THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE IN THE COGNITIVE ERAimages.forbes.com/forbesinsights/ibm_mobility/digital...Introduction Executive Summary The Digital Workplace: Empowering Users and Enabling

IN ASSOCIATION WITH:

THE DIGITAL WORKPLACEIN THE COGNITIVE ERA

POSITIONING FOR THE FUTURE: INTELLIGENT ITFOR THE ANYTIME, ANYWHERE WORKFORCE

Introduction

Executive Summary

The Digital Workplace: Empowering Users and Enablingthe Agile Enterprise

The Anytime, Anywhere Workplace in the Cognitive Era

Case Studies in the Cognitive Enterprise

How Cognitive Capabilities Will Enable the Digital Workplace

Watson at the Support Desk

Enabling the Cognitive Workplace

The Workplace of the Future

The Cognitive Transformation

Acknowledgments

CONTENTS

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© COPYRIGHT 2016 FORBES INSIGHTS | 3

There is a tectonic shift in the way we work. We expect the same kind of intuitive, tactile experience with our workplace technology that we now take for granted with our smartphones, tablets and gaming systems. We expect our devices to talk to each other and update automatically. Virtual meetings should be as easy to set up as a video chat, and whatever we need to do our jobs should be as easy to tailor as a streaming music or video application.

“In the workplace, there is a shift from ‘one size fits all’ to a more personalized experience in IT support and service,” says Richard Esposito, general manager of IBM’s GTS Mobility Services. “Users want to choose their own devices, and they expect the kind of experience they have with consumer devices. At the same time, the idea of renting versus buying has transformed the way most organizations pay for new IT infrastructure. The infrastructure-as-a-service model has revolutionized the way IT resources can be deployed for many of our clients.”

Perhaps the most dramatic change to the digital workplace comes from the potential for cognitive support to combine intelligence and sentiment for a true sense-and-respond experience. Cognitive systems will change the workplace in ways we haven’t yet imagined.

There is no question that technology gives us more choices and better tools. Yet what most of us want is less complexity and, if we are paying for it, lower costs. Planning for the workplace of the future means striking the right balance between finding the right tools for each user today and accessing an infrastructure that can expand with the intelligence and the power of the technology of the future.

We will explore some of these shifts in the workplace through a series of publications beginning with “The Digital Workplace in the Cognitive Era.”

INTRODUCTION

There is a shift from 'one size fits all' to a more personalized experience in IT support and service. At the same time...the infrastructure-as-a-service model has revolutionized the way IT resources can be deployed.

“

—Richard Esposito, General Manager, IBM GTS Mobility Services

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The digital workplace merges work and life—a virtual space with applications, services and information on demand. For users, this means access to the technology they need, when they need it, on whichever device they prefer to use.

Employees expect their enterprise systems to be as engaging, exciting and intuitive as consumer devices. Technology research company Gartner calls this a shift from technology-literate people to people-literate technology.

At the same time, companies now have more exquisitely detailed data about how their products and services are used than they ever had before, thanks to a vast network of sensors and advanced analytic tools.

Cognitive systems can parse all that data and learn what employees need to do their job better—even if they don’t yet know it themselves. Cognitive systems will deliver the ability to visualize vast amounts of data, curated and analyzed, for a unique task and a unique user.

The workplace of the future will embrace emerging new cognitive and analytic capabilities. These tools can provide insights into how employees engage most e�ectively, what the best technologies are for each task and each individual, and help provide a seamless work environment—an environment that will help to attract and retain the best talent.

Success in the growing mobile, digital world requires a deliberate business and IT strategy that allows you to provide cognitive capabilities that set your digital experience apart every time in the context of the moment. When businesses design around this revolution, instead of simply accommodating it, whole industries can shift.

