, spreadsheets, presentation software, task management tools, calendar, etc., are a must-have digital workplace component. Productivity tools enable your team to easily manage their day-to-day activities and raise their efficiency.
4. Security
Digital workplace adoption implies shifting to a cloud-first, mobile-first workplace, where employees use many devices to accomplish tasks. This can expose organizations to potential cyber threats and security vulnerabilities. Digital workplaces offering virtual private servers (VPS) and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) help retain absolute rights over your data by employing advanced access controls, user permissions, and firewalls.
5. Storage
Sufficient storage is a must to handle both expected and unexpected workloads, whether your data is stored onsite in physical servers or uploaded to virtual cloud servers. There should also be a provision to scale storage on demand with ease as your organization grows.
6. Integrations
Work becomes more convenient and smart when all your productivity tools and collaboration apps can be accessed and managed from a centralized platform through a single sign-on. Handling multiple subscription renewals, maintaining separate login credentials for each software, and spending money on unused tools can be easily eliminated with centralized IT management. Through seamless third-party software integration, a digital workplace brings all the tools you need in one place to perform your tasks without any interventions and challenges.
Debunking 3 Common Myths About the Digital Workplace
Though digital workplaces are designed to make life easier and more productive for employees, only a few are aware of the benefits. Outdated views about workplace technologies prevent IT leaders and key stakeholders from providing their buy-in. Three common false assumptions standing in the way of digital workplace adoption are dispelled here:
Myth #1: Digital workplace adoption can happen without culture change
The pandemic expedited the adoption of digital workplace technologies, which made remote work mainstream. However, most organizations use digital workplace tools such as video meeting solutions and visual collaboration applications to emulate their existing communication and collaboration experiences instead of enabling new ways of working. This affects the productivity of employees.
Here’s what you can do to address this challenge:
Nominate peer advocates and champions at the team level who can coach team members and support the cultural and process changes needed in a digital workplace.
Identify employees who need more encouragement or motivation. Demonstrate how the digital workplace is linked to their career advancement.
Develop a “our way of working” statement that helps employees select the applications they need for each scenario. This encourages them to use all of the functionalities you’ve implemented.
Myth #2: Workplace collaboration is always synchronous
Several business leaders still believe that true workplace collaboration occurs only when their employees are in the same place, working on a common task. In a hybrid world with frequently overlapping work schedules, asynchronous modes of collaboration equally impact team innovation. Employees forced to spend more time in meetings have proven that they can be as productive and innovative using modern asynchronous collaboration methods. For example, video meeting recordings and transcriptions are great time savers, as they reduce the need for meetings and allow employees to catch up on missed discussions.
Ways to promote asynchronous collaboration methods:
Use internal networking collaboration tools like employee intranet solutions to experiment with new collaboration styles, grow communities, and strengthen employee interactions.
Collaborative work management applications, such as online office tools, file collaboration, and simultaneous editing, drive the adoption of new collaboration practices, improve workplace transparency and accountability, and boost employee engagement.
Myth #3: Digital workplace and digital transformations are the same
The digital workplace is often used interchangeably with digital transformation. Both aren’t the same. A digital workplace provides an engaging and intuitive environment for employees to collaborate virtually through a horde of workplace applications. It allows teams to leverage existing and emerging technologies to drive business outcomes. A digital transformation model exploits the latest digital technologies to create new business models.
A digital workplace is a key step in accomplishing the digital transformation. Prioritizing employee-centric workplace digital initiatives will augment your digital transformation agenda.
Understand what could enhance your employee experience and help them operate in a more engaging and intuitive workplace.
Choose a digital workplace software that’s easy for your employees and managers to optimize when, where, and how the work gets done.
What are the Benefits of a Digital Workplace?
A digital workplace improves employee engagement in your organization by giving your teams the tools they require to connect, collaborate, and perform their core responsibilities at work. Here is why you should implement digital workplace software.
1. Flexibility to work remotely
The third edition of McKinsey’s American Opportunity Survey reveals that 87% of people prefer to work remotely one or more days per week if given a choice. Remote work gives employees the flexibility and freedom to manage their core job responsibilities without being physically in their office workspace.
A digital workplace platform features all the collaboration tools you need to connect virtually with your colleagues and access your company data and applications online from any device, any location, at any time of the day. This will enhance your employees’ job satisfaction, productivity, and work-life balance. Flexible work environments and schedules help employees get the most out of their workdays, as they can time-shift to perform work when they are most prepared.
2. More room for ideation and innovation
Smart and reliable virtual collaboration tools cut down meeting times, reduce delays in peer-to-peer communication, strengthen employee-management relationships, and give teams more room for ideation and innovation. Better workplace coordination infuses a collaborative culture in your organization that helps churn ideas that may not otherwise have been heard.
Instant feedback shared laterally between team members and vertically between the management and employees will improve your team’s workplace morale and satisfaction. Employees ardently use their freed-up time for problem-solving and ideation when work becomes easier.
3. Lower operational expenses
There is no better choice than a cost-effective digital workplace to manage globally distributed teams. When you are spared from the need to pay multiple subscription costs and license renewal charges, your operating expenses decrease considerably. For example, a cloud-based digital workplace platform eliminates the need for costly on-premise servers and storage and the physical office space and IT resources needed to operate and maintain them.
4. Better data security, storage, and access
Digital workplace software leverages the power of the cloud and mobility. Cloud technology ensures secure storage and easy access/ sharing of data files from anywhere, at any time. The virtual work environment allows employees to access the right information they need and share their knowledge with a few clicks or taps.
Most digital workplaces are designed with built-in security measures. To protect your employees’ personal identity and save your data from cyber attacks, you can implement additional security measures, such as strong password encryption and multi-factor authentication.
5. Transparent work environment
A digital workplace combines multiple components into a single suite, so your employees can perform their best with as few obstacles as possible. When everyone in your team is on the same page, you will get more time to focus on business and organizational goals. Sharing company news, success stories, culture posts, accolades, and recognition via the digital workplace platform improves team bonding, promotes a “family-like” environment in your workplace, and ensures all employees are aligned with your organizational culture.
How Does a Digital Workplace Transform Your Employee Experience?
Digital workplaces follow a bottom-up approach that considers all the daily challenges of employees and provides all the tools to boost the overall employee experience.
1. Facilitates modern workstyle
A digital workplace platform allows employees to work remotely with optimum productivity. Easy access to all information in one place, sharing the right information to the right people at the right time, collaboration tools, productivity applications, and all the necessary tools and technology for your remote employees ensure that their productivity isn’t compromised.
2. Bring your own device (BYOD)
Millennials, who presently comprise the largest portion (38%) of the American workforce, prefer to work from their own devices because they feel more engaged, motivated, and comfortable. As long as your employees are connected to the internet, they can access their work-related data anywhere, on any device. The freedom to use any device they prefer improves your organization’s employee experience.
