Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Adoption: Today's Digital Workplace Priority 💥 with Andrew Hewitt (Forrester)

Transcript

Adoption: Today's Digital Workplace Priority 💥 with Andrew Hewitt (Forrester) · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome it, change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim
0:05
Speaker 1: Flower and Tom McGraw. Let's get into.
0:07
Speaker 2: It adda change Makers, welcome back to the deck Show.
0:14
Speaker 2: I'm joining you from London as ever, but Tim Flower
0:18
Speaker 2: is next to a canal in Copenhagen. Tim, how's it
0:22
Speaker 2: going out there?
0:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's one of the one of the
0:25
Speaker 3: beautiful parts of this job. Definitely not having a digital
0:29
Speaker 3: employee experience right now, I'm having very much a real one,
0:31
Speaker 3: So it's an awesome part of the show. Had a
0:34
Speaker 3: great meeting with some CEOs yesterday in Copenhagen and off
0:36
Speaker 3: to Amsterdam and London next week.
0:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, really cool, super cool.
0:40
Speaker 2: And this is how this is how slick we're getting
0:43
Speaker 2: listeners in our four fifth year.
0:45
Speaker 4: Who knows what it is because.
0:46
Speaker 2: Tim's joining us from beside a canal and he's joining
0:49
Speaker 2: us for a very special guest with everybody's favorite guitar
0:55
Speaker 2: playing rock climbing decks analyst super Emo Andrew Hewitt.
1:01
Speaker 4: How you doing, Andrew?
1:02
Speaker 5: I'm great.
1:03
Speaker 6: Yeah, I actually really get that bio uploaded to my
1:05
Speaker 6: foesheer dot com site.
1:07
Speaker 7: I appreciate that.
1:08
Speaker 5: That's nice.
1:10
Speaker 2: You've got to be everybody's favorite, because I don't think
1:12
Speaker 2: there's too many. There's too many out there with that
1:14
Speaker 2: specific list of accolades. But I was trying to do
1:18
Speaker 2: the maths. Andrew, I mean you were you were our
1:20
Speaker 2: first guest. That's that's a firm fact in my memory,
1:25
Speaker 2: our launch guest. But I don't know how many times
1:27
Speaker 2: you've had John Suits. It might be a fourth something
1:29
Speaker 2: like that.
1:29
Speaker 6: I think it's it's either three or four. I would
1:31
Speaker 6: say I feel like it's at least once a year.
1:33
Speaker 6: So absolutely somewhere in that range.
1:36
Speaker 4: So should be. And how are you, Andrews.
1:39
Speaker 5: I'm great. I'm great.
1:40
Speaker 6: I'm in research mode, which is rare for an analyst.
1:44
Speaker 6: Usually you're in consulting and traveling mode. But I've been
1:47
Speaker 6: doing research for the last three months, which is super exciting.
1:50
Speaker 6: So I have a bunch of stuff coming out soon,
1:52
Speaker 6: so it's good. It's nice to not be on the
1:55
Speaker 6: road and actually focus on writing and delivering content for clients. Yeah,
2:01
Speaker 6: I'm really good.
2:02
Speaker 4: Nice. We look forward to it. We always look forward
2:04
Speaker 4: to it.
2:05
Speaker 2: And I got written down here for my first question,
2:08
Speaker 2: I've got written down let's start at thirty thousand feet
2:10
Speaker 2: and I think that's where I like to picture you Andrew,
2:12
Speaker 2: you know, with your your nails in a bit of
2:14
Speaker 2: a cleft of rock. So and based upon you know,
2:19
Speaker 2: if you're in the sort of writing and composition phase
2:22
Speaker 2: at the moment, I'm I'm sure we've had a lot
2:24
Speaker 2: of conversations with enterprise customers in recent months, and where
2:30
Speaker 2: would you say based upon these the center of dex
2:34
Speaker 2: gravity is presently you know what, what do you think
2:37
Speaker 2: is emerging is the big kind of collective challenge or
2:40
Speaker 2: indeed opportunity. But you're hearing about echoed again and again.
2:44
Speaker 6: Yeah, So if I take a look at our priorities
2:47
Speaker 6: that we've surveyed our digital workplace leaders on. We do
2:50
Speaker 6: this every single year and we have a new survey
2:52
Speaker 6: coming out in June. But the priorities are very clear.
2:56
Speaker 6: I mean, there are top five priorities. First one is
3:00
Speaker 6: end user adoption of technology, which I'm sure we'll jump into.
3:03
Speaker 6: Second one is improving the user experience of those applications.
3:07
Speaker 6: Third is taking advantage of AI. Fourth of proactive it
3:11
Speaker 6: very dex oriented, right, and the fifth is workplace experience
3:14
Speaker 6: so that whole return to office type of momentum that's
3:19
Speaker 6: going so overall, you know, what I'm seeing is that
3:22
Speaker 6: that prevailing trend of DEX is getting bigger. It's it's
3:25
Speaker 6: breaking out of its traditional home of end user computing
3:29
Speaker 6: and service desk and starting to address a lot more opportunity.
3:34
Speaker 6: And we're also seeing that manifest across the organizations that
3:37
Speaker 6: we're working with as they're continuing to work outside of
3:40
Speaker 6: it as well. So the overall prevailing notion is bigger
3:45
Speaker 6: essentially for decks, more holistic, and so it's something we've
3:49
Speaker 6: seen for a number of years, but we're seeing that
3:50
Speaker 6: even accelerating this year.
3:52
Speaker 2: Why adoption at number one all of a sudden, Andrew,
3:55
Speaker 2: what's your read for the sort of backdrop for that
3:58
Speaker 2: sudden like unanimity there?
4:00
Speaker 6: Yeah, you would think it would be very employee experience focused,
4:03
Speaker 6: but it's actually very cost focused.
4:06
Speaker 5: It's about getting more for less.
