Provider Lens Report: Aligning Digital Workplace Requirements with Services and Solutions
What is Happening?
ISG’s work with enterprise clients suggests that, in their quests to implement an overall digital transformation strategy, practically every enterprise is initiating their transformation by implementing a digital workplace. However, we also see that the definition and interpretation of a “digital workplace” is different for every enterprise. Some of this stems from industry-specific factors; some stems from relative business and IT maturity; and some comes from economic factors.
But as explained in our latest research report, the most important overall factors influencing the vision and implementation of enterprise digital workplaces, and their requirements for IT services are two: how complex the end-user workplace environment is, and how well integrated enterprise IT is with rest of the business. Variations in these factors give rise to significant differences in how each enterprise perceives and values digital workplaces, and in turn, what types of IT services are or will be the most valuable to them. And even within a single enterprise, it is likely that there will be multiple, and possibly conflicting, sets of workplace services needs.
Why is it Happening?
Our new ISG Provider Lens™ Digital Workplace Services Archetype Report summarizes months of research focused on workplace services, services providers, and the global range of buyer needs. The report summarizes the relative capabilities of workplace services providers and their abilities to address the requirements of five typical categories of enterprise buyer types (i.e., “archetypes”). Each archetype represents a unique set of enterprise user business and technological needs and challenges; many if not most enterprises include more than one archetype. And the ability to satisfy the needs of these archetypes is what’s going to enable provider success in a rapidly changing workplace services marketplace.
The archetypes are based on workplace environment complexity and involvement with the rest of the business. The roles and requirements of each of the five archetypes - Ad-hoc, Transformation-oriented, Cloud-enabled, Digital, and Next-gen Sourcing - are detailed in the report, and mapped to relevant IT services provider capabilities to provide a means of identifying and comparing relevant services and providers.
For each of the archetypes, the report also positions different services providers based on our analysis and assessment of their relevant capabilities and offerings. Based on this analysis, we can identify some providers as “leaders” for each archetype’s needs. The leaders are then compared against each other based on their abilities to satisfy each of the key imperatives for the archetype.
As is explained in the report, many factors had to be identified, and their effects evaluated, in order to segment the marketplace into these five archetypes. These factors include the following:
- Growth of the Millennial workforce
- Increased sales of end-user mobile, wearables, and similar devices
- Declines in the number and scope of outsourcing contracts for End User Computing (EUC) services
- Increasing use of automation and analytics in IT and desk-side support services
- More involvement of non-CIO leaders in enterprise workplace transformation
- Increased enterprise adoption of virtual device interface (VDI) and cloud-based VDI
- Increased importance of enterprise social networking and collaboration
- Automation, analytics, bots and self-healing tools form the basis of end-user workplace support services; and
- The typical enterprise End User Computing (EUC) services team is being transformed into a Digital Workplace Services team. This team, in most cases, is well integrated with the application design and user experience management teams, or is part of a larger digital strategy team.
Net Impact
Beyond our assessment of archetype needs and provider/services alignment with those needs, the report also provides insight into key trends shaping (and re-shaping) digital workplace-related services and their providers, and how these trends are changing (and will change) enterprise-side demand and use of such services. Two of these key trends are as follows:
- Growth of the Millennial workforce
- Increased sales of end-user mobile, wearables, and similar devices
- Declines in the number and scope of outsourcing contracts for End User Computing (EUC) services
- Increasing use of automation and analytics in IT and desk-side support services
- More involvement of non-CIO leaders in enterprise workplace transformation
- Increased enterprise adoption of virtual device interface (VDI) and cloud-based VDI
- Increased importance of enterprise social networking and collaboration
- Automation, analytics, bots and self-healing tools form the basis of end-user workplace support services; and
- The typical enterprise End User Computing (EUC) services team is being transformed into a Digital Workplace Services team. This team, in most cases, is well integrated with the application design and user experience management teams, or is part of a larger digital strategy team.
Note: This report presents services providers’ known capabilities in the context of user enterprises’ typical project needs (i.e., archetypes). This report is not meant to rank providers or to assert that there is one top provider whose abilities can meet the requirements of all clients who identify themselves with a particular archetype.