3. Communication and Collaboration
Effective workplace collaboration is the key to business success and innovation. Ideas developed by a team of three or more people have a greater appeal than those developed by just one or two individuals. However, desk-side collaborations and conversations over lunch are practically impossible when you have a highly distributed workforce. A digital workplace platform is the best way to make collaboration and coordination an important part of your company culture. Using digital workplace software, you can set up internal communication channels for every team or department, making it easy for members to communicate with each other. It gives your team more time for innovation and ideation by reducing the duration and number of meetings they attend.
Why Choose InfinCE Over Other Digital Workplaces?
No digital workplace platform is 100% one-size-fits-all. Therefore, it’s crucial to find a digital workplace solution that can be customized according to your company’s needs and integrated with your existing workflows and third-party software tools, if any. To keep it simple and short, a digital workplace should augment your employee experience and work culture without disrupting your existing workflows and give you better results and ROI. This is where InfinCE makes a difference.
Whatever your use case may be – team communication, project management, document creation and sharing, managing information assets, video meeting, virtual collaboration, and more, InfinCE has everything you need to handle all aspects of your business. Here is a summary of the top InfinCE features.
1. Built-in collaboration apps and productivity tools
Collaboration apps for employees to coordinate at work more efficiently, including employee directory, live chat, one-on-one voice and video calls, video conferencing, and private email.
A comprehensive suite of productivity tools that help perform your day-to-day organizational activities like task management, document creation, and sharing.
Ready-to-access online office tools: Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, and Calendars raise your employees’ productivity. Employees can easily share and collaborate on documents and get the work done quickly.
Secure file sharing: Files can be securely shared between employees, but also between employees and non-employees using options like upload-only folders and password-protected files.
2. Custom dashboards to track insights and make decisions
InfinCE lets users create custom dashboards to help them keep track of what’s happening in their project or team. It brings an effective way to communicate key business information in real-time and simplifies team collaboration.
InfinCE dashboards can be restricted to and contain just the information appropriate for the expected viewers. However, those viewers may be classified: as Organization, Department, or Team. An individual can create private dashboards for their sole use.
Unique standard tiles on the InfinCE dashboards allow sharing of different types of information, including news feeds, announcements, bookmarks, videos, notes, and more, in one view.
The dashboards consolidate data from various sources (such as other internal software apps) and display insights in charts, graphs, tables, and other formats.
3. InfinCE Mobile App
Download the InfinCE employee engagement mobile app on your iOS or Android device and stay on top of your work.
View dashboard updates, access work files, find contacts, join video meetings, and do a lot more with the intuitive InfinCE mobile app.
Customize the app’s interface to reflect your branding and deliver a highly engaging experience to your workforce.
The mobile app is envisioned to help you perform all the functions that are available on your InfinCE Web, from anywhere, at any time.
Private cloud infrastructure guarantees enterprise-grade security for your organization. It provides unmatched data security and powerful performance that your IT team can manage and monitor easily.
We offer dedicated virtual servers, so you don’t have to manage your cloud platform separately. InfinCE private enterprise cloud gets renewed along with your subscription.
Virtual private servers improve corporate privacy because there is no sharing of your company data with third-party software vendors. InfinCE’s secure digital infrastructure achieves this added protection through its inbuilt firewalls and encryption/password-based user access controls.
5. Custom brand your digital workplace
You can elevate your brand presence from your workspace to your customer front with InfinCE’s extensive custom branding options.
Showcase your brand logo and colors at every touchpoint – internally and externally – such as your private email, website, digital workplace, company mobile app, and video meeting rooms.
Carve a unique brand identity that’s both consistent and catchy through custom business email, white-labeled web and mobile apps, personalized smart workspaces, and branded video meeting rooms.
Reflect on your brand’s purpose, values, strategy, and communication codes with InfinCE.
6. Curated application marketplace
InfinCE features a growing library of commercial and open-source business applications from several software vendors on its platform. Available applications come in categories suited to different business functions, such as CRM, ERP, project management, HRM, etc.
Subscribe and readily access all your essential enterprise applications with a single sign-on through the marketplace. Suggest any compatible software that can be added to the marketplace. Our developers also help you build special-purpose custom software.
Easily integrate all your business processes, reduce expenses, manage resources optimally, and engage with clients better to stimulate growth.
Stay on top of your software costs by avoiding multiple subscriptions and unused software tools.
7. Business phone system
InfinCE offers a complete cloud-based phone system for all your business communications.
Enjoy lower call costs per minute based on the time spent on calls. No cancellation fees are required.
An intelligent IVR system helps improve customer service efficiency, manage incoming call spikes, and increase customer satisfaction with auto callbacks.
Automated call distribution minimizes call waiting times by customizing call flow paths and diverting callers to the right agents.
Conclusion
A robust digital workplace drives real cultural change. It breaks down communication barriers, transforms employee experience, and fosters innovation and growth. From integrating email and instant messaging to virtual meeting software and custom business dashboards, InfinCE offers all the tools you need to implement an entirely new working environment that replicates your employees’ changing work experience.
I am a Product Consultant, living at the intersection of empathy, design, engineering and helping teams craft Products that bring a smile. I believe that technology best serves its purpose when we use it to address deep problems without losing sight of the human nature of its users. Truly transformative technology is one that seamlessly becomes part of the daily narrative of its customers, aiding them to achieve their goals faster and easier.
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How Digital Workplaces Make Remote Working Effective
Cloud
Technology
With organizations worldwide adapting to either a hybrid or a remote work structure, the shift to a new work order is difficult if there is no digital workplace platform to streamline operations, especially if the company has a mix of on-site and online employees. Companies need digital solutions to ensure that all employees and stakeholders are on the same page.
During the pandemic, many companies managed to pivot to remote work, but many of them used existing technology overlays to adapt to a hybrid or online work structure. These piecemeal solutions are inadequate and do not have the intuitive design of a digital workplace solution built especially for digital workplaces and put workers at the center of their design. Companies should choose solutions that digitally transform tasks, unify data, drive productivity, and provide intelligent collaboration apps.
What is a digital workplace?
A digital workplace is a virtual office space designed to help employees work efficiently and carry out their tasks in remote or hybrid settings. Digital workplaces give employees instant access to resources and help them collaborate better. They streamline company workflows, increase productivity, and boost team morale. Digital workplace solutions also enable an always-connected work environment and a seamless employee experience.
There is a misconception that a digital workplace is simply a group of remote workers. Digital workplaces are all about how you work and are not restricted to location.
According to Deloitte, a digital workplace can manage tasks from your HR applications and your core business applications to emails, instant chats, enterprise social media tools, and virtual meeting tools.
Deloitte points to one of the key requirements of a good digital workplace solution – one that aligns with the company’s business value and connects worker experience to business outcomes.
Digital workplaces are gaining traction in the remote work culture – here’s why
With digital workplaces, workplace efficiency has increased, and so has flexibility. Digital workplace solutions also equip companies with exciting new technologies that automate mundane tasks and increase the speed that it takes to complete time-sensitive projects.