4 | THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE IN THE COGNITIVE ERA


THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE:EMPOWERING USERS AND ENABLINGTHE AGILE ENTERPRISE

The digital workplace is not a place at all. As a grand vision, it is technology that merges work and life—a virtual space with applications, services and information on demand. Gartner defines the digital workplace as a way to create a corporate culture of autonomy, accessibility, accountability and empowerment.1 For individuals, this means access to the technology that they need, when they need it, on whichever device they prefer to use. “Think of it as the composable workspace,” says Pat Bolton, IBM Distinguished Engineer and chief technology o�cer for Workplace and Mobility Services. “You pick up your device and compose your workplace around your role in the organization and what you need to accomplish.”

Most of us are already relying on an arsenal of digital devices to work in a virtual environment, and we know there is great potential for improvement. Creating and supporting the digital workplace is a challenge and an opportunity for every organization. It is an opportunity to leverage technology to enhance the employee experience, facilitate connections and foster data-driven decision making throughout the organization. It is also an opportunity for organizations to leverage the talent of their workforce with cognitive technologies.

The challenges include curating and dynamically updating all of the knowledge that will enable the workplace of the future and then identifying which data is most useful to each user. Cognitive capabilities can help organizations with the enormous task of managing the corpus of knowledge that represents a business and provide a mechanism for personalizing data that will become more expansive, more refined and more responsive as it learns.

Employees already expect their enterprise systems to be as intuitive and responsive as consumer devices. At the same time, companies now have more exquisitely detailed data about how their products and services are used than they have ever had before, thanks to a vast network of sensors and advanced analytic capabilities. Cognitive systems can parse all that data, learn what employees need to do their job better—even if they don’t yet know it themselves. They can do it in nanoseconds, and they can help automate routine tasks.

Think of it as the composable workspace. You pick up your device and compose your workplace around your role in the organization and what you need to accomplish.

“

—Pat Bolton, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technology O�cer for Workplace and Mobility Services

1 Attention to Eight Building Blocks Ensures Successful Digital Workplace Initiatives, Carol Rozwell and Achint Aggarwal, June 15, 2016, G00274167 Gartner

WELCOME TO THE COGNITIVE ERA

Cognitive systems can ingest vast quantities of di�erent kinds of data, learn from their interactions with data and people, reason with purpose and interact with humans naturally. They represent a leap from the deterministic information systems that preceded them, explains John E. Kelly III, senior vice president, IBM Research and Solutions Portfolio. Cognitive systems are probabilistic. They can take all the data we ask them to look at—structured and unstructured—and generate hypotheses, reasoned arguments and recommendations, along with a measure of the probability or confidence level of any recommendation generated, says Kelly.

Cognitive systems have the potential to augment our ability to understand—and act upon—complex systems, such as the human genome, enterprise systems or optimal work habits. Many organizations are struggling to draw meaningful conclusions from the unstructured data they already have, but cognitive computing represents a giant leap forward in addressing this challenge. Its ability to process a vast amount of information, learn from that information, provide conclusions and act on those conclusions in fractions of a second is far beyond any other technology available today.

Cognitive computing is enabling a new class of products and services that sense, reason and learn about their users and the world around them. As cognitive computing becomes more embedded in consumer and enterprise systems, it has the potential to change how companies deliver products and services, engage and interact with customers, and how employees learn and make decisions. Applying advanced analytics and automation to predict potential issues and enable systems to be corrected proactively will enable businesses to keep employees productive and keep customers engaged.


Cognitive computing is an opportunity to put the growing universe of customer and corporate insights into the hands of workers whenever they need it and wherever they may be. Doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering, for example, are training Watson, IBM’s cognitive platform, to assist doctors in treating cancer patients. Watson can take information about a specific patient and match it to a huge knowledge base of medical journals and documented treatments and outcomes for similar patients. A cognitive assistant can find patterns and present options that can both personalize and broaden the information available to medical professionals when making treatment recommendations. The insights from cognitive assistance can help patients and doctors make more-informed, evidence-based decisions.

