THE KEY TO GOING DIGITAL THINK PEOPLE

Crowdsourcing technology and persona-based approaches are key to creating a happier and more productive digital workplace

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE

CHAPTER 2: CROWDSOURCING TECHNOLOGY: SOCIAL PROVISIONING AND SUPPORT

CHAPTER 3: PERSONA-BASED APPROACHES: ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL

CONCLUSION

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Introduction 1

People. Process. Technology. Every business leader recognizes these three pillars of IT success. For decades, organizations focused on technology, improving IT efficiency through process automation and industrialized IT. The experience of people, employees and customers, often seemed a distant third. Today’s new digitally driven environment, with its focus on worker productivity, demands the traditional order be reversed.

Consider the typical office of 1995. An on-site worker with a PC, desk and landline telephone works within a strictly defined chain of events and procedures based on ITIL, the industry framework for rigorous governance of standard IT processes.

Support tools with embedded ITIL best practices did a great job optimizing IT Service Management (ITSM) and support. Unfortunately, the end user experience left much to be desired. Little was obvious or intuitive. No surprise that workers often resented and resisted IT procedures that seemed tedious, bureaucratic and unnatural. In essence, people served the process.

INTRODUCTION

What is the key to going digital? People before process.

2Introduction

“The way individuals and companies interact, collaborate,

and leverage IT resources and technology is shifting. Today’s

employees need quickand easy access to services that

help them work efficiently.”

Robert Young, Research Director at IDC

Now consider today’s work environment. A typical professional still has a desk, but likely also works regularly at home and on the road, in an airport or a coffee shop, across town or across the world. They are equipped with a notebook, smart phone, tablet or “phablet,” mifi hotspot and perhaps, a smart watch. Much of the day is spent switching between company and social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn, cloud-based services like Dropbox and Skype, and a host of user-friendly software programs and apps. Some are company-approved, many are not. Time between tasks might be spent doing one-touch shopping on Amazon or dinner delivery. This new digital workplace is complex, placeless and dynamic.

This e-book focuses on two important ways to shift focus from process to people; crowdsourcing and persona-driven user experience. Each aims to empower both sides of the service desk with technology that helps people work faster, smarter and more easily.

INTRODUCTION

Expectations /Demands of MillennialsThose ages 18 to 29 have always been the most likely users of social media by a considerable margin. Today, 90% of young adults use social media. 2 This generation has grown up with the Internet, smartphones, social networks, immediate feedback, and exceptional levels of service. Millennials expect and demand digital workplace initiatives that span social, collaboration, and smart office capabilities.

Faster New Hire Assimilation For a new employee, it takes weeks to figure out systems, forms, processes, key people, etc. Digitizing onboarding significantly drives down the time for a worker to become truly productive.

Greater Competitiveness More millennials are entering the workforce. 3 Companies failing to adopt mechanisms needed to quickly advance in the digital world and attract digitally savvy workers will find themselves in a weakened competitive position.

GROWTH OF MILLENNIALS IN THE WORKFORCE

Source: Brookings Institute, How Millennials Could Upend Wall Street and Corporate America, May 2014

1 BMC Delivers New Innovative Solutions to Enhance Employees Digital Experiences 2 Pew Research Center, Social Media Use 2005-2015. 3 Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, 2015.

Digitally Engaging the Millennials

and Provide Breakthroughs in IT Productivity, Press Release, December 8, 2015.

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The Digital WorkplaceCHAPTER 1

5Chapter 1

What is required is a radical rethinking of traditional IT provisioning and support. More specifically, a 180-degree shift to a “people-centric” view focused squarely on user empowerment, while keeping necessary process enforcement and governance out of user sight. Such inward-facing modes of IT service

will prove increasingly inadequate in today’s new digital workplace. Success for most IT organizations will depend on how well they are able to close the gap between managing IT service efficiency in a static environment and enabling worker productivity using an ever-growing array of digital services. Supporting services is no longer sufficient for IT; enabling and empowering the workforce is mandatory.

The quest to align changing business and user needs has led to what some people call a digital workplace, which is not a physical place, but rather the digital unification on a single gateway for all of a user’s devices, networks, apps and digital services available from any physical place.

IN THIS NEW ERA, WORKER PRODUCTIVITY HAS ECLIPSED IT EFFICIENCY AS A PREMIER TECHNOLOGY AND BUSINESS VALUE. THE BIG CHALLENGE, THEN, BECOMES:

How can we enable today’s digitally savvy workers to be productive and happy in the most frictionless way?