With digital tools giving employees all the information they need, including troubleshooting guides and company manuals, customer care reps can service customers better.
We live in a hyperconnected world where the right digital work experience drives workplace productivity. In its roundup of technology trends, Deloitte states that digital workplaces are gaining popularity because organizations need to use technology to optimize team productivity and collaboration to stay ahead of the curve. In particular, companies can derive incredible benefits from the actionable data generated by these tools and the AI-driven people analytics solutions that can drive superior workflow management solutions.
A Gartner survey backs this up by reporting that 56% of CEOs attribute increased revenue to digital improvements. Many companies invest in digital workplace solutions because they know that these tools promise measurable returns, which accounts for their growing importance in business.
How Digital Workplace Solutions Make Remote Work Easy And Profitable
Digital workplace solutions are built to make it easy to work virtually and remotely. They provide powerful enterprise productivity tools that help companies optimize workflows and create an agile workforce. Their tools work in sync with employee workflows, and they help companies adapt to the complexities of the new workforce.
Digital workplace platforms help remote team members to collaborate easily. Employees can share files, manage cases, track project statuses, and enjoy a single integrated view of multiple workflows. This ensures that all employees and departments are not working in silos and that there is a more transparent, integrated working environment where team members can track project statuses, leads, define tasks, and set deadlines.
Digital workplace platforms provide collaboration tools that employees can use to work across locations and time zones. Digital workplace solutions also automate repetitive tasks, provide an integrated work experience, and increase employee engagement. They have also re-engineered organizational structures and cultures, with workers being more connected with leadership and employees having access to company data.
Here’s How You Can Identify The Right Digital Workplace Solution
When looking for the right digital workplace solution for your company, look for a complete digital workplace toolkit. While many piecemeal digital solutions offer communication tools, it’s the collaboration tools that truly make digital workplace solutions very useful. There is more to digital workplace productivity than ad-hoc digital solutions. Instead, look for a digital workplace orchestration platform that transforms how people work and collaborate. Unlike generic digital workplace tools, digital orchestration platforms are designed to help companies boost efficiency, scale operations, work on continuous innovation, and deliver proactive and intelligent people analytics.
Here are some aspects to consider when choosing the right digital workplace solution for your company.
Go for personalized and intuitive solutions: Every company is different, so it is important to go with a customizable digital workplace solution that allows you to choose off-the-shelf software or SaaS per your requirements.
Look for collaboration tools: Choose a digital workplace platform that provides workgroup chats, group meetings, audio and video conferences, and other collaborative tools. Also, favor a platform with a unified dashboard to manage daily operations seamlessly.
Prioritize productivity tools: Go for platforms with important productivity tools like smart email management, simplified multi-app management, calendar management, time tracking, and collaboration channels. Look for tools that can monitor the progress of projects and employee performance.
Choose a people-focused digital workplace platform: With remote work, employees and teams need to be constantly engaged and motivated to work and collaborate efficiently. Choose platforms with intra-organizational tools that foster a sense of community and engagement.
With an orchestration platform like InfinCE, you can simplify your processes and choose only the features you need, thereby controlling infrastructure costs. InfinCE’s modern tools unify data and give you a competitive edge over other companies. Want to increase your profits and drive great business outcomes? InfinCE helped a company like Fingent improve productivity by 20% due to its incredible digital workplace orchestration platform.
Aarathy is a Senior Digital Marketing Analyst at InfinCE. She is majorly into content marketing and focuses on getting the messaging right across a host of marketing collaterals. While not working on content, you can find her juggling SEO, social media, branding, and more. She enjoys exploring new frontiers in digital marketing and the associated challenges keep her going.
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Top 10 Digital Workplace Platforms Your Company Can Choose From
Cloud
Small Business
Technology
Remote work is here to stay, and companies that transition to a remote or hybrid work culture will be the ones that will adapt to the digital revolution that lies ahead. A survey by Upwork states that by 2025, 22% of North Americans will be working remotely.
To stay one step ahead of their competitors, companies must choose the right digital workplace platform to build their digital workplace ecosystem effectively and set up their digital businesses for success.
Digital workplace software offers the tools and technologies to make the best of remote work and to help remote teams double their productivity. These tools include apps to communicate, collaborate, and work productively from any part of the world, with unified access to business data and automation.
One of the best ultra-modern digital workplace platforms on the market, InfinCE offers a remarkable range of digital productivity tools and collaboration features. InfinCE is a cloud-based, all-in-one digital workplace platform that allows you to manage multiple workflows with its no-code workflow management. Its groundbreaking digital workplace orchestration platform helped US-based company Fingent launch its digital collaborations and remote workforce with incredible success.
As soon as Fingent switched to InfinCE’s Digital Workplace, its productivity increased by 20%. InfinCE’s flawless data security system protected the company from serious data breaches.
Data-powered, custom dashboards: InfinCE offers tiled dashboards with a unified view of data and real-time insight, with graphs and charts adding to the visual element.
Productivity tools: InfinCE’s productivity apps include calendar management tools, smart email management, and collaboration channels.
Collaboration tools: InfinCE offers presentation and collaboration tools, including time management apps, calendars, spreadsheets, and task managers.
Communication tools: Instant messaging, comprehensive workplace chat apps, video conferencing, and business apps help your company stay connected and communicate effectively online.
Dedicated servers and security: With private servers used primarily for a single business, there are very few data security risks.
Other features: A host of add-ons, including virtual desktops, instant access to contact databases, and integration with CRM and CMS systems.
You may come across a digital workplace solution that stands out for one feature over the other. Some offer exceptional project management capabilities. Some are user-friendly and perfect as remote work platforms. Others are good for complex projects. InfinCE is one of the few digital workplace platforms that offers all features under one roof.
Asana is a well-known app for managing tasks and workflows. Despite not being a full-fledged project management platform, it offers many benefits. It automates repetitive tasks, is focused on collaboration, and helps team members break down their tasks and improve work management significantly. It also offers many integrations, time-tracking tools, custom fields, workloads, Kanban boards, portfolios, and templates.
3. MangoApps
Also known as MangoSuite, this user-friendly, flexible digital work portal unifies communication, teamwork, intranet, and engagement into a single system instead of relying on separate tools. MangoApps has effective employee engagement tools and a customized dashboard experience, making it easy for companies to offer streamlined communication and collaboration services. With MangoApps, you can centralize your company’s content, create searchable team workspaces, and digitize repetitive workflows.
4. Zoho
A platform primarily known for its customer relationship management feature, Zoho is a very useful project and task management software that also offers a good user interface. It helps businesses communicate, collaborate, manage projects, and extrapolate intuitive reports. It offers some impressive real-time chats, invoice applications, inventory management capabilities, and communication tools.