These same tools can provide insights into how employees engage most e�ectively, help select the best technologies for each task and each individual and help provide a seamless work environment. Imagine having an intelligent assistant draw on the recorded knowledge of your profession as well as real-time data from your environment, helping to inform your decisions and describe probabilities to your range of choices for a given task. Imagine that assistant can also then learn over time, through real-life interactions with you and others in your profession, expanding knowledge and o�ering more precise assistance.

“The digital workplace empowers users; it enables enterprise agility and is a key contributor to productivity,” says Ajay Jotwani, vice president of IBM’s Digital Workplace Services. “The real transformation, however, is in applying cognitive intelligence to the digital workplace to make the enterprise competitive,” he adds. As with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, every enterprise will need to embrace the change to grow its market position.

The workplace of the future will be designed to ensure ubiquitous, personalized and secure access to emerging new cognitive and analytic capabilities. Cognitive systems will learn continuously how best to engage with users and enhance productivity. They will provide the ability to visualize and more e�ectively use vast amounts of data, curated and analyzed for a unique task and a unique user. And they will be open to whatever new platforms, applications or devices we may need to do our jobs in the future.


The real transformation is in applying cognitive intelligence to the digital workplace to make the enterprise competitive.

“

—Ajay Jotwani, Vice President of Digital Workplace Services, IBM

We are in an age when the line between consumer and enterprise technology is disappearing. Digital communication enables employees, their organizations, their partners and their clients to engage with one another in voice, video and written communications at every touchpoint. In fact, employees expect their enterprise technology to be as intuitive and user-friendly as the latest smart device or application.

Instead, many users are left wondering: If the personal assistant on their phone can recognize their voice, their gaming system can learn and remember their preferences, and their GPS can reroute them to avoid tra�c, why does their workspace feel like it’s stuck in a time warp?

Employees have been compensating by using their own devices in the workplace for years. Now, some small businesses are even adapting smart-home devices—the kind designed to play music and learn your lighting habits—to predict sales and gather business intelligence.

As cognitive applications spread through many professions—from retail to healthcare to manufacturing—users will expect the same dynamic, personalized and context-aware environment in all their workplace interactions. Cognitive capabilities will enable the workplace of the future, but it’s important that organizations first develop and enable the infrastructure, data and security to create a cognitive user experience for professionals.

THE ANYTIME, ANYWHERE WORKPLACE INTHE COGNITIVE ERA

Source: IBM Client Care Services: Service Engagement Guide, 2016;

https://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?htmlfid=AZO12387USEN&&dd=yes&attachment=AZO12387USEN.PDF

Personal profile: Work location, preferences and other relevant information to give context to the questions the user is asking.

News and alerts: Pertinent information sent to user since the last time they logged on.

Learning on the job: Watson will learn from other agents if unable to answera question.

People: Connect person to other users or super-users who can assist.

Conversation recall: Remembers previous searches to provide new solutions.

System updates: Recognizes upcoming updates that would impact the user.

Relevant tickets: Retrieves past questions from the user and relates them to current events.

Knowledge and productivity tips: Leveraging user profile to send useful information on timely basis.


Cognitive assistance on a human scale


At the same time, the information captured through intelligent devices and social media provides businesses with insight into customers’ habits, preferences and behavior as well as a wealth of data on how employees are interacting with each customer. Most organizations are already collecting and analyzing that data. Putting it into the hands of employees who can use it is more of a challenge—and a competitive advantage to organizations that can do it most e�ectively. A cognitive system can analyze vast amounts of structured and unstructured data to come up with a reasoned analysis of what would be most useful to a specific user at a specific time.