4:08
Speaker 7: Right.
4:08
Speaker 6: A lot of the IT leaders I speak with today are,
4:11
Speaker 6: you know, making these huge investments in these big productivity
4:14
Speaker 6: suites or these large, monolithic enterprise applications, and so they
4:18
Speaker 6: want to get their money back, and the way that
4:20
Speaker 6: you do that is you enable people to get the
4:23
Speaker 6: most out of those applications as possible, right, And so
4:26
Speaker 6: that's a lot of the prevailing notion today has helped
4:28
Speaker 6: me get my value for those investments that I've already made,
4:32
Speaker 6: and adoption is absolutely one of the key components of that.
4:35
Speaker 6: The second piece of that, of course, is taking advantage
4:38
Speaker 6: of the potential innovation from these new systems like artificial
4:42
Speaker 6: intelligence generative AI capabilities as well, which you know, if
4:45
Speaker 6: you're able to enable the employee, you know you're going
4:48
Speaker 6: to drive better competitive differentiation in the marketplace, more innovation,
4:52
Speaker 6: higher productivity, hopefully less burnout because you're doing less boring,
4:56
Speaker 6: mundane things on a daily basis because you're automating it.
4:59
Speaker 6: So think AI has also impacted that adoption conversation, but
5:02
Speaker 6: I would say it's primarily give me more for less.
5:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I had loads I know we have
5:09
Speaker 2: loads of questions about we better put a.
5:12
Speaker 4: Pin in some of those thoughts right now.
5:16
Speaker 2: But you know, look, I think you were talking about
5:19
Speaker 2: decks getting bigger just a minute ago, and you know,
5:24
Speaker 2: would you say the in terms of maturity, is there
5:28
Speaker 2: a kind of consensus direction or do you see the
5:30
Speaker 2: sort of market fragmenting presently in terms of focus and
5:34
Speaker 2: maturity posts.
5:35
Speaker 6: So there's consensus in the fact that every organization or
5:40
Speaker 6: software vendor I talked to recognizes the value of decks,
5:44
Speaker 6: Like you're going to be flying blind into the future
5:47
Speaker 6: if you don't have some type of real time telemetry
5:50
Speaker 6: collection that's helping you make decisions with more accuracy, right,
5:55
Speaker 6: because that's how we previously have operated, especially within energy computing.
5:59
Speaker 6: It's like, you know, we're just guessing about what the
6:02
Speaker 6: problem is and not actually verifying it. So there's consensus there.
6:05
Speaker 6: And so what I'm seeing across the digital workplace is
6:08
Speaker 6: des getting embedded into so many different areas where I
6:11
Speaker 6: think there's not really a lot of consensus yet. Is
6:14
Speaker 6: I'm seeing a couple of different let's call them hubs
6:17
Speaker 6: or camps of digital employee experience. Like there could be
6:20
Speaker 6: kind of the pure decks digital workplace, give me the
6:23
Speaker 6: broad holistic view of all the technologies impacting employees.
6:27
Speaker 5: That's definitely one hub.
6:28
Speaker 6: You have endpoint management taking in DEX capabilities that rise
6:33
Speaker 6: of you know what we're hearing in the industry as
6:34
Speaker 6: autonomous endpoint management is another kind of camp around decks,
6:38
Speaker 6: and then you have more of the itsm LED DEX
6:41
Speaker 6: capabilities as well, you know, driven by a lot of
6:44
Speaker 6: the major itsm players, and so there's not really a
6:47
Speaker 6: lot of consensus in terms of where that future is going.
6:50
Speaker 6: But I think there is consensus that, yes, there's value
6:53
Speaker 6: in having a data driven approach to how we manage
6:56
Speaker 6: everything within the digital workplace.
6:59
Speaker 4: Great.
7:00
Speaker 2: Great, and we're going to dove into a few of
7:02
Speaker 2: these topics or teammates with you in a moment. But
7:04
Speaker 2: before we do, I think, you know, look used to
7:06
Speaker 2: a lot of people, all of us turn into you
7:08
Speaker 2: to know who the decks leaders are in terms of vendors. Right,
7:12
Speaker 2: that's the typical thing. But it's curious, right if you
7:15
Speaker 2: had to describe the decks leaders of today in terms
7:20
Speaker 2: of like enterprise adopters, what do you see as the
7:24
Speaker 2: tell tell science?
7:24
Speaker 4: What do they tend to be doing differently?
7:27
Speaker 5: So one is how they're organized.
7:29
Speaker 6: Right, A lot of organizations are setting up, you know,
7:32
Speaker 6: what we've called like experience management office, you know, and
7:35
Speaker 6: they start to kind of like have the center of
7:37
Speaker 6: excellence around experience. What I'm finding with the most mature
7:40
Speaker 6: organizations is that they're actually moving away from that dedicated
7:44
Speaker 6: center of excellence model and they're actually embedding decks into
7:48
Speaker 6: the product teams itself. So the most mature organizations have
7:52
Speaker 6: kind of decentralized that where it's actually a culture of
7:55
Speaker 6: experience that's expected across all of the product teams and
7:59
Speaker 6: it's not as necessarily just kind of one center that's
8:02
Speaker 6: driving everything.
8:03
Speaker 5: You know forward.
