Turn back to the clocks to just a decade ago, and Digital Employee Experience (DEX) was an idea that forward-thinking business leaders were familiar with, but was hardly the omnipresent topic it has become.
But today, DEX isn’t just a vague descriptor for how companies monitor their employee technology – it’s an indispensable thread in the fabric of their business. Yesterday’s workplace leaders might have considered DEX; the workplace of the future is DEX-driven.
And new research is emerging that reveals just how significant of a priority DEX is becoming among the world’s top businesses.
According to Gartner’s new Market Guide for Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Tools, “at least 60% of infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders will use Digital Experience Monitoring” to measure the performance of their services and endpoints from the employee’s perspective – a massive increase from just 20% in 2021.
While DEX management is gaining traction in a major way, there still exist some misconceptions about the sheer diversity of use cases this technology can account for. Many business leaders see the benefits of DEX technology when it comes to IT incident management– when in reality, the transformation they’re able to achieve extends far beyond the service desk.
DEX is becoming a board level priority for today’s top workplaces.
In recent years we’ve seen IT leaders face one predominant challenge as they try to implement DEX initiatives: they struggle to secure the buy-in they need from their executive board.
Improving DEX hinges on much more than adopting a specific tool and implementing a “set it and forget it” process to monitor employees’ day-to-day technology experiences. It requires a much broader shift in the business’s philosophy towards their workplace. Otherwise, IT leaders will lack the resources, budget, manpower, and internal advocacy to truly transform the workplace for the better.
Fortunately, the tides are beginning to change when it comes to how executives consider DEX. In predicting how the market will change over the next 12 to 18 months, Gartner cites the following:
- DEX and the broader EX will elevate in importance as an executive/board level concern.
- Moreover: by 2025, 50% of IT organizations will have established a DEX strategy, team, and management tool, up from 15% in 2022.
These predictions indicate a groundbreaking development in the broader workplace technology landscape. We’re not just seeing companies adopt tools that weren’t on their radar a decade ago. They are also creating entire teams dedicated solely to DEX initiatives – proving that they view DEX as an essential driver of business success moving forward.
DEX technology supports a variety of benefits beyond traditional IT service use cases.
When business leaders consider DEX technology, they primarily view these solutions as vehicles to make their IT departments more effective and efficient. Providers emphasize the IT benefits that their offerings provide, such as:
- Increased visibility into employee technology performance.
- Proactive identification and elimination of technical issues.
- Automation driven by real-time experience data intelligence.
And so on. It’s true that DEX management solutions are IT tools, first and foremost – but as these solutions have evolved, the scope of benefits they can provide far exceeds an organization’s IT efforts.
According to Gartner’s research, non-IT use cases are critical to a DEX provider’s ability to deliver results for their customers: “Through 2027, 80% of the DEX tool deployments that account for only IT-focused use cases will fail to achieve a sustainable ROI.”
You might be asking: how can DEX technology benefit an organization beyond improving IT service? Here are just a few of those benefits – and how they contribute to an improved, fully transformed digital workplace:
Boost adoption through improved employee awareness and education.
DEX technology enables organizations to fully visualize the process of adoption for each tool they implement and maintain in their ecosystem. If adoption rates for a specific solution are lagging behind their standard thresholds, they’re then able to deploy personalized engagement campaigns to educate employees on how to adopt and use the tool effectively, driving adoption in the most streamlined and targeted way possible.
Improve digital dexterity across the organization.
Not all employees start with the same level of digital dexterity, which means that some are more adept at learning new technology than others. DEX management technology will provide insights related to adoption and proficiency that enable organizations to determine which employees exhibit high and low levels of digital dexterity. From there, digital workplace teams are able to tailor their educational strategy to help low-dexterity employees keep pace as new technology is introduced to the workplace.
Leverage consumption data for more cost-efficiency technology provisioning.
One of the most ROI-driving benefits of DEX management technology is its ability to help organizations streamline their approach to technology provisioning. Within most organizations, unused software licenses and hardware over-provisioning lead to inflated annual costs. With more visibility into consumption data, these organizations can identify and remove inactive software licenses, reclaim unnecessary hardware, and proceed to provide employees with the exact tools they need to do their jobs effectively.
Reduce security risks by limiting shadow IT usage.
DEX technology also provides a number of cybersecurity benefits, as the right tool can reveal technology consumption that is not approved by the IT department. These shadow IT solutions open the door for a higher chance of a cybersecurity threat. Once these potential threats are identified, the team is able to either provide employees with alternative solutions or integrate those tools into the standardized architecture to guarantee compliance.
Want to learn more about where DEX technology is headed, and the IT and non-IT benefits of selecting the right DEX management tool for your organization? Read Gartner’s full report.