“People are demanding and expecting a more digital experience and want to be

engaged. They will go elsewhere if they can’t be engaged.”

Michele McFadden, AVP of Product Management

and Marketing at BMC Software

Crowdsourcing Technology: Social Provisioning and SupportCHAPTER 2

Chapter 2 7

Traditional approaches to IT service management might be summed up as: “IT will handle IT.” While it made sense in previous computing eras, such command and control must be evolved for the digital

It’s Inevitable

IT Friction Hurts Productivity

“Shadow IT” is Out of Control.

Whether enterprises like it or not employees are using their devices. Rather than just saying no, and then have employees do it anyway, Frost & Sullivan recommends a more measured approach. “The solution is for the company to develop policies that strike the right balance between flexibility and control. IT and business leaders need to work together to create and support policies that enable employees to use the apps they need to be productive, with controls in place to protect data and minimize corporate risk.” 4

A Forrester study found the average business worker loses about two days a month due to IT-related issues, or so-called IT friction. Not only is time wasted waiting for a resolution, but the hours spent researching what’s wrong, combing through knowledge management databases, locating the service catalog, completing the submission form, and repeatedly calling IT to check on the progress all adds up to 18 hours a month. 5

Easy end user access to low-cost cloud services like Dropbox, Office 365, Zenefits, etc. has worsened technology spending outside of IT channels. IDC predicts shadow IT spending will reach 33% of the average technology budget by 2019. 6

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workplace. Crowdsourcing leverages widespread use of social platforms to shift much provisioning and support to the entire user community. There are several compelling reasons for doing so:

Chapter 2 8

App and Technology SelectionInstead of wasting days identifying, requesting, and waiting for apps, employees come to a consumer-like enterprise app store that provides easy access to cloud, mobile, custom, and

How do enterprises get started? Crowdsourcing and social collaboration are embedded into standard workflows. Users access these via a centralized portal, pulling them into the center of the digital workplace and giving them a big voice in helping IT discover and manage the work environment.

User benefits

Instantly activates pre-approved items

Reduces time spent on requests for services

Powers real time services

Fosters knowledge sharing across the enterprise (thanks in part to the use of Personas – See Ch. 3)

Allows usability across iOS, Android, or any device with an HTML5 browser

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Easily procure, publish, secure, track, and manage compliant apps across the organization Deflect routine help desk calls to decrease the cost of high-priority tickets

Cut IT-related downtime by connecting business users to IT services anywhere, anytime, on any device

Find more time and resources for critical IT transformation projects

IT benefits

desktop applications. Users can comment, rate, and share apps they enjoy, allowing others to on-board applications based on peer selections. BMC’s MyIT ServiceBroker is an example of where employees can find hardware, software and services they need whenever, wherever, in one place.

Chapter 2 9

Social Tech SupportAnother way crowdsourcing brings non-IT people to the center of the digital workplace is through ongoing collaborative tech support and education.

Unlike the traditional “waterfall’ approach to knowledge management, crowdsourcing democratizes knowledge helpful tips, suggestions, outage reports, quick fixes and general suggestions about how to use the environment most productively are created “by the people, for the people.” High-contributors are recognized with premier badging or star status. By building a repository of crowdsourced problems (with resolutions), IT becomes an information powerhouse, where users can find answers to all their questions with little effort.

4 Frost & Sullivan, The Hidden Truth Behind Shadow IT, 2013.5 Forrester, Exploring Business and IT Friction: Myths and Realities, April 2013.6 IDG Enterprise Cloud Computing Study, 2014.

New role for IT: CuratorGreater user involvement through crowdsourcing doesn’t mean that IT is out of the picture. Instead, IT’s role evolves into technology broker and technical knowledge curator.

As curator, IT runs a controlled process, overseeing reporting, coaching users how to improve the quality of their contribution and knowledge. They work with designated employee representatives and HR to create, publish and tweak the application catalog and oversee updating processes.

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Persona-based Approaches: One Size Doesn’t Fit All CHAPTER 3

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Persona-based Approaches: One Size Doesn’t Fit All

A key tenet of bringing people to the center of the digital workplace is creating a great user experience. A persona-based user experience, coupled with ITIL processes, is vital to ensuring consistency and data integrity, while minimizing risk. But to the employee, they can be perceived as a hindrance to working productively.

