In a recent NelsonHall blog, we looked at the key themes and investments being made across digital workplace services. The overarching themes were employee experience, AI-enabled digital support services, sustainability, and digital re-skilling (read more here). For this blog, we spoke to NTT DATA’s digital workplace leadership team to understand its key focus and strategic roadmap investments over the next 12 months.

The new NTT DATA Group is a much-enlarged firm with ~$30bn in revenues and 195k employees. The group comprises NTT DATA Japan, with ~$12bn in revenues, and NTT DATA Inc., the $18bn international business with integrated application, infrastructure, and network capabilities (read more here).

NTT DATA’s digital workplace services innovation is focused on four key investment areas:

• Generative Workplace: utilizing GenAI to provide personalized digital support services
• Experiential Workplace: using XLAs to support total experience
• Sustainable Workplace: includes sustainable device as a service (SDaaS)
• Smart Workplace: facilitating productive and safe workplaces with IoT-based services.

Utilizing GenAI to provide personalized digital support services

NTT DATA is investing in GenAI across all its digital workplace towers, including employee experience enablement through conversational AI. This provides the ability to mimic agent behavior and translate language in real-time. IT Service Desk use cases include incident creation/resolution, approvals and updates, request fulfillment, knowledge management, ticket details and self-service, access management, and password reset. The agent can also deliver other self-service and administrative tasks across other industry use cases including retail, financial and banking (FSI), airline and travel and more. NTT DATA has a single delivery team for GenAI in its high-performance delivery centers and consulting & advisory services and sales at a local level through its Glocal model approach. Below are examples of deployments.

NTT DATA deployed a conversational AI chatbot in partnership with kore.ai for a multinational food processing company with 150k employees. It further integrated specific LLMs, resulting in ~40% call deflection.

NTT DATA is also engaged in multiple Microsoft Copilot workshops, providing advisory and consulting services, readiness and deployment, organizational change management (OCM), and Copilot extensibility. Typical engagements include Microsoft 365 Copilot calling and meetings workshop, Copilot proof of value with NTT DATA Cloud Voice (Modern Work and Copilot Engagement Program), and Copilot Studio/Sales workshop. NTT DATA also offers a 3-week Copilot advisory workshop to assess Copilot readiness across all workloads, discover use cases, and ensure data governance and implementation roadmap and Copilot for Azure PoCs.

For a Spanish telco with 15m customers, NTT DATA provided consulting and advisory services supporting a 300-license pilot for Microsoft 365 Copilot. This included training in the transversal use cases of M365 Copilot and additional use case identification, including document summarization and creation, agent assist, outage and remediation notification, knowledge management, etc. In the pilot, 76% of users saw increased productivity, and 70% had a positive experience. The client is now entering a second phase, extending the licenses to 1k. A key factor in the adoption was NTT DATA’s change management approach to drive mindset change and generate interest in the pilot groups.

NTT DATA will continue embedding GenAI across its digital workplace offerings, leveraging IP LLMs and AI-powered Copilot for engineers and use cases supporting client experience and expert advisory. Using smaller LLMs and proprietary data to solve vertical or business-specific problems will increase moving forward. NTT DATA’s investments in OCM and Microsoft Copilot consulting services are also key as organizations seek to drive AI technology adoption. In particular, organization change management (OCM) and AI with OCM will play a key role in helping clients adopt GenAI technologies by driving a greater focus on personalization to expedite adoption, and we expect to see POCs and pilots moving strongly into production over the next 12 months. There will also be more emphasis on proactive experience centers supported by SRE teams that look at every aspect of experience and monitor users in real time as they engage across services.

Utilizing XLAs to support total experience

NTT DATA has developed Experience-as-a-Service (EXPaaS) with the aim of providing its clients with a total experience using persona-aligned services and XLA delivery supported by its experience management office (XMO) and dedicated DEX squads.