The ability for employees to work most e�ectively anywhere, anytime on any device

The ability to securely provide the right information to the right people in the right context

The ability to collaborate more closely with clients, partners and co-workers

The ability to create a responsive service with a clear user journey

The ability to establish and maintain an expansive network of synchronized, real-time data

The ability to leverage structured and unstructured data, including voice, video images and location data

KEY CAPABILITIES OF THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE:

Cognitive assistants learn through their interactions with users. Gartner calls this a shift from technology-literate people to people-literate technology. “By being people-literate, conversational, pervasive, and proactively looking out for their people, smart agents, such as smart advisors and virtual personal assistants, will change the working relationship between people and technology for the better.”2 Gartner predicts that virtual personal assistants will sweep the digital workplace. “Virtual personal assistants will fundamentally change the way workers interact with technology by decoupling applications from content, prompting IT strategists to redesign business processes.”3

What could a cognitive-enabled system mean for your enterprise?

CASE STUDIES IN THE COGNITIVE ENTERPRISE

Example 1: Improving economic competitiveness by streamlining business permitting processes

An aspiring entrepreneur looking to open a new business interacts with a cognitive assistant through a city’s mobile application to understand the regulatory formalities required to open her business. After providing expert advice on required permits, the system presents the required forms to be completed by the business owner. The system evaluates the application submitted by the business owner and provides approvals for permits and licenses based upon an understanding of all applicable business rules, governmental policies, regulations and laws. The entrepreneur then gets alerts on additional assistance that the city can provide to help her grow her business, such as sales leads or networking events.

2 Smart Agents Will Drive the Switch From Technology-Literate People, to People-Literate Technology, May 2015, G00277198, Tom Austin, https://www.gartner.com/doc/3063817/smart-agents-drive-switch-technologyliterate3 IT Strategists Must Prepare for the Rise of Virtual Personal Assistants in the Workplace, July 23, 2015, G00279840, Van L. Baker and Whit Andrews, https://www.gartner.com/doc/3099127/it-strategists-prepare-rise-virtual

1 Attention to Eight Building Blocks Ensures Successful Digital Workplace Initiatives, Carol Rozwell and Achint Aggarwal, June 15, 2016, G00274167 Gartner

To maintain the best user interface, a cognitive system can continuously update the data around regulations and policies and feed users the correct forms. The system will learn and improve continuously, based on what users are asking and doing. The IT team, meanwhile, gets analytics-based insights on application usage patterns, application performance and support issues so that they can improve the user experience.

Example 2: Improving user productivity and satisfaction with IT

Example 3: Safety first: Prioritizing IT support

A sales regional manager is traveling to meet with three clients. At the beginning of his trip, his tablet is automatically loaded with ready-to-go demonstrations, sales collateral and client-opportunity analysis for each client meeting. While en route, he receives an alert that his sales contract management application has had a performance degradation and he can expect delays in access and response time. He is also notified when service is likely to be restored. Unfortunately, it’s not before his first client meeting in three hours. The alert helps him avoid spending time contacting the help desk and allows him to handle contract items with the client through his pre-loaded documents.

The key is to be able to understand who the user is: to know his work, understand his priorities and be aware that he is on the road. A cognitive system can leverage data gathered from mobile devices, social media, past IT usage patterns and location-based data. Then, if technology and connectivity are not working optimally, a cognitive system can step in to keep vital applications running.

A law enforcement o�cer calls in to the city’s IT help desk when she cannot get her license plate reader to operate due to a password issue. A cognitive system identifies that the caller is a police o�cer requiring immediate assistance, and not, perhaps, the receptionist from the sanitation department, who needs to reset her password. The call is then routed with high priority, and when an agent picks up the call three seconds later, he also knows (using GPS and satellite topography) that the o�cer is located in a median, in the middle of the road, and that the o�cer most likely just pulled someone over. The system already has identified the three most likely problems the o�cer might be having as well as the most likely solutions to give the best possible user experience and fastest response.

For a system to work at this speed, an understanding of the city’s IT environment and when safety should take priority over other considerations is imperative. A police o�cer who works in the field would receive di�erent priority than a deskbound employee, even if they were both calling in with the same mobile phone issues. The ability to analyze technical issues over time could help the city improve safety for every employee in a potentially dangerous job.