8:04
Speaker 6: So that's been a shift that I've seen with some
8:06
Speaker 6: of our more mature Decks customers over the last year
8:10
Speaker 6: or so, is that they start to build this culture
8:13
Speaker 6: experience where you don't need to have someone kind of
8:15
Speaker 6: be the enforcer of decks, if you will. So that's
8:20
Speaker 6: one sign that someone is more mature. I would also
8:22
Speaker 6: say that they move beyond thinking about specific tech silos,
8:27
Speaker 6: Like a mature Dex customer is not going to just
8:30
Speaker 6: focus on what's my device performance or what's my Microsoft
8:33
Speaker 6: through sixty five health, et cetera. They're going to be
8:36
Speaker 6: thinking about the employee journey, like what is that employee
8:39
Speaker 6: trying to accomplish when they're using multiple different technologies at once,
8:44
Speaker 6: and how do I start to measure that? And so
8:47
Speaker 6: I have a lot of customers today that are doing
8:49
Speaker 6: like designed thinking employee journey mapping workshops, and it's with
8:53
Speaker 6: that goal of really understanding what are the various elements
8:57
Speaker 6: that impact that experience that may come from auple different technologies,
9:01
Speaker 6: and so that's a much more sophisticated way to approach
9:04
Speaker 6: some of the more process oriented issues with digital experience
9:08
Speaker 6: than say, just focus on specific silos. And then the
9:11
Speaker 6: final area is that you absolutely start to see collaboration
9:13
Speaker 6: outside of it and the most mature customers, so you're
9:16
Speaker 6: going to see CHR involved facilities, sometimes security is involved.
9:21
Speaker 5: So that's a major transition.
9:23
Speaker 6: That we've seen amongst the mature customers as well.
9:28
Speaker 7: So that maps right in.
9:29
Speaker 3: Andrew had a conversation yesterday with some senior leaders here
9:32
Speaker 3: in Copenhagen with a great partner of ours Atteia CIO
9:36
Speaker 3: level and maybe CCIO minus one, and it was fascinating
9:40
Speaker 3: to hear the conversation.
9:42
Speaker 7: It was a couple hours.
9:43
Speaker 3: The conversation around employee digital employee experience, using that acronym
9:48
Speaker 3: of decks and not talking about a platform, a product,
9:52
Speaker 3: a solution at all. It was all around how are
9:55
Speaker 3: my employees experiencing, primarily in the world of AI, how
9:59
Speaker 3: are they experiencing chat, GPT, How can we leverage that
10:02
Speaker 3: technology to health their experience versus making it a burden
10:05
Speaker 3: to try to learn it.
10:07
Speaker 7: It was really interesting to hear the conversation.
10:09
Speaker 3: I spoke for about an hour more of a conversation
10:12
Speaker 3: on how to solve some of those problems. But you've
10:15
Speaker 3: tracked that evolution of DEX for a while. Is the
10:18
Speaker 3: definition changing a Tom touched on it a little bit
10:22
Speaker 3: in terms of fragmenting or consolidating, But when we talked
10:26
Speaker 3: about the definition of decks, it was very much outside
10:28
Speaker 3: the normal boundaries that we do.
10:30
Speaker 7: I'm curious if you see it.
10:32
Speaker 3: Broadening or narrowing or becoming something else, what are put
10:36
Speaker 3: people talking to you about.
10:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's super interesting.
10:38
Speaker 6: I mean, the majority of DEX conversations that I get
10:41
Speaker 6: today are at that strategic level. Sounds very similar to
10:44
Speaker 6: the conversations you're having, which is, hey, like, there are
10:47
Speaker 6: so many aspects of decks that impact the end user experience,
10:51
Speaker 6: and they're not just end user computing. Like I have
10:54
Speaker 6: one client today where they're like, you know, decks from
10:57
Speaker 6: US computing perspective doesn't really matter to us because we
11:01
Speaker 6: way overspect the devices they're going to be running for
11:04
Speaker 6: you know, five or six years, like they're just that's
11:06
Speaker 6: not our problem. Our problem is around like the processes
11:09
Speaker 6: that we have in place that are frankly, you know,
11:12
Speaker 6: a total pain to navigate as an employee. And so
11:15
Speaker 6: that definition, the original definition that I had for DECKS
11:19
Speaker 6: a number of years ago, was the sum of perceptions
11:21
Speaker 6: employees have working with the technology they use daily. So
11:25
Speaker 6: it's that idea that it's not necessarily the tech that matters.
11:28
Speaker 6: It's what you feel about the tech and how it
11:30
Speaker 6: impacts your day to day work that's really what matters
11:32
Speaker 6: from an employee perspective. And so, you know, I would
11:35
Speaker 6: venture to say that maybe maybe I was a little
11:38
Speaker 6: bit premature in terms of that definition about five years
11:43
Speaker 6: ago when when DEX was really you know, it was
11:45
Speaker 6: just about that whole like new data collection mechanism. And
11:49
Speaker 6: so what I'm starting to see now is I think
11:51
Speaker 6: the market is starting to see that it's a broader
11:55
Speaker 6: conversation than just how do I impact digital workplace? And
11:58
Speaker 6: that's why we're seeing a lot of these other leaders,
12:00
Speaker 6: like HR leaders getting involved as well. So the definition,
12:04
Speaker 6: I would say has remained the same, but I think
12:07
Speaker 6: that the market has now got to the point where
12:10
Speaker 6: they're able to address this more holistic picture of DECKS
12:13
Speaker 6: in a way that they just couldn't before.
12:17
Speaker 3: And interestingly enough, that was the other half of the
12:19
Speaker 3: conversation was the partnership between HR and IT, the business
12:23
Speaker 3: and IT, and not just looking at it as kind
12:26
Speaker 3: of collaborative partners, but getting more connected in the delivery
12:32
Speaker 3: of an experience. We talk a lot about and Tom
12:35
Speaker 3: to touch on this earlier, and we want to kind
12:37
Speaker 3: of go a little bit deeper in it. I think
12:39
Speaker 3: Pedro was really ahead of his time twenty years ago
12:42
Speaker 3: and continues to be ahead of his time every year
12:44
Speaker 3: that next think marches forward, including last year the purchase
12:48
Speaker 3: of app Learn and being able to now write a
12:52
Speaker 3: product in our platform called adopt, and that adoption of
12:55
Speaker 3: technology was absolutely top of mind with the executive yesterday.
