How to select the fitting DEX software for the perfect digital worker expertise
DEX software program helps firms optimize their office know-how, which makes for happier and extra productive workers. Here’s what to search for in a DEX platform and 6 main instruments to contemplate.
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The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically modified the best way folks work, as working from dwelling grew to become the rule reasonably than the exception. Moving ahead, many firms are persevering with to assist 100% distant workforces, or they’re adopting a hybrid work mannequin, with some workers working within the company workplace, some working at dwelling, and lots of splitting their time between the 2.
These distant and hybrid staff depend on company-provided know-how to speak with managers, co-workers, and clients. Savvy organizations need to present each employee with digital worker expertise (DEX) — the notion that workers have in regards to the know-how they work together with for work. To do this, firms want whole visibility into how their workers are experiencing the know-how they rely upon to do their jobs.
“DEX is a strategy that focuses on employees, their experience, and their use of technology,” states Gartner’s Innovation Insight for the Digital Employee Experience report. “This strategy is supported by a set of tools that offers key feature sets to provide insights that drive action — both in the form of a script or technology automation and human action or behavioral change.”
Growing curiosity in DEX instruments
Dan Wilson, senior director analyst at Gartner and one of many authors of the report, says the agency is seeing an growing quantity of curiosity from purchasers round digital worker expertise on the whole and in digital worker expertise instruments specifically.
“I was shocked when I did a comparison of the clients’ inquiry volumes. I’m seeing about a 40%, quarter-over-quarter increase in volume since January of 2021,” he mentioned. “So there’s a tremendous amount of interest here. And we think it’s being driven by the anxiety around the Great Resignation, which is really scaring a lot of companies in terms of making sure they focus on taking care of employees.”
DEX instruments, generally known as digital worker expertise administration (DEEM) instruments, are notably helpful for giant enterprises with greater than 10,000 workers which have a whole lot of legacy know-how in very advanced environments, mentioned Andrew Hewitt, senior analyst at Forrester Research. “We’ve seen a lot of deployments of digital employee experience management tools in financial services, government, and manufacturing — companies that are sometimes 100 years old and have a lot of legacy technology that can impact that overall end-user experience,” he mentioned.
However, DEX instruments are additionally notably related for firms that need to guarantee they provide workers wonderful know-how experiences in order that they will retain their expertise, he added. “This resonates very well with financial services customers that want to prevent employees from going to Silicon Valley tech companies,” Hewitt mentioned. “They will often use [DEX tools] to set a good foundational technology experience that enables people to be productive and feel like they can actually get their work done.”
How DEX instruments work
Digital worker expertise instruments “can provide a deeper understanding of employees’ experiences with digital technologies and enable digital workplace teams to build an approach focused on employees’ individual preferences,” Gartner famous in an infographic.
Digital worker expertise is an final result of a whole lot of totally different applied sciences all taking part in collectively in an ecosystem, Hewitt mentioned. That digital worker expertise could be good, it may be dangerous, it may be impartial. By aggregating and analyzing utilization and efficiency knowledge for varied office applied sciences, DEX instruments can assist firms pinpoint which applied sciences are underperforming and supply steering on enhance them.
“These are [software] agent-based tools that go out and collect telemetry data across all the different technologies, such as devices, applications, networks, that people use on a daily basis,” Hewitt mentioned. “And basically [analyze] and use that data to benchmark the experience to identify issues with the overall experience and hopefully remediate those issues as well fix anything that comes up.”
For instance, an organization can set up an agent on a tool to gather knowledge on its efficiency, its stability, how rapidly it’s booting up, or what number of purposes are crashing, Hewitt mentioned.
“All of the tools support agents for Windows, most support macOS, some support Android and Linux,” Wilson mentioned. “However, nothing I’m aware of exists for iOS, and that’s primarily because Apple restricts [the use of agents] on the iOS side of things.”
As nicely as monitoring and optimizing purposes, units, and different applied sciences, DEX instruments additionally accumulate worker sentiment knowledge in regards to the know-how, usually carried out via built-in surveys, Wilson added.
Advanced analytics engines in DEX platforms permit close to real-time processing of the collected knowledge into actionable insights, stories, and alerts for admins. And DEX software program can combine with IT service administration instruments for sooner concern decision, in some circumstances automating troubleshooting and remediation.
Features to search for in DEX instruments
There are plenty of options organizations ought to search for when researching DEX instruments, together with:
- Continuous monitoring throughout units, virtualization, purposes, and networks to measure precise worker expertise.
- Real-time reporting and alerts for directors when points come up.
- Ability to work together with workers by way of such instruments as built-in desktop messaging.
- Prebuilt scripts and configurable capabilities that allow IT to repair issues.
- Root trigger evaluation to permit troubleshooting throughout units, purposes, virtualization, and networks.
- Integration of analytics and troubleshooting with messaging and remediation capabilities to diagnose and resolve points.
- Qualitative suggestions functionality to gather worker sentiment although built-in surveys.
- Internal benchmarking functionality to match the digital worker expertise scores of workers in several places.