HOW COGNITIVE CAPABILITIESWILL ENABLE THE DIGITALWORKPLACE

For most of us, the promise of an anywhere, anytime, any device workplace is met with the reality of too many choices and too much information. Currently, the average employee is distracted once every 11 minutes and needs an average of 25 minutes to refocus on tasks.4 People compensate by working faster (but not necessarily more e�ectively), and experience more stress, higher levels of frustration and greater time pressures.5

“The irony of many workforce tools available today is that because there are so many to choose from, they can reduce employee e�ectiveness,” says Inhi Suh, general manager, IBM Collaboration Solutions. “By incorporating analytics and cognitive technologies into these solutions, we expect them to be able to learn what is important, in context, and take the right actions on behalf of the user.”

Cognition is already enabling a new class of products and services that sense, reason and learn about their users and the world around them. The cognitive workplace will become an ever more personalized experience, anticipating, advising and assisting in ways that we never imagined possible. For example, a financial advisor could meet virtually with a high-value investor over video with a cognitive service o�ering real-time advice, handling tasks and sharing data in a secure environment.

Advances in mobility, analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT) are making it possible to know more about the way people use their technology and their personal preferences. “Cognitive support has the potential to derive knowledge from a user’s device and past behavior as well as contextual, situational and location-based data,” says Dr. Linda Delbridge, global sales executive with IBM’s Global Technology Services.

Cognitive systems such as Watson can take that knowledge, find patterns, o�er solutions and learn from experience. “Watson knows who you are when you log in, it knows the types of applications that you’re running, it knows what equipment you’re using, and it knows where you are located,” explains Niki McKenna, global o�ering manager, IBM’s Client Care Services. Watson can take in all that information and create a persona around you, your work and your technology. So, when there is a problem, Watson can know you as a person, not as a specific device or a help desk ticket.

Cognitive support has the potential to derive knowledge from a user’s device and past behavior as well as contextual, situational and location-based data.

“

—Dr. Linda Delbridge, Global Sales Executive with IBM’s Global Technology Services

Watson knows who you are when you log in, it knows the types of applications that you’re running, it knows what equipment you’re using, and it knows where you are located.

“

—Niki McKenna, Global O�ering Manager, Client Care Services, IBM

4“The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress,” In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 5-10, 2008, pp. 107-110. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1357054.1357072, Gloria Mark, Daniela Gudith and Ulrich Clocke5ibid

Watson is available now as an application that can handle basic tasks, such as troubleshooting a software update. Eventually, Watson will be able to proactively provide information, letting you know that the printer you usually use appears to be temporarily down, for example, or warning you if your VPN login credentials are about to expire, or even providing you instructions if you are locked out of one of your devices.

“In today's world of increasingly complex workplaces, driven by the proliferation of mobile technology, a more e�ective, flexible and knowledgeable support for the IT user becomes a critical success factor for all companies and employees,” says Piero A. Chiodo, vice president, Global Client Care Services, IBM GTS Mobility Services. “Today's IT user requires a dramatically di�erent level of support for their extended workplace—a workplace that relies on cognitive computing to combine insights, power, options, learning and 'always-on' availability to provide a superior, personalized support experience.”

Today's IT user requires a dramatically di�erent level of support for their extended workplace—a workplace that relies on cognitive computing to combine insights, power, options, learning and 'always-on' availability to provide a superior, personalized support experience.

—Piero A. Chiodo, Vice President, Global Client Care Services,

IBM GTS Mobility Services

“

Watson will look longitudinally, at your habits and history over a period of time, and also latitudinally, comparing your issue with a series of concurrent events and environmental factors. If 10 other people experience a VPN problem at the same time, Watson will look to see if there is something more pandemic going on in the environment rather than tell you to reboot or ask you if you have reset your password recently. The response will be flexible and dynamic.