13:01
Speaker 3: I'm curious and you touched on it too, the digital
13:04
Speaker 3: adoption piece. Is it finally being recognized as a core
13:08
Speaker 3: pillar of decks? Are we truly ahead of our time
13:11
Speaker 3: or do you still see it as just a downstream
13:15
Speaker 3: training problem and a number of different platforms might be
13:18
Speaker 3: able to solve it.
13:19
Speaker 5: Well, I would say a couple of things.
13:21
Speaker 6: First, I'll reiterate it's the number one priority from digital
13:24
Speaker 6: workplace leaders that we survey against that's the one that
13:27
Speaker 6: they say, this is our most important thing over the
13:29
Speaker 6: next twelve months. So there's recognition that adoption is super important.
13:34
Speaker 6: And when I work with a lot of these DECKS
13:36
Speaker 6: teams today are digital workplace teams, they will often have
13:40
Speaker 6: like a dedicated DEX tool in the traditional sense like
13:42
Speaker 6: the next thing, but they'll also have adapt tool. And
13:45
Speaker 6: I see that very consistently where they have kind of
13:48
Speaker 6: these two separate tools that they use to deal with
13:53
Speaker 6: this overall issue. And so I think it's more of
13:56
Speaker 6: there's much better recognition amongst it that you need to
13:59
Speaker 6: have something looks at overall adoption. I don't think it's
14:02
Speaker 6: a downstream training component anymore. That being said, it's still,
14:06
Speaker 6: you know, really early in terms of the convergence of
14:09
Speaker 6: those two, right you know, I think we'll start to
14:11
Speaker 6: see more of the more of that happen over the
14:14
Speaker 6: next couple of years. But you know, there's not a
14:16
Speaker 6: ton of examples, as you know, of DEX and DAP
14:19
Speaker 6: kind of coming together, you know, in the enterprise today,
14:22
Speaker 6: although those tools often exist in the portfolio that workplace
14:26
Speaker 6: leaders have.
14:28
Speaker 2: You're saying a lot I was going to just jump
14:31
Speaker 2: into him, but maybe I was going to say, Andrew,
14:35
Speaker 2: I mean thinking about that, You've got these two tools
14:39
Speaker 2: often found side by side. What advantages could you anticipate
14:43
Speaker 2: in those two tools being one tool, in those two
14:46
Speaker 2: functions coming much closer together.
14:49
Speaker 6: Well, I think there's a lot of value in being
14:50
Speaker 6: able to unify the measurement of all of those capabilities
14:55
Speaker 6: in a single you know, dashboard or like a single
14:58
Speaker 6: place right you know, you as a DEX team, I
15:01
Speaker 6: don't really want to go out and have you know,
15:04
Speaker 6: five to ten different ways that I'm measuring the experience.
15:08
Speaker 6: I want to have kind of a consistent way of
15:10
Speaker 6: doing that. And that's what we've seen at the large
15:12
Speaker 6: enterprise level so far. You know, most of the customers
15:15
Speaker 6: I'm working with, if they're moving towards a more holistic
15:18
Speaker 6: deck strategy, they're saying, hey, take the data out of
15:20
Speaker 6: the DEX tool or out of the DAP tool, out
15:23
Speaker 6: of itsm host it in a back end database and
15:27
Speaker 6: then you manage it that way, so I have that
15:29
Speaker 6: visibility across there. Right, So they're effectively creating a platform strategy.
15:34
Speaker 6: And I think as you start to bring together decks
15:36
Speaker 6: and DAP and maybe other areas as well, you are
15:39
Speaker 6: kind of creating, you know, forcing that platform strategy, and
15:43
Speaker 6: I think that's the big future of this space is
15:45
Speaker 6: that we're going to see a lot more consolidation so
15:48
Speaker 6: that people have that unified view. So yeah, I think
15:50
Speaker 6: there's absolutely a benefit of bringing those two together, and
15:55
Speaker 6: of course, you know, being able to draw connections between
15:59
Speaker 6: the two. If I see within a dex tool that
16:02
Speaker 6: an application is not performing, you know, correctly, but I
16:05
Speaker 6: can also see that the user is using it in
16:07
Speaker 6: some strange way, you know, maybe I can draw connection
16:10
Speaker 6: there and offer an opportunity for learning or remediation of
16:14
Speaker 6: some sort. So I could definitely see some overlap in
16:17
Speaker 6: terms of the capabilities themselves beyond just you know, how
16:20
Speaker 6: do I visualize the data?
16:23
Speaker 3: So a lot of leaders are talking to you about
16:25
Speaker 3: the fact that this is top on their list. You
16:26
Speaker 3: talk with lots of enterprises, some more mature than others.
16:31
Speaker 3: Do you see the mature the customers that you know
16:34
Speaker 3: the enterprises that you know of that are mature. Are
16:39
Speaker 3: you seeing signs of a design or an approach or
16:42
Speaker 3: a process that they've actually solved and can set the
16:45
Speaker 3: path for others or is it very much up in
16:47
Speaker 3: the air. Now you talked about maybe DECKS, what I
16:50
Speaker 3: would feel is fragmented and going to different teams versus
16:53
Speaker 3: being centralized. Are you seeing anything come together and gel
16:57
Speaker 3: around adoption and performance and stability come together that somebody
17:02
Speaker 3: has solved and concept the.
17:03
Speaker 6: Way I have not seen it, you know, formally. You know,
17:07
Speaker 6: there's definitely been a couple of examples of companies managing
17:11
Speaker 6: those two tool sets and using them to kind of
17:13
Speaker 6: benchmark that experience, But in terms of like integrating the
17:17
Speaker 6: data together, I haven't seen that at a large enterprise yet.