EXPaaS for EX focuses on operational, people, and technology experiences and combines them with CX assurance, services management, and analytics to enable total experience. NTT DATA aims to identify issues that impact UX and respond quickly to prevent issues, using its DEM platform to increase observability and visibility. It collects multiple telemetry info from devices, apps, networks, etc., in real-time, which it runs through its XMO and digital analytics fabric to derive insights and improve EX.  

NTT DATA uses its 5A framework to implement EXPaaS and enable XLA standardization. It starts with the initial Ask phase to understand the key stakeholders, the environment, the client’s experience aspirations, and what part of the scope is influenced by NTT DATA, the clients, or its partners. The next phases are Analyzing, Assessing, Acting, and Attuning and providing continuous monitoring and improvement of experience indicators through its dedicated XMO.

For a global airline client, NTT DATA implemented EXPaaS with its 5A framework and persona-based XLA dashboards, measuring multiple metrics parallel to SLAs. It utilized its DEM platform, OCM, and modern device management to support 30k devices. The client achieved an improved overall EX score of 9.5/10, using XLA-delivery and persona alignment, and reduced ~35% of service desk contacts through proactive automation.

NTT DATA’s focus on EXPaaS to drive its XLA approach along with its dedicated XMO capability are key, and we expect the company to continue to ramp its SREs in support of its SRE/agile POD-led approach to bridge the gap between operations and deployment.

In addition, NTT DATA’s Workplace Orchestration platform delivers consolidated client experiences across the workplace. For example, its digital twin capability built on Power BI looks to expedite the employee onboarding process from 4 weeks to less than a week, with accelerated Day 1 onboarding being a major element in the overall employee experience.

Infusing ESG into its Digital Workplace Services offerings

NTT DATA focuses on persona-aligned VDIs, rightsizing devices based on personas, and increasing remote technical support with AR/VR and digital humans to reduce carbon footprint. This also includes accessible devices, kiosks, inclusive meeting rooms, and remote device wipe services. A key offering is Sustainable Device as a Service (SDaaS), available per device per month or per user per month, with devices and peripherals aligned to the employee persona.

NTT DATA deployed this capability for a global biotech company with 54k devices, identifying opportunities for remote support and field dispatch avoidance. It also provided smart refresh by persona supported by 1E and Nexthink on a needs-only basis through a phased approach. It provided automated provisioning through Autopilot and streamlined the catalog to ensure the correct configuration for the user, for example, moving them to a VDI platform if more suited to the persona. The client achieved an ~85% increase in device provisioning time.

Adoption of NTT DATA’s Sustainable Device as a Service (SDaaS) is likely to increase in importance in support of clients’ ESG and sustainability goals.

Another key capability includes eSIM, which integrates personal and corporate telephony on one device with a single number for Teams and mobile phones.

In partnership with HP, NTT DATA offers re-manufacturing and refurbished device allocation at the end of three years, providing users with the same out-of-the-box experience. This approach will resonate with clients as they seek to lower their carbon footprint and sustainably extend the device lifecycle.

NTT DATA also helps clients optimize office space and improve energy efficiency using Workplace Orchestration platform employee intranet.

Providing smart workplaces

NTT DATA provides managed private 5G, SD-WAN, SPEKTRA platform for networks, IoT, and edge computing, infusing this into digital workplace services to create a smart workplace. This also includes its Private 5G Device as a Service, with a fully configurable device selection aligned to the user’s persona and a choice of lease versus buy. Industry use case examples include manufacturing (industry 4.0 and autonomous factories), healthcare (providing clinicians with access to patient data on any device), and automotive (providing visibility of the global supply chain). NTT DATA will increasingly invest in further industry use cases in support of its P5G Device as a Service offering.  

For a global construction and utility client, NTT DATA utilized Workplace Orchestration platform, conversational AI, and employee intranet to develop a mobile app to streamline physical bookings, corporate service access, and communications for employees and external collaborators. It also enables the optimization and management of common spaces and occupancy visualization. The client achieved several outcomes, including increased energy efficiency, reduced environmental footprint, and improved worker productivity.