The advancements in latest technologies have impacted our lives in several ways – both personal and professional. They are revolutionizing the workplace as well.
Productivity is the engine of human progress—it is what propels our society forward. The promise of technology is to help us get more done, with less effort
To manage developing business needs, distributed teams, and a complex threat environment, we must maintain a responsive, modern digital workplace.
What Is a Modern Workplace?
A modern workplace is an environment in which employees can securely access the content or information, exchange innovative ideas, make better conversations, enable productivity, experience seamless communication through multiple devices to bring the team together and do their best work to drive digital transformation.
The demand for high-performance teams is playing an important factor into today’s workplace dynamics. An advanced working environment is both a basic objective and a crucial strategy for supporting employees as organizations change into digital businesses.
Here are a few new trends of digital workspace which will revolutionize the future of work:
- The Shift Towards Cloud Will Accelerate: Advanced security and information management, low infrastructure costs and remote working capability offered by cloud storage are a few aspects which will spearhead this changing trend.
- Enterprise Chatbot Platforms: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella declared that “bots are the new apps” at the Microsoft Build developer conference in March 2016.
In coming years, organisations will focus more on developing bot strategies and use AI-Powered chatbot platforms to deploy, train and manage bots in the B2C, B2B and B2E workflows.
80% of businesses want chatbots by 2020!
– Business Insider
Check out our bot builder platform BotCore to create and train your bot according to your organizational needs conveniently and effectively
- Analytics For Everything: Today a majority of enterprises are focusing more on application of analytics across multiple domains. Incorporating this culture in all business workflows will help in heavy cost-cuttings and drive a hassle-free and accurate decision making among employees.
By 2020, 85% of new operation-based technical positions hires will be screened for analytical and artificial intelligence skills – IDC
- Bigger Investments in Robotic Process Automation (RPA): RPA promises an error-free automation of manual business workflows and leads positive change in the workforce with more productivity.
RPA offers a potential business ROI of 30 – 200 percent – Leslie Willcocks
Read more: 5 DIGITAL WORKPLACE TRENDS SHAPING THE FUTURE OF WORK IN 2018
This advancement is influencing changes in how employees engage with each other, share content, communicate and collaborate in both physical and virtual working environments.
This is the place where the intranet fits into the modern digital workplace environment.
The modern workplace with an influx of new tools, content and information explosion, increased mobile workforce and security threats, demands a single digital hub in which employees can connect, collaborate, engage and share data.
Nielsen Norman Group’s Latest report on Intranets confirms organizations are swiftly making their intranets the central hub for content access, collaboration and communication.
In contrast to a traditional intranet with basic features, poor user experience and complicated processes, a modern intranet with modern features like communication & sharing, collaboration, employee engagement, integrated social networking platforms, stunning design and great user experience, can be a window to the digital workplace that improve employees performance and increases intranet adoption rate.
A modern intranet is where employees connect, collaborate, share innovative ideas, and accomplish work efficiently, which results in a more productive and streamlined employee experience.
The advanced digital workplace environment should integrate these technology platforms to make a central area of productivity. A place where you can sign in at any-time, anyplace and “go to work.”
Read more: A buyer’s guide to choosing the best intranet software
How Modern Intranets Connect the Digital Workplace
Comprehensive Solution
Modern intranets include features like document management, content management, enterprise socializing network etc.
These tools are interconnected in a single environment to make a digital workplace where employees communicate, work together and finish the tasks. This saves the time of the employee of navigating different platforms and get all the needs in one place.
Integration or Single Sign-On
Integrating external systems to the intranet is somewhat similar to plugging a tangled bunch of cords into an adaptor. By connecting them wherever possible, the employee can easily access the information with more streamlined.
If complete integration is not possible, a single sign-on facility can help to reduce difficulties in finding data to make a productive and effective employee experience. Basically, integration and single sign-on will enable the employee to get the information quicker and finish tasks faster.
Task-Based Information Architecture
Resist the tendency to construct your intranet on a structure of division/department based subsites.