17:21
Speaker 6: What I would say is driving a lot of this interest, though,
17:25
Speaker 6: is the evolving conversation around XLAS. That seems to be
17:28
Speaker 6: an area where organizations are saying, hey, I need the
17:32
Speaker 6: visibility from DApp, I need the visibility from DECKS, I
17:35
Speaker 6: need the visibility from my HR tools to be able
17:39
Speaker 6: to construct an employee journey focused XLA. In other words,
17:43
Speaker 6: I looked at you know, the classic ones obviously like onboarding, right,
17:46
Speaker 6: that's going to have multiple different components in it, and
17:49
Speaker 6: they may say, hey, I want to be able to
17:52
Speaker 6: construct this XLA of onboarding using insights from all of those,
17:56
Speaker 6: and so I think that's going to be a forcing
17:57
Speaker 6: function for what drives a lot of integration together over
18:02
Speaker 6: time is people get more focused on these journey led
18:06
Speaker 6: xlas as opposed to like just measuring like boot up
18:09
Speaker 6: time or log in or application health those types of things.
18:12
Speaker 6: I think that's where you're going to start to see
18:14
Speaker 6: more of that formal approach of bringing those two capabilities together.
18:21
Speaker 2: You touched upon it a little bit earlier, Andrew. You know,
18:24
Speaker 2: one of the reasons that adoption maybe finds itself at
18:27
Speaker 2: that number one spot again and again is I guess
18:31
Speaker 2: what you might describe as the imminent wave of AI
18:34
Speaker 2: driven digital transformation. To block a phrase out of here,
18:39
Speaker 2: and I'm really interested in your read of that dynamic
18:43
Speaker 2: between adoption adoption investment adoption kind of focus and what
18:51
Speaker 2: people are anticipating over the next few years from AI
18:55
Speaker 2: and what you think that process looks like and what
18:58
Speaker 2: they think that process is going to look click.
19:00
Speaker 7: Yeah.
19:01
Speaker 6: So, first of all, you know, the thing that I
19:03
Speaker 6: always recommend with adoption is you've got to really understand
19:06
Speaker 6: the conditions in which you're trying to drive adoption.
19:09
Speaker 5: Right, if you're working in.
19:12
Speaker 6: An environment where the employee experience is poor, where people
19:15
Speaker 6: are already burnt out. You definitely do not have the
19:20
Speaker 6: credibility to go in there and drive adoption because people
19:23
Speaker 6: are not going to adopt tools when they're already too exhausted.
19:25
Speaker 4: You know.
19:25
Speaker 6: That's one of the major components of this as an organization,
19:29
Speaker 6: And what we also see with more mature organizations is
19:32
Speaker 6: they create that space to drive that adoption and allow
19:35
Speaker 6: people to have that time to learn and take on
19:38
Speaker 6: new capabilities. And so that's often the thing that gets
19:41
Speaker 6: missed with less mature organizations. They don't have a concept
19:45
Speaker 6: of employee engagement and what they're dealing with in terms
19:48
Speaker 6: of constraints from the workforce as they try to drive
19:52
Speaker 6: you know, adoption of a new solution. So that's been
19:54
Speaker 6: one of the challenges with AI is like everybody knows
19:57
Speaker 6: I got to take advantage of AI. Someone that knows
20:00
Speaker 6: how to use better AI than me is probably going
20:02
Speaker 6: to replace me if I don't learn to use this,
20:04
Speaker 6: but I don't really have the time, and so a
20:07
Speaker 6: lot of the focus has been, you know, on giving
20:09
Speaker 6: people that space, giving them the right training and resources
20:12
Speaker 6: to be able to go and experiment with these new
20:15
Speaker 6: you know, AIK abilities. You know, it's it's a massive change,
20:17
Speaker 6: you know for folks. And so I'm finding, you know,
20:20
Speaker 6: with our enterprise organizations that they're having to spend a
20:24
Speaker 6: lot more time on employee enablement with these generitive.
20:27
Speaker 5: AI solutions than they thought.
20:29
Speaker 6: Right, It's not as easy as just hitting a key
20:31
Speaker 6: on your PC and have it bring up your genitive
20:33
Speaker 6: AI system. Right, It's it's about how do you do
20:36
Speaker 6: the prompt engineering, how do you develop the right use
20:39
Speaker 6: cases all of that, how do you ensure compliance all
20:42
Speaker 6: of that. So it's it's a tough, tough challenge, but
20:45
Speaker 6: it's something that I think a lot of IT leaders
20:47
Speaker 6: for the first time are really seeing a huge potential
20:50
Speaker 6: in what types of innovation you can drive if you're
20:52
Speaker 6: able to really unlock that adoption of those AI capabilities.
20:57
Speaker 2: And do you think do you think it's like I mean,
20:58
Speaker 2: if you can trust it with previous waves of digital transformation, Right,
21:03
Speaker 2: it hits a little different as well, doesn't it, Because
21:06
Speaker 2: I think you know, adopting to something like teams or
21:10
Speaker 2: whatnot is a little different to a technology if it's
21:15
Speaker 2: not only transformational for how you communicate or function internally,
21:20
Speaker 2: but your survival inside your own industry.
21:24
Speaker 4: You know, collectively.
21:25
Speaker 2: Do you know what I'm saying, like, yeah, you know,
21:27
Speaker 2: and does this, does this, and does that dynamic elevate
21:31
Speaker 2: it and elevate the process of adoption to something that's
21:34
Speaker 2: much more strategically kind of essential than has previously been
21:40
Speaker 2: the case.
21:42
Speaker 7: Yeah.
21:42
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
21:42
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, we often talk about this concept
21:45
Speaker 6: of you know, you're really trying to harness intelligence at
21:50
Speaker 6: scale with AI, which is a way of saying that, like,
21:54
Speaker 6: these capabilities are learning over time, you're teaching your training.
21:58
Speaker 6: It's constantly changed, right, And I think that's one of
22:01
Speaker 6: the major differences with AI versus let's say Microsoft teams
22:05
Speaker 6: or like the initial era of mobile adoption, right, it
22:08
Speaker 6: was like this very defined, discrete thing. You know, you
22:11
Speaker 6: learn how to deposit a check with your mobile app
22:14
Speaker 6: on your phone.