5. Kissflow
Kissflow is another multifaceted and easy-to-use platform that offers diverse project management capabilities and comprehensive tracking tools. It helps teams manage complex workflows and offers facilities like contextual chats that help companies coordinate better. Kissflow offers reliable reporting tools and an intuitive workflow design, besides numerous integrations and efficient collaboration tools.
6. Microsoft Teams
A prevalent digital workplace solution in the market today, Microsoft Teams enables teams and employees to collaborate on multiple tasks and projects. It also helps employees share content. Its video conferencing and online meeting facilities are awe-inspiring. It also offers integrations with all Office 365 software apps. Microsoft Teams allows you to create your team channels, sign up to other data sources, add files, and customize your workspace.
7. Monday.com
Monday.com has many advantages, including an intuitive and visually appealing user interface with many display options. Its project visualizing tools are excellent, and it offers third-party integrations, task management tools, and data-driven dashboard analytics. Monday.com gives you multiple project views and customizable templates to track project portfolios and campaigns.
8. Trello
Another popular task and project management software is Trello. A leading workplace solutions and project management software with boards, visual cards, and lists to help teams stay organized. Trello does not have very advanced tracking and reporting capabilities, but it is still very popular among companies undertaking simple projects.
9. Wrike
Wrike is a digital workplace solution with many features, including performance tracking, integration capabilities, diverse workflows, analytics, and performance reports. Wrike has a customizable approvals process and gives a good overview of multiple projects and where each team member is in the cycle. It takes employees a while to break into the platform, but it does pack in multiple features.
10. ClickUp
ClickUp is a cloud-based, customizable platform that offers collaboration and project management tools to boost productivity, apart from other features like task allocation and goal tracking. It has good dashboard visibility and offers great scheduling, team collaboration, and document management tools. ClickUp helps remote teams streamline their workforce, structure their processes more productively, and coordinate multiple tasks efficiently.
Want more clarifications on how to choose the right digital workplace platform for your business? Connect with our experts today! We can help you identify apt workplace technologies to drive success with a streamlined workflow!
I am a Product Consultant, living at the intersection of empathy, design, engineering and helping teams craft Products that bring a smile. I believe that technology best serves its purpose when we use it to address deep problems without losing sight of the human nature of its users. Truly transformative technology is one that seamlessly becomes part of the daily narrative of its customers, aiding them to achieve their goals faster and easier.
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The Best Ways to Improve Your Digital Workplace Management
Business Software
Small Business
Technology
Remote work is taking a front seat, and companies need to shift from traditional workplace norms to an on-demand workforce that is changing the business world completely. To make this shift, companies need a digital workplace solution. These integrated and intelligent remote work platforms provide exciting new ways to increase employee engagement, optimize costs, and create an agile workforce.
What is a digital workplace? On the face of it, a digital workplace may seem like a virtualized proxy of the in-person office space, but in today’s competitive and technology-enabled world, it needs to do so much more.
A digital workplace platform offers cloud-native technologies that improve the company’s bottom line and lead to better team collaboration. It also leverages digital tools that help companies achieve scale while reducing costs.
Deloitte describes the digital workplace as encompassing “all the tools and technologies people need to get their work done in today’s workplace – both in operation and the ones to be implemented.” Deloitte’s report outlines one characteristic that makes a great digital workplace solution. A good digital workplace platform connects the employee experience with business outcomes.
Why Your Company Needs a Digital Workplace Solution
Digital workplace solutions give companies a competitive advantage by making them agile, flexible, and providing them with a centralized management view. In the shift to a remote work culture that is now the new normal, companies need to go beyond generic tools for remote work. Instead, they need to look at a digital workplace solution that integrates processes and leverages digital technologies to help companies improve their profits. There are many reasons why your company must rely on a digital workplace solution.
Provides real-time collaboration and productivity tools: Productivity and collaboration tools are crucial for remote and hybrid work. Productivity tools like smart email management tools, collaboration channels, and task management apps can help companies complete more work in less time and strategically plan their workloads and business strategies.
Improves employee experience: Digital workplace solutions put employees at the center of their design, making team members feel engaged even though they work remotely.
Offers unified custom dashboards: A good digital workplace solution provides tools like interactive, data-rich dashboards that give a unified view of all the end-to-end processes.
Reduces costs and drives profitability: Digital workplace solutions reduce organizational and management costs. They can increase productivity, which impacts the bottom line. This survey byGartner reveals a 44% rise in employee productivity. Thanks to collaboration tools.
Promises transparency and data security: With their business dashboards that provide an additional layer of data security, digital workplaces offer better transparency and prevent data theft.
Drives innovation and scalability: Digital workplace technologies will drive innovation by enabling companies to hire from around the world. They will also help companies scale and increase productivity due to their feature-rich collaboration tools.
The Best Ways to Improve Your Digital Workplace Management
In the aftermath of the pandemic, remote work is the new reality of an on-demand workforce. A company can have many productivity and collaboration apps but without a digital workplace management strategy and platform to unify them all, there can be information and collaboration overload.
Here’s how you can improve your digital workplace management.
Prioritize a single pane of glass view: Digital workplace management brings this unified view of the entire company’s workflows. A central point of control is important. With it, you can leverage advanced levels of automation to make collaboration better and faster. Unified dashboards lead to faster workflows and greater scale.
Aim forseamless integration: Digital workplace solutions are invaluable only if they are completely integrated into the company’s overall business processes. Digital workplace management helps companies achieve this single point of integration.
Choose smarter data analytics: To improve your digital workplace management, focus on actionable data and people analytics. Intelligent collaboration tools can give you real-time updates about projects and employee performance. It is not just important to have data but to mine and utilize it immediately. Use custom dashboards to track performances and processes. These dashboards can also give you immediate access to company-wide data from APIs, apps, and CSV files.
Look for personalized digital solutions: Choose digital workplace solutions that suit your company and its specific requirements. This is where digital orchestration platforms come in. They blend into your company’s existing workflow and optimize it instead of disrupting processes. A digital orchestration platform helps you integrate software and solutions from various SaaS vendors to manage and scale your digital workplace.
Pick the right tools: Choose digital workplace tools that drive higher rates of automation and collaboration. Digital workplace solutions should be designed to drive end-user adoption, leading to an agile digital workplace. Look for rich interactive collaboration tools like live chats, multiple screen sharing, breakout rooms, and shareable meeting links. Go with productivity apps with excellent project management capabilities and tools to track performance and tasks.
Give importance to the employee experience: Employee experience is central to the success of your digital platform. Opt for voice and video calls to build stronger workplace connections so that employees don’t miss face-to-face interactions. Employees value flexibility in remote work and tools like live chats, collaboration channels, and intranet platforms that keep social interactions alive.
Choose a centralized IT management: When your company runs multiple applications and has to juggle between many sign-on, work becomes tedious and difficult to manage. With a single sign-on and an efficient third-party tool integration, centralized IT management unifies all of the enterprise’s applications and workflows. It also increases business transparency.