Additionally, firms ought to search for DEX instruments which can be hosted within the cloud reasonably than on-premises instruments, Wilson mentioned. “The big difference is the analytics capability — the engine that is used to do the analysis,” he mentioned. “On premises, you don’t have the power of machine learning and big data analysis.”
Potential challenges
When it involves deciding on and implementing DEX instruments, enterprises want to contemplate the potential challenges. For instance, DEX instruments could be costly, so to obtain the required sources and funding, IT leaders must persuade enterprise leaders that the short-term and long-term payoffs will justify the upfront investments.
In addition, organizations want to pay attention to the adjustments that may accompany the implementation of DEX instruments. Not solely will firms have to coach workers, however they will even have to switch their workflows and enterprise processes.
“DEX strategy and tools require reskilling or acquiring talent with curiosity, problem-solving, and data analytics skills, in addition to establishing a new mindset and approach to IT’s role as an enabler, rather than a controller of technology,” the Gartner report acknowledged. The report suggested “dedicating and developing engineers into DEX tool subject matter experts but maintaining integration into digital workplace engineering and operations teams.”
Because of privateness points, enterprise leaders in firms which can be required to adjust to authorized or regulatory necessities on knowledge assortment and use could oppose implementing DEX instruments. While DEX instruments can anonymize personalised knowledge, doing so can scale back its worth. DEX instruments want to grasp and assist people to considerably enhance the worker expertise.
“These tools look at user behavior on devices, so you have to be sure that the vendors have good privacy protection, good data deletion capabilities and features, and that they’re aware of certain geographic privacy laws,” such because the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, Hewitt mentioned.
In addition, firms solely get out of those DEX platforms what they put into them, he mentioned. “And what I mean by that is that the companies that are most successful with digital employee experience management tools have dedicated team members that manage it,” he mentioned. “DEX tools are never going to be successful if you just deploy them.”
Organizations additionally want to grasp that it’s going to take a while earlier than they’ve captured sufficient knowledge to successfully gauge the well being of their workers’ digital experiences, in response to Hewitt. “It typically takes a couple months to collect all that data,” he mentioned. “So while it’s not very difficult to deploy the agents from an implementation perspective, it does take some time to collect enough data to be able to derive any insights from it.”
6 main DEX instruments
There are plenty of digital worker expertise instruments available on the market, so that can assist you start your analysis, we’ve highlighted the next merchandise primarily based on discussions with analysts and unbiased analysis.
1E Tachyon Experience: Offers real-time analysis and remediation of efficiency and availability points throughout units and purposes. Leverages microtransactions (executed in milliseconds) on all endpoints to verify well being primarily based on efficiency, stability, responsiveness, and consumer sentiment. Performs root trigger evaluation and automatic decision. Provides actionable insights that assist firms make knowledgeable selections about the place to speculate and what to prioritize. (Contact 1E for safety information.)
Aternity Digital Experience Management: Offers enterprise-scale analytics for each endpoint, utility, transaction, and consumer, serving to firms rapidly resolve points by exhibiting them the breakdowns of response occasions between shopper units, networks, and app again ends. Self-healing management and AI-powered visibility assist IT improve the efficiency of enterprise purposes. Customers can evaluate their workers’ digital experiences with these of a whole lot of different Aternity clients. Aternity is available in three editions: Fundamentals, Essentials, and Enterprise. (See Aternity’s safety information.)
ControlUp: Continuously screens the provision and efficiency of organizations’ end-user computing environments. Provides fast root trigger evaluation and remediation along with historic views of advanced IT infrastructure. Uses experiential knowledge to assist IT detect any points that have an effect on workers’ efficiency and allows IT to enhance or repair issues rapidly. ControlUp is available in 4 editions: Pro, Enterprise, Platinum, and Ultimate. (See ControlUp’s safety information.)
Lakeside Digital Experience Cloud: Allows firms to watch, measure, and improve their workers’ interactions with the know-how they use within the office. Customers can carry out end-user expertise administration, digital office planning, distant work administration, IT asset optimization, and proactive service desk operations. Helps IT decide the foundation causes of present points and determine potential future points. Integrations embody ServiceNow, Microsoft, Citrix, VMware, and Splunk. (Contact Lakeside for safety information.)
Nexthink Experience: Guides admins to proactively handle and enhance workers’ know-how expertise, together with issues to concentrate on, seemingly causes, and remediation steps. Correlates technical efficiency with worker sentiment to assist IT pinpoint every concern, its root trigger, who it’s affecting, and resolve it. Provides versatile dashboards, occasion visibility and visualizations, automated concern identification and remediation, and prebuilt integrations with ServiceNow and Splunk. (Contact Nexthink for safety information.)
VMware Digital Employee Experience Management: Aggregates knowledge from quite a lot of sources, together with third-party methods, and provides IT whole visibility throughout desktops, cellular units, and apps. Offers actionable insights, a policy-based automation engine, and prebuilt integrations for ServiceNow and Slack. Out-of-the field dashboards and stories give directors at-a-glance perception into the digital worker expertise, utility efficiency, and system well being. Automates data-driven root trigger evaluation to detect incidents, troubleshoot, and remediate points. Part of VMware’s Workspace ONE platform. (See VMware’s safety information.)