22:14
Speaker 4: It was great.
22:15
Speaker 6: Then you moved on. Right, With AI, it's going to
22:18
Speaker 6: be constantly changing. It's going to be learning about you,
22:21
Speaker 6: and as it as it gets more sophisticated, your ability
22:25
Speaker 6: to interact with that is going to get more sophisticated
22:27
Speaker 6: as well. So I think that's a really you know,
22:30
Speaker 6: interesting component of adoption here in the sense that like,
22:34
Speaker 6: like the floor is like shifting beneath you. It's like
22:36
Speaker 6: quicksand beneath your feet. You're always trying to keep up
22:39
Speaker 6: with it versus just you know, you know, dealing with
22:41
Speaker 6: that one time of learning something and then having to
22:45
Speaker 6: move on and not really having to touch it again
22:47
Speaker 6: for years.
22:48
Speaker 2: Your business isn't going to be a bit less efficient
22:50
Speaker 2: if you if you fail to adopt, it's going to
22:52
Speaker 2: be a lot less competitive.
22:54
Speaker 4: Is one way of maybe putting it right.
22:57
Speaker 2: And you know, another interesting thing is to kind of
23:00
Speaker 2: customers and enterprises you know, who are very forward thinking
23:03
Speaker 2: of this way myself also, and there's a kind of
23:08
Speaker 2: a theme that I would describe as using AI to
23:10
Speaker 2: adapt and adopt to AI.
23:12
Speaker 4: You know what I mean, AI is becoming.
23:15
Speaker 2: A catalyst for its own AI transformation. And I wonder
23:20
Speaker 2: if that's something you're picking up on and encountering, you know,
23:23
Speaker 2: the level of newance you're describing requires or at least
23:27
Speaker 2: really benefits from AI technology.
23:29
Speaker 6: Also, Yeah, absolutely so, I mean we see this, you know,
23:33
Speaker 6: to kind of narrow the deck's focus a little bit.
23:35
Speaker 6: If you think about decks when the context of like
23:37
Speaker 6: endpoint management, oftentimes think people will say, okay, AI is
23:42
Speaker 6: going to be automating all these endpoint management tasks. I
23:45
Speaker 6: don't really necessarily want that, and so I'm not going
23:47
Speaker 6: to invest in it.
23:49
Speaker 5: I'm too scared.
23:50
Speaker 6: I don't want to I don't want to relinquish the
23:52
Speaker 6: control there as well. But I think to your point,
23:55
Speaker 6: what you can also use AI to do is to
23:58
Speaker 6: is to stop the automations from happening and actually bring
24:02
Speaker 6: you into the loop. And so it can go both ways.
24:04
Speaker 6: You can use AI to go out and automate certain
24:07
Speaker 6: things in your endpoint management stack, but you can also
24:09
Speaker 6: use it as a guide to be able to bring
24:11
Speaker 6: you in to give you more of that human than
24:13
Speaker 6: loop experience. And so in a way, you know, you
24:16
Speaker 6: can kind of use AI to safeguard against the pitfalls
24:20
Speaker 6: of AI as well, and so I think that's something
24:22
Speaker 6: that's often overlooked, is that you can use it in
24:25
Speaker 6: that way to reduce some of the risks. And so
24:28
Speaker 6: that's one of the major conversations that we're seeing. We
24:30
Speaker 6: think about decks in the context of that endpoint management
24:33
Speaker 6: stack and how do I do better management at scale.
24:36
Speaker 6: That's definitely one of the key considerations of how do
24:38
Speaker 6: I keep that human in the loop without introducing undue
24:43
Speaker 6: risk into the environment, and.
24:45
Speaker 7: This actually came up yesterday as well.
24:47
Speaker 3: It's interesting the themes are so close to overlapping. But
24:50
Speaker 3: you've been really focused and vocal, as have we about
24:55
Speaker 3: the cross functional nature of Deck's ownership. A couple of
25:00
Speaker 3: concepts that float around the Chief Experience Officer, the experience
25:04
Speaker 3: operations center similar to a security operation center or a
25:08
Speaker 3: network op center, but the Chief Experience Officer CXO. Do
25:13
Speaker 3: we feel that that's something that's going to be the
25:17
Speaker 3: catalyst to consolidate things and really formalize the focus on
25:22
Speaker 3: cross functional experience or do you think we're still moving
25:26
Speaker 3: in a decentralized model, that things are still too fragmented.
25:30
Speaker 6: Well, so, I think in general, like you want to
25:32
Speaker 6: move eventually, the end goal is to have this culture
25:35
Speaker 6: of experience where it's it is defensorized. You have all
25:38
Speaker 6: the product owners that say, hey, like dex is part
25:41
Speaker 6: of twenty percent of my goal. I got to make
25:42
Speaker 6: sure that that's a big focus of mine moving in
25:45
Speaker 6: that right direction. But to create that, it often needs
25:48
Speaker 6: that first step of the high C level executive that
25:52
Speaker 6: can kind of enforce that, and I think that's why
25:54
Speaker 6: you see the rise of the XMO and then in
25:57
Speaker 6: some cases the CXO. Now what's interesting is I've heard
26:00
Speaker 6: a couple of executives that are like chief DEX officers
26:04
Speaker 6: or chief experience officers. It's really not super common today,
26:09
Speaker 6: but I have had a couple of organizations move in
26:11
Speaker 6: that direction. Where it tends to move in that direction
26:15
Speaker 6: of there's a leading CXO is that person is often
26:19
Speaker 6: coming from like a customer experience perspective, and then they're
26:23
Speaker 6: realizing that, hey, employee experience has an impact on customer experience.
