ISG Provider Lens™ Digital Workplace of the Future Archetype Report 2018
Personal Digital Assistant For Everyone
A machine is anything that reduces human effort and makes it more efficient. Technological advancements in the recent few years have solidified the above belief. The current digital technologies aim at reducing human efforts in mundane tasks and at enabling people to focus on more value-added work that could differentiate the output generated by humans from that from a machine. Whatever can be automated is getting automated. “Can this process or system be automated?” or “How can this process or system be automated” are frequently asked questions within enterprises.
Modern workplace technologies are heavily influenced by digital and automation technologies and are moving toward a man-machine maturity model. In this model, tasks and processes with high automation potential are handed over to a cognitive intelligent machine system that can provide operational efficiency and reduce cost. These intelligent machines and automated systems also enhance the experience for end users and enable them to explore higher value-added work. With digital and automation technologies, having a personal assistant is no longer a luxury that only senior executives can afford. Modern digital workplace technologies provide every worker with a personal digital assistant that can assist by taking over mundane tasks to help the user explore value-added work and advance their career.
An AI-based virtual chat agent is the simplest example of a personal digital assistant. A basic virtual agent can assist in creating an IT service desk ticket based on end user’s interaction over chat. A slightly advanced virtual agent could book meetings on users’ behalf. A highly advanced agent could identify end users’ sentiments from chat input and then suggest issue solutions. Highly intelligent virtual agents also can interact with proactive systems and predictive analytics solutions working in the background and can warn users of excessive use or an upcoming computing power crisis. Such an offering would result in higher end-user satisfaction and improved productivity.
Another example of automation and intelligent technologies can be seen in field services, where an agent need not travel to a user’s desk or other onsite location to assist in device support. By using digital technologies like augmented and virtual reality, a remote user can very effectively aid end users. These services provide considerable cost reductions.
Smart offices and meeting rooms are more examples where intelligent automation is transforming the workplace environment. Smart unified communication and collaboration technologies can deduce conversation context and can also take notes from an actual live meeting. End users experience the changes in physical workplace treatment according to their user role and persona.
In addition to cognitive automation, consumerization is also affecting how workplace technologies are transforming user experience. The growing use of smart phones with cloudifying and "appifying" information access leads to end users expecting similar treatment at workplace. The pay-per-use model is also creating new service delivery models for enterprises.
Automation and analytics technologies are disrupting all major workplace services areas. Automated analytics and intelligence can help provide efficient IT service desk or IT support services. Augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) technologies are providing cost advantages for onsite field support. Enterprises are also considering opex model cover device procurement, provisioning, management and refresh in a pay-per-use model, which is making device-as-a-service popular. Endpoint management services are extending their focus to support the increasing use of smart wearable devices. Technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can monitor traffic at each endpoint and recognize threats in the device ecosystem. Only issues that are not being automatically resolved will be escalated to human agents. End-user system use analytics also empower cloud-based virtual desktop services, or desktop-as-a-service offerings, to automatically scale to support additions and reductions in the end user population. Automated solutions like chatbots can connect with a variety of interaction channels like Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana and Google Assistant to provide end users with a consumer-like experience in the workplace.
Different enterprises aspire to transform their workplace environments exhibit different characteristics according to their digital maturity. Based on the workplace environment complexity and level of enterprise IT integration with business, ISG classifies five types of enterprise behavior toward workplace transformation. They are shown in Figure 1.
Each enterprise behavior type is affected by the increasing automation and maturity of its digital personal assistant. As enterprise clients mature from a legacy environment to digital one, their workplace automation and analytics also mature. As they mature, the personal digital assistant defining the workplace environment could handle more complex scenarios and offer higher cognitive intelligence.