This is only the beginning for cognitive support. “Watson is a great technology, and it will learn what we teach it; it needs to be populated with information,” says McKenna. Building out Watson’s knowledge is a process, she says. “A lot of our focus has been around how do we make sure we start with good end-user-facing knowledge.” As a first step, IBM’s mobility services architects have created knowledge cartridges for some of the most common software questions and call-center issues, so any client can get Watson up and running quickly.

Most calls describe a symptom: “My email’s not working” or “The printer is broken,” for example. Training Watson to match those symptoms with the problems that cause them and then provide immediate assistance is the job of Dennis Perpetua, senior technical sta� member and chief architect for Client Care Services, and his team. Matching symptoms with problems is one of the ways that a cognitive system learns over time, together with its interactions with humans.

WATSON AT THE SUPPORT DESK



Watson is already assisting help-desk agents behind the scenes for IBM clients, putting answers at their fingertips as well as learning how human agents resolve problems. In April, a Watson-powered application was launched that allows users to chat with Watson directly to resolve common software and technical problems.

In the beginning, there will be questions Watson cannot answer, so there is a built-in failsafe. If Watson is in a dialogue with a user and is not able to respond with 100% confidence after a certain point, then the user will have the option to pass over to a live chat agent, sharing with the agent the information gathered so far. For a cognitive system, this is not so much a failure as it is a learning experience. At that point, Watson will be shadowing the agent, learning from the agent’s responses what works and what doesn’t work. Eventually, Watson will incorporate that shared experience, but in the meantime, no one who needs help will be left stranded.

The education of Watson will follow a road map, says Perpetua, and the user interface and service capabilities will evolve with it. One of the next steps will be image recognition. So, instead of explaining a problem to Watson, the user can take a picture of a frozen screen or an error message, and Watson will diagnose from the image and o�er specific instructions, in natural language, to fix the problem: “You need to press the blue button,” for example.

Watson is also being trained to pick up on emotional cues, based on the language and tone of its dialogue with users. “Watson will focus on the words people are using to determine if they are interested in helping themselves, if they are just curious or if they are angry,” says Perpetua. If Watson reads frustration or anger, the user will be handed over to a live agent right away. “If that’s the case, we don’t want to bring them through any other situations; we want to comfort them,” explains Perpetua. “Watson could do that, too, but most humans don’t like to be comforted by a computer.” He also wants to be sure Watson knows a lot of jokes. Watson doesn’t understand humor yet, but it does receive frequent requests to tell a joke.

This isn’t necessarily about reducing costs, it’s really about pivoting in the market to where technology is heading.

“

—Dennis Perpetua, Senior Technical Sta� Member and Chief Architect for Client Care Services, IBM

Will sharing a joke increase productivity? For the user, sharing a moment of humor with a machine may be preferable to su�ering through unintended downtime. For Watson, humor and interaction are part of building an understanding of the nuance of language. “Watson understands a broader set of language because it has the experience of how to fix a washing machine or how to fix a car,” explains Perpetua. “Now Watson can be better at how to fix a computer because it understands the questions in a truly natural way.” The Watson-at-the-help-desk service will be focused on the types of answers users are most likely to need, but Watson uses all of its collective knowledge and learning capabilities to understand language more e�ectively.

Just as Watson will start to recognize the way we use idioms, it will also learn more about the way each individual uses technology, where the pain points are, what equipment or data plans might be more e�ective and when a breakdown is most likely to occur. Accumulating that sort of knowledge across an enterprise can provide powerful insights and metrics into how technology is deployed and utilized on a broad scale. Is our organization spending money on technology that isn’t being used to its full potential? How can we measure and promote best practices? How does the way we use technology compare with other organizations?

“This isn’t necessarily about reducing costs, it’s really about pivoting in the market to where technology is heading,” says Perpetua. Cognitive capabilities are going to reduce costs, but they are also going to improve experience. “The drive for us is to get to the point where you have a robot assisting you and taking action on your behalf, and you don’t even know it,” he says. Ideally, the technology would be invisible. We would notice only if it wasn’t there and wonder how we ever lived without it.

We envision the capabilities in the following table will become a normal part of our work experience.