26:26
Speaker 6: DEX impacts the employee experience and therefore I need to
26:29
Speaker 6: focus on that too. And so when I've seen a
26:32
Speaker 6: CXO come into a DEX initiative, they're often coming from
26:35
Speaker 6: a customer experience perspective and they're often a little bit
26:40
Speaker 6: blind to some of the issues that I could could
26:43
Speaker 6: help with and help them prioritize. And so I think
26:46
Speaker 6: that that executive is going to be more common, but
26:49
Speaker 6: it's likely not going to come directly from the CIO.
26:52
Speaker 6: I think it's going to come from another part of
26:54
Speaker 6: the business, and that person is going to have to
26:56
Speaker 6: upscale and I really rely on the digital workplace organization
26:59
Speaker 6: to help them kind of understand the components of decks specifically.
27:03
Speaker 6: So yes, I think there is movement in that direction.
27:06
Speaker 6: I would say it's not very common. But the ultimate
27:09
Speaker 6: goal again is that transformation where that DEX culture is
27:13
Speaker 6: just embedded across the whole organization.
27:15
Speaker 5: But you're absolutely right.
27:16
Speaker 6: I mean, you need that executive level sponsorship in order
27:19
Speaker 6: to drive that level of acceptance.
27:23
Speaker 3: And over the years, my observation anyway has been that
27:25
Speaker 3: there isn't a real strong connection between IT and HR.
27:30
Speaker 3: I don't know if I would call it conflict or
27:33
Speaker 3: even go so far as you know, a turf wars
27:36
Speaker 3: per se. But do you see any genuine collaboration models
27:42
Speaker 3: emerging other than just a general committee style governance.
27:48
Speaker 6: Yeah, I've started to see, you know, some IT organizations
27:52
Speaker 6: reporting into HR. I've seen that a couple of different times,
27:55
Speaker 6: where you know, you're senior vice president of a digital
27:59
Speaker 6: workplace reports up to the CPO, and so that's a
28:03
Speaker 6: I think an example of a more mature organization where
28:07
Speaker 6: they're going to have that executive level approval and they're
28:09
Speaker 6: going to have more formalized roadmaps working together where you're
28:14
Speaker 6: really treating that DEX as an overall product that you're
28:16
Speaker 6: managing over time. Right, so it's today, it's it's been
28:20
Speaker 6: very uncommon. I think the prevailing notion is that there
28:23
Speaker 6: is still a bit of a turf for HR. Feels
28:25
Speaker 6: like they own the experience, but it's often from an
28:28
Speaker 6: employee life cycle perspective of hire to fire, it feels
28:32
Speaker 6: like they own kind of the daily productivity experience, but
28:35
Speaker 6: they don't really have insight into like human capital management
28:38
Speaker 6: and those types of tools. So right now it's there's
28:41
Speaker 6: still a bit of you know, challenge out there. I
28:44
Speaker 6: would say for folks listening in, it's like, what can
28:48
Speaker 6: you give to that HR person, What what type of
28:51
Speaker 6: insight do they need that you can uniquely provide and
28:54
Speaker 6: use that as a lever in your partnership to build
28:57
Speaker 6: that relationship you know better, and over time I think
29:01
Speaker 6: you start to see, you know, more convergence or collapse
29:04
Speaker 6: of those organizations in the context specifically of DEX.
29:08
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's really fascinating.
29:10
Speaker 3: The notion of it reporting to HR, I wouldn't suggest
29:15
Speaker 3: symbolic organizational changes, but that one could be significant. In
29:19
Speaker 3: my prior role at the Hartford for a long time
29:23
Speaker 3: it reported into finance and there couldn't have been a
29:27
Speaker 3: stronger message that it was an expense as a call
29:31
Speaker 3: center and reporting into the CFO, but it sends an
29:35
Speaker 3: equally strong message if it reports into HR. I think
29:38
Speaker 3: that's a very fascinating evolution of an IT org chart. Yeah,
29:44
Speaker 3: I think it's I wouldn't be surprised to see that.
29:47
Speaker 4: Gotta add, Gotta add.
29:48
Speaker 2: We did a survey of a recent survey of over
29:51
Speaker 2: one thousand IT leaders. We asked them what their expectations
29:56
Speaker 2: were for dynamic between the departments in the next three
29:59
Speaker 2: to five is sixty responders told us they thought they
30:04
Speaker 2: would merge inside five years HR and IT.
30:07
Speaker 6: So yeah, when we ask our surveys of digital employee
30:14
Speaker 6: experienced teams like what do you deal on a daily basis?
30:17
Speaker 6: Like what are your key activities? The number one areas
30:19
Speaker 6: they collaborate with people outside of IT. So it's it's starting,
30:23
Speaker 6: but it's yeah, it's going to take it some time.
30:26
Speaker 3: And there's a notion that it is going to be
30:30
Speaker 3: the HR of AI. The digital employees need HR just
30:34
Speaker 3: like the human human. There's all kinds of synergy be
30:39
Speaker 3: the next five years are going to be fascinating.
30:42
Speaker 2: AI is blatantly going to have like feelings soon, Isn't.
30:45
Speaker 8: It like it's going to be I feel really neglected
30:48
Speaker 8: by my by my users, and I feel really appreciated.
30:52
Speaker 8: It is going to have to be like, Okay, we're
30:54
Speaker 8: going to send you on a on a on a
30:56
Speaker 8: management course.
31:01
Speaker 3: Uh my last question, while the tour boat goes by
31:04
Speaker 3: on the canal, I'll give you focus. You're on the
31:08
Speaker 3: deck shop, Yeah, what do you see? And it gets
31:13
Speaker 3: I get outside the IT piece and Tom kind of
31:16
Speaker 3: touch on it too. Is what about the emotional intelligence
31:19
Speaker 3: that's required here or even deeper? You talked about designed thinking,
31:23
Speaker 3: What about the neuroscience informed design the next evolution of
31:28
Speaker 3: decks being informed by some scientific methods, especially as we
31:33
Speaker 3: start to understand the toll of the cognitive overload and
31:37
Speaker 3: employees are under and the fraction detention. Where do you
31:40
Speaker 3: see that emotional intelligence coming into play and everything.