With the rise of remote work, sustaining a distributed workforce and empowering it with a solid digital workplace management solution is important. InfinCE integrates online and offline communications by providing all-time access from anywhere in the world. While most digital workplace tools offer a variety of tools, some of them like InfinCE, are purpose-built to provide unified reporting of company workflows and targets. InfinCE also provides companies with excellent data accessibility and multiple modes of effective collaboration. Its features include customizable dashboards built to mine data and generate metrics. Want to create powerful and profitable digital workplaces that help you race ahead of the competition?
Currently leading and managing a highly talented group of developers to produce an unmatched futuristic complex cost effective cloud product which can compete with technology giants.
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How a Unified Environment Promotes a Successful Digital Workplace
Business Software
Small Business
Technology
A digital workspace is the virtual equivalent of your individual workstation. It is an integrated technology framework that leverages evolving technologies to enable you to work online by providing and managing a hoard of features like apps, data, task management functionality, desktop delivery, etc., on any device, anytime. Global Workforce Study 2021 by BCG and The Network says 89% of the respondents expect their jobs to be partly remote when the pandemic ends. So, remote work is here to stay, fully or partially.
The pandemic caused businesses worldwide to quickly adopt digital workplace solutions to prevent disruption to their workflows. What started as a move triggered by the force of circumstances later proved to be so highly productive and beneficial that most forced adopters became strong advocates of digital technologies. Adopting a digital workplace solution is the first step toward creating a digital workspace.
App and desktop virtualization to provide seamless access to your remote workforce
Secure and hassle-free access to SaaS apps in one place
Easy and seamless file sharing
Content collaboration tools to let teams create, edit, review, and post content that can be accessed by the right people
Automated workflows that save time and man-hours
Unified endpoint management of all devices by a central management console
A single sign-on that provides your employees quick and secure access to data and apps
You can improve the productivity and efficiency of your remote workforce by choosing the right kind of digital workspace with task management functionality that matches your business needs. Hewlett Packard Enterprise defines a digital workplace as “ a virtualized form of the traditional, in-person office environment, where many elements of collaboration and productivity are performed through some combination of digital applications, cloud computing, and other technology”.
A digital workplace solution leverages cloud technologies to integrate all the apps and services required for the internal operations of your business on a single platform so that your remote teams can seamlessly access and share data in a secure environment. Companies create unified environments to enable seamless collaboration among their systems.
So, what is a unified environment?
A unified environment or platform is an efficient, effective, collaborative, and scalable ecosystem consisting of people, systems, and data that work in unison to meet business goals. It enables seamless collaboration among teams and offers secure data access, independent of device and location.
Salient features of a unified platform
Secure and hassle-free exchange of data between systems and apps.
Seamless collaboration among teams across geographies.
Central and controlled access to data across all access points.
Scalable to accommodate the changing needs of your business.
Enhanced security and protection against data breaches.
Thus, unified platforms have multiple features that help employees improve productivity and meet goals. The pandemic-induced lockdowns and new health protocols have paved the way for increased adoption of remote work among businesses worldwide. The BCG Employee Sentiment Survey 2020 reports that 75% of the 12000 surveyees are able to maintain or improve productivity on individual tasks, while 51% confirm being able to maintain or improve productivity on collaborative tasks. As working from anywhere is becoming the new pattern of work, companies are increasingly embracing digitalization to overcome the challenges of an ever-evolving business environment.
So, how does a unified environment promote remote work?
Provides a central hub for all business processes, thus eliminating the need to switch between apps to get work done. Multiple modules are integrated on the centralized platform, which can be accessed on dashboards.
Allows users to create their own workflows sans coding. Workflows can be reconfigured or changed to meet changing business objectives.
Offers flexible integration of apps and data. Data updates are synchronized across all tools, thus breaking silos to enable all pervasive integrations.
Uses dashboards for smart reporting. Smart dashboards simplify data analysis and help track and report KPIs and other metrics.
Digital workplace solutions thus bring together people, processes, and cloud technologies to deliver secure, efficient, and enriched employee experiences across multiple devices and geographies. They come endowed with a host of features to help your remote teams work smarter for your business growth.
A smart digital workplace solution will have an extensive suite of collaboration apps to help you connect with your teams faster and smarter to meet your goals. It will help you streamline communication through a series of channels like email, live chats, easy file sharing, individual and group audio/video calls, etc. Above all, you can centrally control your entire IT assets from one place and manage your information assets with ease and security. You can even leverage private business IT infrastructure custom-built to meet your end-to-end needs for enhanced security.
If you are looking for a digital workplace solution that unifies all your business tools to increase your employee productivity, InfinCE would be your answer. The curated marketplace on the platform includes apps from multiple vendors to meet all your business needs. And what’s more, our experts can guide you through adding custom apps to the platform to increase productivity and improve the experiences of your employees. Whether creating documents, handling emails, scheduling events, or managing tasks, InfinCE’s vast library of productivity tools will help you accomplish your day-to-day activities easily and raise your workforce efficiency.
Get in touch with our experts or take a demo to know more.
I am a Product Consultant, living at the intersection of empathy, design, engineering and helping teams craft Products that bring a smile. I believe that technology best serves its purpose when we use it to address deep problems without losing sight of the human nature of its users. Truly transformative technology is one that seamlessly becomes part of the daily narrative of its customers, aiding them to achieve their goals faster and easier.
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6 Tips To Guarantee Data Security in a Digital Workplace
Business Software
Cloud
Small Business
Technology
Digital transformation leverages cloud technologies and modern processes to enable businesses to operate faster and more efficiently. As a result, applications are increasingly moving out of data centers to cloud-backed networks to help businesses work smarter and more collaboratively. Once you drive your applications to the cloud, the service provider will henceforth manage your IT infrastructure, thus relieving you of the complexities of managing your own IT assets. As a result, your employees get to work from anywhere, accessing data on devices of their choice. Digitalization of your business operations ensures seamless IT infrastructure management from one place. When you move your workloads into cloud-backed virtualized networks, it is imperative to adopt new technologies to secure your data.
Why is securing solutions essential for digital transformation?
Your remote employees use their personal devices to access various apps in the cloud, including multiple collaboration tools, to access data on your corporate network to get their work done. This calls for the adoption of enhanced security measures across your network to safeguard your data. Embracing security transformation is essential for successful digital transformation.
So, what is security transformation?
Security transformation refers to the integration of security, combining all aspects of digital technologies to operate your business securely once you embrace digitalization. Integration of security protocols would radically change how security is architected, deployed, and operated to safeguard your data. Therefore, it is crucial for you to choose the right digital workplace solution that suits your business, with capabilities to integrate additional security patches for added security.
A few tips to secure your solutions to shore up your digital strategies
1. Ensure password protection rules are in place.
Strong passwords protect your data against breaches and cyber attacks. Ask your employees to update their passwords mandatorily. They should be taught to create strong passwords and remember them too.