Leverage analytics and cognitive capabilities to improve cost, performance, user productivity and user IT satisfaction

Reimagine user experience in a cognitive workplace

Create new services based on understanding and knowledge from human interactions

BUILDING VALUE WITH COGNITIVE CAPABILITIES



PERSONAS, CHOICE, SELF-SERVICE ANDCOGNITIVE SUPPORT

Know what devices I have and how I use them

Anticipate my needs: Do I need a di�erent device or lower data plan to better match my usage and help reduce costs? Do I need more data storage at certain times of the year (e.g., quarterly financial reports or peak buying season)?

Understand my preferences in how I want to work

Provide seamless IT support regardless of what channel I’m using

Provide personalized IT support by alerting me if performance may be degraded and an estimated fix time

Notice if my system is performing poorly (e.g., email application keeps hanging up, battery power is draining rapidly) and automatically take corrective action

O�er service desk chat (live or virtual) if I am spending more than a few minutes searching for information for a particular problem

Let me get expert help in natural language via a virtual assistant from any device

Curate content that helps me be more productive and automatically push that content to my devices

Give me advice on how I can get more value from my technology

KNOW ME

HELP ME

DELIVER INSIGHTS TO ME

THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE IN THE COGNITIVE ERA | 16

ENABLING THE COGNITIVEWORKPLACE

To enable the cognitive workplace, the IT infrastructure has to be designed and managed to provide a superior personal experience.

“

— Nishi Gupta, Vice President for IBM’s GTS Infrastructure Services Portfolio Strategy

To enable the cognitive workplace, the IT infrastructure has to be designed and managed to provide a superior personal experience, explains Nishi Gupta, vice president for IBM’s GTS Infrastructure Services Portfolio Strategy. “Mobile applications need to be secure, personal data needs to be kept private, and the mobile network connection needs to be resilient and work well.” To maintain the best user interface, a cognitive system can continuously update the data around regulations and policies and feed users the correct information. The system will learn and improve continuously, based on what users are asking and doing. The IT team, meanwhile, gets analytics-based insights on usage patterns, application performance and support issues so that they can improve the user experience.

“Deploying technology is the easy part,” says Beth Rudden, Distinguished Engineer, Analytics, and member of the IBM Academy of Technology. “There are plenty of smart people that can make the technology work. But that’s only part of the puzzle. Every organization needs good data for intelligent systems to work optimally.”

All employee and consumer devices are advancing toward the ability to put structured, unstructured and streaming data together with a cognitive system, but making it work requires an investment in time and talent. “We have come really far in technology, but we are not so far that we can replace human intuition,” says Rudden. Every cognitive system must still be assisted by human beings. Training for both users and the system is time intensive and requires a level of expertise in natural language processing and machine learning.

Invest in training for both users and the system.

Bring in expertise for natural language processing and machine learning skill sets.

Invest the time up front to select needed data. Cognitive systems are only as good as the data to which they have access.

Digitize records. The future of your organization’s corpus depends on it.

Assess and understand how the cognitive workplace will impact processes and how people work.

Policies for data use and sharing may need adjustment to ensure a broad and deep corpus.

HOW TO PREPARE FOR THECOGNITIVE WORKPLACE


INVEST IN HUMAN TALENT

BUILD AND ENSURE A QUALITY CORPUS

CONSIDER POLICY AND PROCESS REQUIREMENTS,AS WELL AS IMPACTS

The other key element is data quality. Cognitive systems are in essence studying the past and the present to predict the future. Those predictions will only be as good as the data on which they are based. “It can take a lot of e�ort to clean and prepare data, either for a central repository or to run alongside an algorithm,” says Rudden. CIOs who try to do this on their own will face multiple hurdles, from data-feed failures to frequent turnover of key personnel. In fact, Rudden says that with any cognitive deployment, “Ninety percent of our job is to make the data consumable. It’s like cleaning out the gutters. It’s not sexy, but it’s necessary.”