31:43
Speaker 6: Oh, if if someone can crack that, they will have
31:46
Speaker 6: the best digital experience, right, you know, that's that's that's
31:49
Speaker 6: really kind of like the holy grail of all of this. Right,
31:52
Speaker 6: if you can get to a cognitive you know, informed
31:56
Speaker 6: approach on decks, then then you're doing way better than
32:00
Speaker 6: than anybody else in the space, right, So the opportunity
32:03
Speaker 6: is certainly there. I mean I spoke with a DEX
32:07
Speaker 6: leader just about a year ago for a piece of research,
32:09
Speaker 6: and she told me, I'm literally going out to try
32:11
Speaker 6: to hire a neuroscientist that can help out my team
32:14
Speaker 6: in terms of understanding the cognitive impact of technology on performance,
32:20
Speaker 6: on my ability to achieve flow states, on removing distraction, right, Like,
32:25
Speaker 6: that whole component is super interesting and I think provides
32:30
Speaker 6: a huge opportunity for folks.
32:32
Speaker 7: Right.
32:33
Speaker 6: Just understanding this is what I usually tell I leaders, like,
32:36
Speaker 6: just keep yourself a primer on some of the neuroscience
32:39
Speaker 6: in this space and some of the organizational psychology. It's
32:42
Speaker 6: going to go a really long way if you can
32:44
Speaker 6: understand that, Hey, people are most successful when they're able
32:47
Speaker 6: to focus for long periods of time. The max of
32:50
Speaker 6: that is about three to four hours before they need
32:52
Speaker 6: a break. And so I need to really design that
32:55
Speaker 6: environment with that in mind. I need to create those
32:58
Speaker 6: conditions of flow. And ultimately that's what DEX helps to create,
33:02
Speaker 6: is it reduces all those distractions, things, crashing, whatever, the
33:07
Speaker 6: things that take you out of that flow state. Ultimately,
33:10
Speaker 6: what we see is those that can stay in that
33:11
Speaker 6: state are much more likely to be successful over the
33:15
Speaker 6: long term. They're much more likely to drive competitive and differentiation.
33:18
Speaker 6: And so it's it's one of the key areas that
33:21
Speaker 6: companies absolutely overlook, and they really should not, especially when
33:25
Speaker 6: it's becoming more and more difficult to differentiate year after
33:28
Speaker 6: year after year.
33:31
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and year after year after year. Andrew, we have
33:35
Speaker 2: you on the show. It's a pleasure, it's a delight,
33:40
Speaker 2: and you know, look, I just want to I just
33:42
Speaker 2: want to give you some cue. Does last time around, Desiracol,
33:46
Speaker 2: we asked you to make a prediction, a bolder controversial
33:50
Speaker 2: prediction for the tech space. Actually, I don't think we
33:51
Speaker 2: phrased it like a prediction for the tech space, and
33:55
Speaker 2: you made a very good one. I think it was
33:57
Speaker 2: about acquisitions. And I won't say any further about any
34:02
Speaker 2: more concrete with that, Okay, but you did.
34:04
Speaker 4: You did nail it.
34:05
Speaker 2: I think it's fair to say so this time around,
34:09
Speaker 2: relatively early in twenty twenty five, what's your what's your
34:11
Speaker 2: bold of controversial prediction this year?
34:14
Speaker 5: Yeah, for this year. I have one for like five
34:16
Speaker 5: years from now.
34:17
Speaker 4: But okay, you can do that.
34:18
Speaker 2: You can do that, fine, exactly, it's going to be
34:21
Speaker 2: hard to hold you to account.
34:23
Speaker 4: We'll give you credit.
34:25
Speaker 6: You can take the kudos for the acquisition prediction last year.
34:29
Speaker 4: It's good.
34:31
Speaker 6: So, you know, I think five years out from now,
34:33
Speaker 6: I don't think you see any distinction in the in
34:35
Speaker 6: the DEX market. In other words, I think it becomes
34:38
Speaker 6: this broader platform based approach that we don't have this
34:41
Speaker 6: like specific you know, DEX market specifically. I think what
34:45
Speaker 6: what ends up happening is that all these area of
34:48
Speaker 6: digital workplaces end up taking on DEX components over time, right,
34:52
Speaker 6: and having that data driven approach.
34:54
Speaker 5: So it's not so much as a collapse.
34:57
Speaker 6: Of the DEX market overall, but there is a distribution
35:02
Speaker 6: of DEX capabilities across every aspect of the digital workplace,
35:06
Speaker 6: and you don't have.
35:07
Speaker 5: Like this discrete capability where it's like.
35:09
Speaker 6: I need to go buy a DEX tool. It's I
35:12
Speaker 6: have DEX capabilities across everything that I have as an organization.
35:15
Speaker 6: So I think that is something that we're starting to
35:16
Speaker 6: see happen, and I would expect that to be true
35:21
Speaker 6: by twenty thirty.
35:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, bring us back to that kind of merger expectation
35:26
Speaker 2: around because what you describe describes a kind of an
35:30
Speaker 2: organic merger between HR and IT functionalities, as we've historically
35:35
Speaker 2: understood from right distinctly. Well, I'm so lovely to have
35:39
Speaker 2: you back on the show, Andrew, genuine pleasure and that
35:42
Speaker 2: was that was a great convot. Let's have appearance number
35:46
Speaker 2: five in about twelve months or whatever.
35:48
Speaker 6: It is, perfect, sounds good. Thanks for having me. It's
35:51
Speaker 6: a pleasure as always.
35:53
Speaker 7: Good stuff, Andrew, thank you.
35:54
Speaker 2: Already, and thank you Copenhagen. Yes, that's great, fun, very funny.
36:04
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36:25
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for listening.
36:26
Speaker 1: Until next time,