The digital workplace makes an engaging UI a priority. The goal is not just to offer a pretty interface to employees accustomed to the consumer-grade ease and design of Google, Apple, Zappos, etc. It is to engage, empower and free workers by providing an attractive, simple, highly usable “front door” to the digital workplace. This applies to both lines of business employees as well as internal IT staff.

That leads to a second key tenet: A great user experience doesn’t need to reveal its process steps to the user. Stated otherwise, only show what a user needs to know. A modern user experience shields users from laborious and tedious processes and best practice steps.

For companies who want to create empowered employees in the digital workplace, that means focusing on a persona-based approach. Reduced to its simplest in this context, it means presenting a pre-approved user a view of a tailored UI, customized to his/her specific job function.

For example, a persona-based approach recognizes a line of business (LOB) executive such as a CFO, needs a far different set of technology and information options than a junior financial analyst. Similarly, in IT, a persona-based approach recognizes that even though both interact with change records, a Change Requester needs a vastly different experience than a Change Manager.

CFO

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BusinessConsumer

IT & ServiceDesk

PlatformUser

GlobalBusiness

User

ServiceDeskAgent

ServiceDesk

Manager

ProcessOwner

SystemAdmin

BusinessAnalyst

Developer

FIGURE 1: IDENTIFY PERSONA

Creating optimized user experiences based on the persona V. the process drives significant increases in employee engagement and productivity. The combination of mobile, social, and persona-driven service management is the cornerstone of a modern platform. Engaging user experiences that foster collaborative teams are the key to empowering the employee and driving employee productivity. A single administration team can manage dozens and hundreds of personas tailored for individual roles.

Start with a small sample pilotIdentify key personas in the digital workplace (see FIGURE 1)Dispatch a technical manager and seasoned user experience designer to observe the employees doing their jobs Develop a detailed persona for key individuals and roles (see FIGURE 2)Tackle a large digital project with the support of top management (ideally a Chief Digital Officer) after pilot is completed

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Creating a Digital Workplace Personaa

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TYPICAL ORGCHART POSITION

Age

Education

Previous Roles

ComputerExpertise

Late 20s

University graduate withtechnical, humanities, orbusiness-focused degree

ServiceDesk Team Lead, Problem Manager, Change Manager

Solid, broad knowledge.May have expertknowledge of PC/clienttechnology

PRACTICE DETAILS

LOCATIONCo-located alongsideService Desk

MANAGERIT Operations or Service Support Manager

TEAMServiceDesk analysts (Level 1, and perhaps Level 2)

KPIs AND SUCCESS CRITERIA

Customer Satisfaction survey score

First-call resolution

Response time (e.g. call pickup, incident first response)

Average resolution time

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Visibility of major incidents arising

Workloads, queue lengths (individual, team)

SLA targets and performance levels against them

BACKGROUND

Direct communication with customers in escalation situations.

Leads daily meetings with Service Desk staff.

Weekly meetings with IT Service Level/Relationship managers.

Escalation communications to managers.

Attendee in Service Support weekly operational meetings.

Provides reports on performance of 3rd party support providers.

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FIGURE 2: PERSONA DEVELOPMENT

Manages the day to day operation of the ServiceDesk

Oversees the incident queue

Handles customer service escalations

Monitors ServiceDesk performance against KPIs and manages intervention process where necessary

Manages development of ServiceDesk staff

Participant in “war room” for large multi-change implementations

Manage assignment of issues to 3rd party support provides and track their performance

Take proactive steps to ensure SLAs are met

INFORMATIONNEEDS

KEY OPERATIONAL ASSIGNMENTS

CORE TASKS

Head of Service Support

Service Desk Manager

Service DeskAnalyst

SupportAnalyst

Service DeskAdministrator

14Conclusion

The journey of increased enterprise “digitization” and the digital workplace depends in part on adopting what employees want and demand. But the most fundamental shift in mindset places customized employee experiences and deep collaboration with IT at the center. Success becomes not a matter of placing an attractive interface on an outmoded

To learn more about crowdsourcing and persona-based approaches, go to:http://www.bmc.com/it-solutions/remedy-smart-it.html

CONCLUSION

process or vice versa, but of valuing worker productivity and satisfaction as the surest pathway to success. For that to happen, people must take priority over process and technology. Crowdsourcing and optimizing the user experience with personas are two powerful ways to bring employees to the forefront.