Watson, IBM’s cognitive platform, can help with that by using text analytics to get to better-quality data, she says. Organizations may also need to assess policies for data use and sharing to build the broad and deep corpus they need for cognitive applications going forward.

Ninety percent of our job is to make the data consumable. It’s like cleaning out the gutters. It’s not sexy, but it’s necessary.

— Beth Rudden, Distinguished Engineer, Analytics, and Memberof the IBM Academy of Technology

“

The way we work will evolve around the advances in devices and applications—from voice-activated systems to wearables to augmented-reality devices, says IBM’s Pat Bolton. Workplace tools that defined the workplace for decades could soon become obsolete.

Just as many consumers have cut the cord with their landlines, for example, desk phones may no longer warrant the space they occupy. Many people already use their mobile numbers across di�erent devices. “Why do we need two complete phone systems?” Bolton asks. “It's redundant and expensive.” Ultimately, the machines we now know as desktops and notebooks will evolve over time into simpler devices that will incorporate new ways of collaborating, she predicts.

Virtual reality tools, for example, could find their way into the work environment. The same is true for wearable devices. “On oil rigs and in remote locations, workers may be in a potentially hostile or dangerous environment where it can be di�cult to communicate by phone,” says Bolton. A wrist-worn device can pick up environmental data and send a physical alert. It could be an approaching storm or a notification about a safety concern. “With geo-tracking, the system would know exactly where that person was and if they have fallen in the water.” Such wearable devices in the workplace can save lives, create safer working environments and reduce stress.

When these new technologies are part of a cognitive platform, they will be powered by the collective knowledge about the enterprise, the user, the location and the best way to create the most optimal workplace—real or virtual.

THE WORKPLACE OF THE FUTURE


Success in the growing digital, mobile world requires a deliberate business and IT strategy that allows you to provide cognitive capabilities that set your digital experience apart every time in the context of the moment. When businesses design around this revolution, instead of simply accommodating it, whole industries can shift.

Why partner with IBM?

IBM applies best practices, innovation and capabilities to deliver a mobile-ready infrastructure for the new workplace. IBM can help you:

• Reinvent your business

• Transform your infrastructure to support the digital workplace

• Integrate and manage applications

• Protect your infrastructure and secure mobile devices, applications and content

IBM’s portfolio covers the journey of digital transformation with services to identify the best path for the enterprise and solutions that provide a device-agnostic support structure and also embrace personal-choice demands from the end-user.

IBM can provide digital workplace tools as a service. Our solutions empower users with self-service access to traditional enterprise applications as well as individual IT services.

IBM can assist you in your journey to becoming a cognitive business by transforming your IT environment to deliver secure cognitive capabilities anywhere, anytime and on any device.

6M+ mobile devices under management

800+ patents for mobile innovation

1000’s of employees supporting workplace clients globally

300+ business partners working with IBM Client Care Services and 500+ partners working with the Watson platform

170 countries supported by 40 call centers in over 4 dozen languages

THE COGNITIVETRANSFORMATION


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Richard Esposito, General Manager, GTS Mobility Services

Inhi Suh, General Manager, Collaboration Solutions

Nishi Gupta, Vice President, GTS Infrastructure Services Portfolio Strategy

Pat Bolton, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technology O�cer for Workplace and Mobility Services

Piero A. Chiodo, Vice President, Global Client Care Services, GTS Mobility Services

Ajay Jotwani, Vice President, Digital Workplace Services, GTS Mobility Services

Niki McKenna, Global O�ering Manager, Client Care Services

Dr. Linda Delbridge, Global Sales Executive with IBM’s Global Technology Services

Dennis Perpetua, Senior Technical Sta� Member and Chief Architect for Client Care Services

Beth Rudden, Distinguished Engineer, Analytics, and Member of the IBM Academy of Technology

For more information about how IBM can help you with your digital workplace initiatives, please contact us at:

ibm.com/services/mobility


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