2. Consolidate all tools on your digital workplace solution to get a single view of your network.
As any connection to the Internet is susceptible to cyber attacks, you should always be prepared to defend against such threats by fortifying your IT assets with security patches and enhancements.
4. Install Virtual Private Network (VPN) for all connections
Networks are more susceptible to cyber attacks as they often have just the protection of generic security measures alone. Make sure your office locations have the added protection of VPN connections. Your employees who may connect through public wi-fi services should be instructed to use the VPN service mandatorily.
5. Leverage the security features on your digital platform
6. Build a multi-layered defense to fortify your current security
Integrate more security solutions, if necessary, to fortify your IT assets. All your employees and partners who have access to your systems need to be educated on the added-on security protocols to protect your information assets and optimize your cyber security measures.
Thus, it would be best if you had adequate measures in place to facilitate the secure operation of your business, to let it remain vigilant against potential cyber-attacks and resilient too, should such attacks happen. Analyze the value of your information assets to assess the potential threats that may occur to them clearly. Your partners and other external players who have access to your critical data should be asked to submit security and audit reports regularly to keep track of the efficacy of your security measures. If you are looking for a smart digital workplace solution that can be scaled up to safeguard your valuable data, InfinCE would be your answer.
How does InfinCE help boost digital security?
InfinCE can help secure your valuable information assets in a number of ways by offering:
Private business infrastructure custom-built to meet your end-to-end needs for improved security
Data security options from multiple vendors,
Scalable private virtual servers that prevent data sharing with third-party software vendors
Secure access controls through encrypted keys and strong passwords
Seamless and centralized IT management of your processes through a single log-in credentials
Secure file sharing through password protection and select edit access to further protect data from unauthorized access.
Not just that. Get in touch with our experts or take an InfinCE test drive to know more.
Sachin works as a part of the digital marketing team at InfinCE. He believes in a healthy and resourceful web and does his own little contributions for the purpose by creating and disseminating innovative and quality content.
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Ensuring Digital Wellbeing With The Right Digital Workplace Platform!
Business Software
Cloud
Small Business
Technology
The COVID19 pandemic redefined the way people worked on a global scale!
The McKinsey report “The Future of Work after Covid-19” says, “the pandemic accelerated existing trends in remote work, e-commerce, and automation with up to 25% more workers than previously estimated potentially needing to switch occupations”.
Remote work necessitates companies to increasingly adopt digital workplaces to let their employees seamlessly access data from anywhere to get their work done. But how can you define if a digital workplace is effective, safe, and focused on the well-being of the employees?
This article will take you through the top ways to monitor your digital workplace and keep it relevant!
What Is A Digital Workplace And Why Do You Need A Digital Workplace Solution?
When your traditional or physical workplace turns digital, with everything you need for your work made available over the internet, it’s called a digital workplace. Digital workplaces are the smartest way to operate. But often digital workplaces give rise to security threats, clogged servers, misplaced data, and more such technology errors.
That’s when you need an apt digital solution, which eliminates all risks, and streamlines work digitally.
A digital workplace solution is a single platform that seamlessly integrates all the technologies required for getting work done, which include multiple apps, intranets, and portals. It consists of an all-encompassing, holistic set of multiple tools and environments needed for work made available on a single platform in an easily usable, logical, and productive manner.
It is essentially a connected environment that provides employees access to all the data they need, independent of devices and geographical locations. Digitization of workplaces has enabled employees at all levels to communicate and collaborate in newer and more effective ways to form more productive relationships, thus serving to break down the silos at work and create employee experiences rooted in efficiency and growth.
Remote work continues to be the preferred way of work for most employees post lockdown!
The McKinsey study “What’s next for remote work: An analysis of 2,000 tasks, 800 jobs, and nine countries” says “executives have indicated in surveys that hybrid models of remote work for some employees are here to stay. The virus has broken through cultural and technological barriers that prevented remote work in the past, setting in motion a structural shift in where work takes place, at least for some people”.
Hybrid work allows employees to switch between work-from-home and the office depending on the demands their roles make on them. Remote work is here to stay, be it full-time or hybrid, a fact that has contributed heavily toward the increased adoption of digital workplace solutions.
Digitization of business processes has caused companies to focus on leveraging technologies to increase employee efficiencies. Digital workplace solutions serve to streamline the internal operations of your business by segregating and analyzing vast volumes of data, and making it available at your employees’ fingertips, thus enabling them to work smarter and faster.
Now, What’s Digital Wellbeing?
Digital wellbeing refers to the practice of leveraging data and technology to ensure the physical and mental wellbeing of your employees. Digital workplace solutions leverage technology and streamline data to help you attract and retain talent, increase productivity, and enhance employee experiences. Futuristic companies have come to realize that they should raise the levels of wellbeing of their digital employees to help the latter thrive in a stressful working environment.
A Few Strategies To Ensure The Wellbeing Of Digital Workplaces:
1. Limit screen time
Digital workplace wellbeing focuses on reducing and optimizing screen time!
A sample survey of 4000 respondents held in the UK found that 75% of the employees felt that reduced screen time would be good for their mental health.
Streamlining the data, be it messages or emails, would save your employees from being bombarded with unnecessary data and reduce their screen time and stress levels. You need the service of a smart digital workplace solution to ensure this.
A good digital workplace solution will make sure that the right data reaches the right people to avoid information overload. Effective collaboration apps can facilitate seamless communication and easy file sharing, thus serving to reduce their screen time. Employees need to access only the right data as and when they need it.
2. The personnel department must focus on human relations than human resources
Companies must cease to look at their employees as means to achieve economic success and consider them as ‘whole men and women’ rather than bundles of skills.
Employee satisfaction and experience should be of utmost importance and their welfare, a primary concern to the leadership. Building employee welfare into the body of corporate policies would serve to create a sense of belongingness in the minds of the employees. The principle of the human relations approach focuses on making organizational members feel useful and vital to the company.
Building custom dashboards on digital workplace platforms will let you keep tabs on your projects’ progress and employee performances, thus enabling you to appreciate and reward good work. Sharing articles of motivation, events, quick games, and surveys through customized dashboards can help keep employees engaged and productive. Good employee experiences create a sense of belongingness and a feeling of being vital, leading to reduced attrition levels.
3. Create an environment of inclusion
Some employees might be wary of new technologies while certain others – like siloed teams – might see collaboration tools as a threat. It is imperative to ensure governance and compliance in place to train your employees at all levels in new technologies before deploying digital platforms. When diverse teams work together from different geographies in a digital working environment, it is the sense of inclusion that helps boost employee engagement.
A digital workplace can be identified as an effective one only when it can be utilized by all. Thus, it needs to be simple and user-friendly, so that all employees can easily adapt to the new tools and technology.
As mentioned above, digital workplaces are the smartest way forward for businesses. But it has its own drawbacks. However, these few glitches can easily be eliminated with the adoption of the right digital workplace solution.
