In this episode of The Late Night Brew, Lee Foster and Robert Buktenica talk about digital workplaces. The end user compute (EUC) and the contemporary work environment, which includes collaborative tools, are based on the digital workplace, according to Lee. User experience is important, and a bad one can cause staff members to leave the company.
TIMESTAMP
00:07 – Introduction
00:33 – The Brew
01:08 – What is Digital Workplace?
04:00 – Why Organisation should care about Digital Workplace Foundation?
TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Robert Buktenica: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Late Night Brew, where we talk to brew first, and we get around to what we’re actually talking about. Joining me once again, who really has checks are getting lost in the mail still, Lee Foster, welcome back buddy.
Lee Foster: Good to see you, Dave, good to see you mate. What’s your fancy brew for today?
The Brew
Lee Foster: What’s your fancy brew for today?
Robert: You throwing me off my script, buddy, but since you asked and you’re so impatient, it is a lager that is called Scottsdale blonde, or technically, it’s a Kolsch.
Lee: Nice. You know me very well, mate, my brew is boiling right now.
Robert: Well, we’ll allow the egregious offense of not having your brew ready at time of recording and we’ll just move on.
What is Digital Workplace?
Robert: In this episode, we’re gonna be diving into digital workplace. Of course, are we already doing that, and what exactly do you mean by digital workplace?
Lee: Great question, mate, great question. Well, look, as you’re not, don’t we already do that? Well, look, EUC is the way we used to talk about what is currently digital workplace, and to be more specific, EUC really is what we talk to now as being the digital workplace foundation. So, you know, over twelve years we’ve done some fantastic work with Citrix and other vendors, and now you’ve got, not so much new kiddish on the block, AVD and W365 and so on, but lots of different ways and VMware doing the similar sort of play, not to mention Google Workspaces. Lots of people doing this, what they call EUC or end user compute, or digital workplace.
Robert: Pick your flavor.
Lee: Exactly, mate, exactly. What we’ve seen over the last couple of years is lots of organic growth which just bolts on to what was the core foundation for EUC. Bits of Citrix, bits of X, yes, exactly.
Robert: Yes, we need this and fit it in.
Lee: Yeah, the pandemic rushed to work from home, scale everything up in Citrix, add some of this, bring on some WVD or AVD, or 365 as it is now W365. Make it just work so that we can make people work from wherever they need to work. So, you’ve kind of got that aspect of the foundation and the tech that allows people to get good work done.
Then, you’ve got the getting work done part, which is all of the modern work stuff.ou know, collaboration and everything else that goes on top of the foundation. So, when we say, digital workplace foundation, we’re kind of moving away from EUC, end user compute as a terminology and as a focus.
What we’re saying is the Digital Workplace Foundation is the foundation for you to be able to build upon the getting work done, modern work aspects. So, the core elements, are they right? And if they’re not, let’s get them right. But whilst getting them right, let’s put the user experience bang in the center with that.
So, you know, I’m sure you’ve spoken to plenty of clients where the user experience is pretty poor, because everything we’ve just said, “Am I connecting to Citrix, am I using this AVD machine? What do I do? I can’t do this; I can’t do that.”
Hey, look, here’s a stat like from the Adobe state of Work report, this is a 2021 report, but one in three people that left their job said the reason they left was their employees’ tech was a barrier to them getting good work done, right? They’ve taken a job, they’ve started a role, they can’t perform that role because the tech is a barrier.
Now, how bad is that? That’s one in three, right? So, you know, if the foundation is wrong, it doesn’t matter how much good work you try and get done, you are forever gonna be limited. That makes sense?
Robert: Yeah, and one in three is a huge number. That is not something to sniff at. I mean, that alone is why organisations should care about this.
Why organisation should care about Digital Workplace Foundation?
Lee: Totally, totally right. If you think about consumer tech, right, what we use day-to-day in our standard lives and our everyday lives, that one person that left that organisation because there was inhibiting their way to get work done, they have a great experience at home.
We often say, “Why is it I have a Jetsons experience at home and a Flintstones experience when I go to work, right? Because he just used to working with his tech in a way that just works.
Robert: Yeah, yeah.
Lee: For the last 20 years, right, enterprise tech has been playing catch up to consumer tech, right, to match that experience. If you take, if you pluck that one user’s personal experience, and say, “How do we give you that Jetsons experience in the workplace?” That’s got to be the centre, that’s the magic, right?
You think about what’s important to an organisation is I want to attract, and I want to retain these people, right? Even more so in today’s market, globally. If I lose Buck today and I’ve gotta replace him, I’m going to pay almost twice as much to replace him, right? That’s not justifiable and not sustainable, right?
Robert: If you’re having to have all that spin-up time to train someone on legacy blank or, “Hey, we have to do it in this order because the tools are just wonky,” that’s much more time before somebody is really capable of contributing to the whole.
Lee: Correct, mate, correct, and you’ve also got the IP. You got the IP that you might lose with that individual. You’ve also got the IP that they’ve created in a system that has been organically scaled out and is a bit of a mess. Now you’ve got to try and govern that and achieve compliance with the messes there.
Again, that’s the getting work done. And modern work, it’s become so clunky and so messy, and so hard to navigate, that people are leaving organisations as a result. When we say digital workplace foundation is like, okay, let’s part that for a second.
Let’s take that user with us back to the beginning, to the foundation, and say, “Right, in order to give this person or these people a great experience, what does the foundation need to look like?” Not what does tech dictate it needs to look like. How do we need to make this work so this person goes back into that organisation and has an outstanding experience?
Robert: Right.
Lee: That’s the core focus of the digital workplace foundation. It’s again, to draw a distinct line. It’s not about the getting work done piece, that’s modern work and that comes later. It’s the how do we put a foundation in place and make that right so that it can scale. It’s designed and architected with security at the centre, zero trust framework, the whole element of the foundation is good.
Robert: All the good bits.
Lee: It can scale, and scale at the right time. It can retract when it needs to, but again, I’ll say it for the final time, the user experience has to be the measure of the foundation, not how good the tech is or what the vendor– how great the vendor says the tech is.
Robert: Exactly. That’s actually a fantastic note to end on, which we’ve gotten through the time. Lee, as always, it’s been a pleasure, bud, love chatting with you.
Lee: You too, mate..
Robert: If anyone has any– You keep coming back, there’s got to– you can’t hate me that much. If anyone has any questions, contact information is below. We’re coming up with another episode to dive even deeper on this, so please stay tuned. Until then, have a good one buddy. I’d say cheers, but you don’t have a drink.
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Next Episode: Late Night Brew – Why Adapt to Digital Workplace Foundation Framework?
