We can now say with absolute certainty that the future of work will remain hybrid post-pandemic. While 2021 drove the deployment of digital workspaces, 2022 is likely to see investments being made to improve the digital employee experience and productivity and rationalize the IT spending on hardware and software suited for remote work. Gartner expects that by 2023, 75% of organizations that exploit distributed enterprise benefits will realize revenue growth 25% faster than competitors. But distributed workforces with heterogeneous endpoints are very difficult to monitor and manage. Let us look at some of the telling trends that are sure to grab the attention of Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) teams in 2022.
Automation to Complement Traditional Helpdesk
The remote work model has put tremendous pressure on the helpdesk with an unprecedented increase in trouble ticket volume. Traditional helpdesk operations have limited capabilities to probe devices, networks, and applications leading to business downtime. The helpdesk agents spend hours resolving repetitive issues across multiple devices in the organization. New capabilities such as automated incident resolution complement helpdesk efforts in fixing IT issues faster. Automation brings in a proactive and predictive approach to remediate issues. This helps deflect issues from the helpdesk agent using self-healing capabilities that detect, triage, and remediate issues before they disrupt the workday. Agents can focus more on higher priority and complex tickets instead of wasting time in fixing common and repetitive issues.
Higher Demand for Improved Helpdesk Efficiencies
In-person IT support is a thing of the past. Service desks that still rely heavily on employees raising trouble tickets or calling in for issue resolution are sure to end up firefighting all the time. Incomplete visibility in the end-user IT landscape with frequent blind spots and delayed Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for even the most common incidents tends to frustrate the helpdesk personnel. Improvements in helpdesk visibility will help identify patterns and anomalies faster. With End-user Experience Monitoring (EUEM) dashboards and other analytical tools, the helpdesk agent will have all the telemetric data, insights, and recommendations to apply fixes at a click of a button. This is sure to help improve agent efficiency with first-time and first-call resolution.
Focus on Employee Productivity Improvements
Newer cloud-based business software, conferencing, and communication tools have enabled a big chunk of the workforce to perform their everyday duties from the comforts of the home office. This increased technology usage at work requires better IT support to minimize business downtime. The number of occurrences of sudden shutdowns, slow browsing, corrupted applications, outdated antivirus protection is on the rise. If these issues are left untreated, it can lead to employee frustration and loss of productivity. High turnover of employees due to technology issues is not very uncommon and can cause a significant dent in business outcomes. Imagine the plight of the clerk at the front desk of a bank, working with a slow desktop machine that is causing a long queue of customers waiting to get served. Digital experience monitoring software that helps preempt trouble tickets and offers periodic device health, compliance checks, and performance tuning activities are the need of the hour.
Employee-driven Self-heal and Self-service on the rise
In most organizations today, the onus of fixing IT issues is solely on the helpdesk agents. The biggest drawback of this approach is being reactive to the situation. An issue is highlighted and worked on only when an employee raises a ticket or calls the helpdesk. Valuable time, efforts, and resources are wasted in explaining the issue, identifying the root cause, and applying fixes at the employee site. A proactive and employee-driven approach to IT issue resolution employs self-heal and self-service methods. Self-service is when employees resolve issues on their own by leveraging self-help templates, standard procedures for routine device health checks, or issue resolution guidance. Enabling employees to execute self-heal automated remediation actions for common IT issues is a game-changer. This approach reduces dependency on the service desk for fixes and the burden of trouble tickets for the agents. The wait time for resolution with the self-heal approach is significantly lower as well.
Organizations should shift their focus from SLAs and indicators to understand how employees are experiencing technology at work. EUEM or Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) software is already stealing the spotlight. Delivering a happier, more productive digital workspace will prove to be a massive competitive advantage in 2022 and beyond.