InfinCE makes a smart digital workplace partner that addresses the vital factors of engagement, diversity, inclusion, and belongingness among employees to help them meet the targets set much faster, in an employee-friendly environment designed to create great employee experiences.
With InfinCE, your employees can:
Stay connected
Work smart
Make quick decisions
Reduce work stress
Maintain work-life balance well
Stay engaged, motivated, and feel valued.
Know more about how InfinCE can drive employee wellbeing as well as improve efficiency in your organization.
Ashmitha works with InfinCE as a creative writer. She collaborates with the Digital Marketing team to deliver engaging, informative, and SEO-friendly business collaterals. Being passionate about writing, Ashmitha frequently engages in blogging and creating fiction. Besides writing, Ashmitha indulges in exploring effective content marketing strategies.
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Why Does Your Business Need An Intelligent Digital Workplace?
Business Software
Cloud
Small Business
Technology
A digital workplace is an integrated platform with capabilities to deliver and manage all the apps and data of your business operations in real-time, independent of any device or location. It is a virtualized form of the traditional, in-person office environment, where many elements of collaboration and productivity are performed through some combination of digital applications, cloud computing, and other technology. Digital workplace solutions gained more acceptance when COVID19 forced several businesses to allow their employees to work remotely.
So, what is an ‘intelligent’ digital workplace?
An intelligent digital workplace is essentially an improved digital workplace, backed up by the ever-evolving cloud technologies, with immense potential to improve employee efficiency and productivity while ensuring enhanced experiences for both employees and customers at reduced costs. It leverages digital technologies to help your company achieve sustainable growth while improving its bottom line.
Evolution of intelligent digital workplace platform
Digital workplace platform are an offshoot of the corporate intranet, the latter being a tool to share company information among employees. The possibility of having unified, seamless access to data and apps to smoothen business operations led to the birth of digital workplace solutions. Modern intelligent digital workplace solutions employ artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), and machine learning to streamline your business operations and render them efficient so that your employees needn’t switch between apps anymore, but can focus on the task at hand instead.
So how does an intelligent digital workplace solution work?
An intelligent digital workplace solution automates the regular tasks of your business operations and analyzes your business activities to give personalized insights on the performances and progress of projects to enable your employees to work smarter and faster. Your employees, applications, data, analytics, and work culture are brought together on a single digital platform to enable your geographically dispersed team members to serve your customers better and faster. This has prompted futuristic organizations to increasingly invest in intelligent digital workplace solutions. An intelligent digital workplace solution makes better use of data and analytics to equip your employees with insights to help them work more efficiently and intelligently. “The intelligent digital workspace is a personalized, federated, secure, and device- and location-agnostic environment that provides workers with the resources required to effectively do their job, including frictionless access to data, technology, and collaborators,” says IDC TechScape: Worldwide Intelligent Digital Workspace, 2020.
Personalization of the digital work environment helps accelerate work and reduce the volume of files at each desk while enabling your business to carry out its operations in different time zones.
Benefits of personalized digital workplace solutions
1. Enhances employee satisfaction and engagement through personalized work experiences
An intelligent digital workplace brings to the table tangible benefits like improved employee performance and productivity as well as intangible benefits like enhanced employee satisfaction and engagement. The digital tool sets that the platform presents to your employees keep them in good stead as they foray into smarter and more innovative digital ways of working. And personalization of digital workplace software serves to give personalized work experiences to motivate and engage your employees.
2. Seamless integration of multiple collaboration apps
Intelligent digital workplace solutions are empowered by a multitude of collaboration apps through which your employees get to connect with each other and discuss work-related topics. Being networked across teams and departments can help information sharing, but collaboration overload can give rise to information overload, affecting the pace at which work gets done. This is where IT infrastructure management companies come to your aid. Their intelligent digital platform solutions come with an array of collaboration apps, offering you the choice to pick only the ones that suit your business operations best.
3. Smarter data analysis through personalized dashboards
Intelligent digital workplace platforms come with capabilities to create personalized dashboards that offer smarter data analytics and display actionable, effective insights into your business processes. Personalization makes digital workplace solutions intelligent with capabilities to ensure that the right information is visible to the relevant people through personalized dashboards and intelligent collaboration apps at the right time.
4. Using cloud storage enables access to data from anywhere
Cloud technologies ensure secure storage and easy sharing of all files from anywhere at any time. Personalization in digital workplace software makes them intelligent working environments where employees get to access the right information they need and share their knowledge with a few clicks.
An infinite cloud platform like InfinCE leverages cloud technologies to enable innovations, and top-class customer services through safe access to resources.
5. Centralized management enabling enhanced business transparency
When productivity tools can be accessed and managed all from a single platform, through a single sign-on, work becomes much more convenient and smarter. Handling multiple subscription renewals, maintaining multiple credentials, plus paying extra costs on unused tools, can be easily eliminated with centralized IT management.
With InfinCE enabling seamless third-party tool integration, bringing all you need for your work, to one platform, just does not makes work easier, but smarter and more efficient.
6. Onboarding employees the smarter way
Employee onboarding might as well be declared as the most tedious process of an organization. And that’s why an intelligent digital workplace must target to systemize and streamline this process.
With an effective cloud platform, new employees can be easily onboarded to the company workflow and culture, introducing them seamlessly to policies, employee directories, chats, communications channels, files, department dashboards, performance matrices, and more just by adding them to a single
platform.
In Conclusion!
With market competition on the rise and customer demands changing each day, there is no room for businesses to compromise on efficiency. In fact businesses, today need to be one step ahead of just being efficient. They need to remain future-ready, make quick decisions, and stay trendy. That’s why it’s highly turning imperative for companies to switch to intelligent digital workplaces, that make work smarter, productive, and innovative, plus let your business stay modern with quick adaption to new technologies.
How can one choose and implement the right digital workplace?
By implementing a digital workplace solution that:
Promotes the rising capabilities of the Cloud
Features custom dashboards for complete transparency
Allows easy communication and collaboration
Allows centralized management with seamless third-party tool integration
Makes data access easy and secured
Gives high priority to resource and data security
Promotes employee engagement
And mostly brings all these features to a single platform, eliminating multiple logins.
InfinCE is the one-stop technology solution for all your IT infrastructure needs. The platform offers all the IT infrastructure required to run your business under one roof from building your website to offering a secure intranet while allowing you to personalize your digital workplace solution to suit your unique business needs. InfinCE has the capabilities to build private and secure IT infrastructure to meet your end-to-end needs for enhanced security. Besides, you get to enjoy data security and customization services at the most affordable cost!
An IDC study rightly defines intelligent digital workspaces as a framework for enterprises to deliver a diverse set of hardware and software resources to workers, which enables more dynamic and adaptable teams, supports individual and group productivity, enables competitive differentiation, and provides a safety net of security and compliance required in the modern digital economy and workplace. An intelligent digital workplace solution, InfinCE has infinite capabilities to meet all your IT needs and smartly manage and secure your valuable data to improve your employee performances and revenues through personalization.