Modern intranets have generally been designed on a structure of department-based subsites which doesn’t reflect the way organizations work.
HR, accounts, marketing, systems etc., do not operate in isolation. By separating their pathways in the intranet can cause divides that restrict usage, knowledge sharing and reduce productivity.
A task-based information architecture implies organizing content and applications in relation to how employees use them. The outcome of user experience is more efficient and have an intelligent pathway to access integrated tools. Thus allowing information and activity to flow between employees of different departments continuously.
Mobility
Mobility is a part of the picture, given our dependence on tablets and smartphones. If the tasks, data, records etc., are distributed across different environments, it is difficult to collect and complete the work on a smartphone.
By making integrated task-based intranet accessible via mobile, employees can log-in from anywhere and complete the tasks, which results in more timely action. It gives employees a more convenient way to consume information and interact effectively.
The essential features of a modern intranet
- Customization feature allows employees to add and remove features based on requirement. Improved user experience and tailored content in the modern intranet fulfill user needs and communicate in a more personal way. Making your employees engage based on a personal connect boosts overall adoption and reinforces organizational culture.
- The intranet is all about finding content that people need in order to execute work quickly and efficiently. Chatbots in the intranet will help employees to get complete control over content wherever it is present and access it by using simple conversation UI with the chatbot.
- Today’s mobile-driven culture has brought simplicity and made intranet access easy. Modern intranet comes with responsive design which enables efficient intranet access on smartphones and various other devices, results in a great user experience.
By 2020, every day, 60% of smartphone users will interact with more proactive personal and professional smart agents than apps – Gartner
- A modern intranet needs to be cloud-based intranet and have a minimum deployment time. Using cloud-based intranet we can get access just by entering the URL on any modern browser.
By 2021, more than half of global enterprises already using cloud today will adopt an all-in cloud strategy – Gartner
- Modern intranets are integrated with socializing feature where different widgets including social features like post, share, like, etc., employees interact with individuals and get engaged. Employees can create groups and exchange information at no additional cost.
- Modern intranet comes with Enterprise search feature which helps employees to pull information by searching through specific keywords or phrases, categories etc. and maximizes productivity.
- Using right analyzing tool in the modern intranet to measure the activities of users, analyzing and drafting reports, can give you insights into what aspects of the intranet your employees are engaging and focus on the right areas to improve.
Measure your intranets performance with Acuvate’s solution Seek. It gets detailed reports on usage, site and page popularity, documents downloaded history, active users, search keyword analysis and more.
Security
As new technologies emerged, more and more tools have influxed the enterprise IT, making maintenance and administration a hassle. The content stored in an intranet is extremely sensitive. A modern intranet should cause zero security and privacy complications and must provide the right user authorization levels across departments, teams and locations.
Conclusion
Intranets are the central hub of tools which can be accessed from anywhere, anytime. They continue to provide great features and pave easy way to evolve and create a gateway to a modern digital workplace.
On the other hand, due to increasing pressure to reduce costs, organizations are compelled to reduce their property footprint by decreasing space for every employee – this can mean allowing employees to work off-site, whether that be at home or in a halfway house. This tends to increase the adoption rate of modern digital workplace in the organizations.
The main point to remember is that the digital workplace is an evolution. This might require organizations to make improvements over time based on requirements.
Introducing advanced innovations like AI-powered chatbots can help employees work quicker and more efficient.
They provide information and required data to propel business productivity and to adopt a digital culture to involve all employees in the brand new experience.
Read more: THE ROLE OF CHATBOTS IN THE INTRANET
At the recent Gartner Digital Workplace Summit, much of the conversation focused on the next evolution of employee experience and how artificial intelligence capabilities, such as chatbots, are beginning to reshape how companies service employees.
Communication, collaboration and employee productivity and engagement are key aspects of a modern workplace. A modern intranet should be capable of covering all these aspects. It should be easy customizable, user friendly, mobile friendly and conveniently fit in the organization’s IT hub.
If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.