Aarathy is a Senior Digital Marketing Analyst at InfinCE. She is majorly into content marketing and focuses on getting the messaging right across a host of marketing collaterals. While not working on content, you can find her juggling SEO, social media, branding, and more. She enjoys exploring new frontiers in digital marketing and the associated challenges keep her going.
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Driving Employee Engagement In Today’s Changing Work Culture!
Business Software
Cloud
Small Business
Technology
Employee engagement is critical for businesses to retain their talent and improve their employee experiences. Engaged employees tend to believe that their employers have their well-being in mind which motivates them to put in their best efforts towards the realization of corporate goals. Disengaged employees are more likely to lose commitment towards the company or start distrusting employers. Such employees fail to see the vision and the objectives of the organization they work for.
In today’s digital world, employees prefer to be highly involved in what they do and be active contributors to their company’s success. Aligning personal goals with corporate goals would inculcate a sense of belongingness in the minds of the employees which is very important for boosting loyalty, a fact substantiated by Microsoft’s employee survey 2021. The report says 90% of the Microsoft employees surveyed globally have responded that they feel included in their work.
It has long been established that good employee experiences beget good customer experiences, a fact which was proved time and again during the pandemic.
Forrester’s study report “Predictions 2022: The Future of Work,” says that 48% of large companies in the US have dedicated programs to improve employee experiences, a number which is expected to rise to 65% in the year to curtail their attrition levels.
“Gallop defines employee engagement as the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace.” Employee experience, on the other hand, refers to an employee’s entire journey with respect to his association with the company and is greatly influenced by his engagement at work.
Why Is Employee Engagement Important?
Employee engagement is vital to companies to help assess employee perspectives on the existing workplace culture which could serve as terms of reference for making future policy changes. Employee engagement catalyzes team engagement, which in turn promotes business growth.
Employee engagement demands your attention more in today’s business scenario for 3 reasons:
Companies operate from diverse geographies
Work is becoming increasingly remote
There is an overload of information on business systems.
As work switched from on-site to remote and workplaces transitioned from physical to virtual during the pandemic, with the added bonus of flexibility thrown into the mix, employees increasingly quit jobs that didn’t meet their needs. “Gartner’s 9 Future of Work Trends Post Covid -19” says 16% of employers surveyed are using technologies to monitor employee activities including employee engagement and their well being to have a better understanding of employee experiences.
The report advocates responsible use of employee information and analytics to improve employee engagement and enrich employee experiences while working remote, and create a culture of inclusiveness to help employees grow in team culture.
This is where an efficient digital workplace solution comes to your aid. Backed up by cloud technologies, digital workplace platforms have the capabilities to keep your employees at all levels stay connected and engaged through a multitude of communication and collaboration tools built into them.
3 Ways Digital Platforms Can Improve Your Employee Engagement
1) Internal communication is rendered seamless through a suite of collaboration apps
A digital workplace facilitates engagement across multiple departments of your business with the help of an array of communication tools and collaboration applications integrated into the platform. These tools can be accessed across geographies, enabling your diversely spread employees to have the right data on their fingertips. Effective internal communication and collaboration are critical to improving employee engagement. Digital workplace solutions ensure that your employees remain connected from anywhere in the world.
The feature-packed collaboration apps on digital workplace platforms will let your employees at all levels communicate with each other and also with external contacts. Digital platforms ease collaboration from a central hub connecting your employees dispersed across multiple time zones and geographies.
2) Enable smarter data analysis by creating custom dashboards and tiles
A custom dashboard is a data visualization cum business intelligence tool that showcases a specific set of metrics and KPIs on a single page. A smart digital workplace solution brings to the table the right capabilities to build multiple custom dashboards and tiles for analysis varied purposes.
Multiple dashboards powered by a variety of tiles can be created on digital workplace platforms for enhanced visibility and productivity. Dashboards serve to track your employee activities and the progress of projects which can be accessed by all team members, thus increasing employee engagement at all levels. Personalized dashboards offer intelligent analytics of data to ensure that the relevant data is visible and accessible only to the right persons.
You don’t have to go for a ‘one size fits all’ kind of dashboard meant for your industry or your line of business in general, when you have the advantage of creating custom dashboards that uniquely suit your business. Pre-built tiles extract information from business apps and display it on custom dashboards to help track projects, campaigns, and other key metrics in one view, thus motivating your employees to strive more toward goals set, thus keeping them engaged.
3) Seamlessly integrate multiple apps that cater to the business needs of varied industries
The successful day-to-day operations of your business demand access to a series of business apps from multiple vendors. Switching between apps will incur huge amounts of time loss which can be prevented by adopting a smart digital workplace solution. A smart digital workplace platform integrates a wide range of apps that find uses in diverse industries. These apps can be managed from a central hub, thus saving time, and serving to improve productivity, communication, and collaboration among your teams. Your diversely spread employees can access data through these apps from anywhere to get their work done.
Good employee experiences stem from good digital experiences, no matter whether companies embrace a fully remote working environment or a hybrid one. This calls for the adoption of a smart, highly interactive digital workplace solution like InfinCE to improve your employee engagement, enhance your employee experiences, and shore up your digitization endeavors in more ways than one.
The platform enables smarter, effective, and streamlined communication among all departments and teams. You can seamlessly share information and organizational updates on the custom dashboards created on InfinCE. The platform has an array of tools and apps to facilitate live chats, video calls, and meetings among your employees, keeping them engaged. The collaboration features of InfinCE include secure file sharing and live editing of documents, thus catering to employee engagement. With InfinCE, collaborative project planning is possible and project calendars can be managed, shared, and synced with personal calendars. The platform draws on data from various sources such as external APIs and apps to offer insights in the form of graphs and charts.
InfinCE offers a curated application marketplace to meet your varied business needs. A few of those apps even come free of cost. And what is more, all business apps available on InfinCE, be it commercial or open-source, can be easily accessed through a single login. A few of these apps are WordPress Blog and WordPress portal for content management; Odoo and Rise for CRM; OpenProject and Kanboard for project management; MyBB to manage and moderate discussions among teams; and Vanilla Forums for interactions with customers and potential clients.
Organizations are increasingly incorporating aspects of engagement into all elements of their employee experience to make it a fruitful journey for both the employers and the employees. And InfinCE is your one-stop technology solution to digitize your business operations and keep your employees engaged such that personal goals are aligned with company goals and employees develop a holistic view of the company and their roles in its operations.
I am a Product Consultant, living at the intersection of empathy, design, engineering and helping teams craft Products that bring a smile. I believe that technology best serves its purpose when we use it to address deep problems without losing sight of the human nature of its users. Truly transformative technology is one that seamlessly becomes part of the daily narrative of its customers, aiding them to achieve their goals faster and easier.
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