NelsonHall recently attended Compucom’s Analyst and Advisor Event 2023 in Charlotte, NC. It provided an opportunity to meet the executive leadership team, which has evolved over the last 12 months. Kevin Shank was appointed CEO in December 2022, having served as a senior executive at Compucom for nine years. He was joined earlier this year by Matt Olson as COO, also a previous senior executive at the company.

Founded in 1987, Compucom supports digital experience management through device lifecycle services, digital support, field services, and modern device management. The company provides end-to-end digital workplace services for large enterprises and mid-size businesses, supporting 9m devices and handling 8m service desk contacts per annum. In December 2021, it was acquired by Variant Equity Advisors, providing new impetus and investment to its focus on improving the digital experience in support of hybrid working.

Compucom is aiming to enhance its clients’ workplace transformation programs by:

• Implementing single points of contact for clients to drive innovation and NPS
• Establishing a Customer Experience Office and Experience Level Indicators to drive XLA discussions
• Driving the use of automation and AIOps across its digital support services.

Implementing Single Points of Contact to Drive Client Innovation & NPS

Compucom has reorganized its account management approach to drive innovation within its clients in a more cohesive and client-centric manner. A program director in charge of sales, solutioning, and client resourcing for the account now becomes the client’s single point of contact. The program director is also responsible to Compucom for the account P&L.

Compucom has deployed this model across its top 65 accounts (~80% of total business), driving greater account opportunities and improved client NPS.

The company continues to utilize its end-to-end capabilities across product provision, professional services, managed services, and staffing services at scale to provide a continuous lifecycle approach for the client.

Establishing a Customer Experience Office & Experience Level Indicators to Drive XLA Discussions

Compucom has established a Customer Experience Office (CXO) to provide a centralized and holistic approach to continuous improvements, increasing service efficiency and customer experience across clients. It includes a dedicated team building automations and improving proactive resolutions through AIOps.

At the same time, Compucom has developed multiple Experience Level Indicators (XLIs), covering metrics such as device and application performance, to measure experiences across four key indicators through its DEX platform and to drive XLA discussions with clients. The four key indicators, each containing multiple XLIs, are:

• Technology choice: covering device performance, application experience, and employee productivity
• Workplace flexibility: covering network, device, and connectivity experience
• Self-sufficiency: covering self-service resolutions, knowledge usage, and self-service support experience
• Well-supported: covering onboarding experience, device lifecycle experience, and support experience.

These XLIs are supported by Systrack, or clients’ end-user analytics tools, putting multiple telemetry points into dashboards to identify opportunities for experience improvement.

In addition, Compucom has a dedicated analytics team that works closely with account management. It takes data from multiple points, including digital support, endpoint, lifecycle, field services, cloud, and security, collecting data via telemetry and metrics from services and sentiment.

The analytics team then utilizes AI/ML to identify actionable insights, which are solutioned to drive service or content improvements. Service enhancement use cases include performance-based refresh to understand if a device is not performing at the level an employee needs to do their job effectively. It also looks at software license optimization to understand usage and identify opportunities for cost-out, including applications on devices not being utilized. Compucom has developed several support interaction use cases, including quality enhancement, knowledge content, AI-chat content, and process improvement.

It also has the opportunity to further support clients’ ESG agendas through its device lifecycle services, immersive technologies, AR/VR, remote support, OEM partnerships, and by developing Green apps to help users monitor, track, and reduce their carbon footprint.

Driving Use of Automation & AIOps across Digital Support Services

Compucom is continuing to invest in digital support models with more automation, self-service, conversational AI chat support, and generative AI POCs with clients. It looks at different telemetry and events from the devices deployed across the workplace and aggregates this data to view patterns and deliver appropriate automation as required.

This includes using AIOps to trigger actions, propose preventative measures to predict, prevent, detect, and fix potential issues before they reach the service desk, and enable self-healing to increase autonomous remediation. It is developing a field technician mobile application to track, for example, ETA and routing automatically.  

Compucom will continue to increase this focus on AIOps and drive a real-time data insight-driven approach across the workplace supported by dedicated skills, including data scientists, automation and AI architects, and UX/EX leads. It will need to ramp up its digital re-skilling and hiring to ensure the requisite skillsets are in place, and this is underway as part of its strategic roadmap.

The company is also investing in Microsoft IaaS and PaaS capabilities, and taking advantage of and securing technologies including Microsoft Copilot to enable GenAI use cases. In addition, there will be greater use of Intune, including Autopilot and cloud-based managed services in support of modern management.

Cybersecurity is also a key focus for Compucom, and it is investing in new cybersecurity tools and standards. The increasing client shift to SaaS is increasing the number of devices that require network connectivity and bringing new security and networking challenges to edge locations. It also provides the intersection between IoT, operational technology, and the workplace in support of hybrid working environments.

Outlook

We expect Compucom to expand its customer-centric approach across key accounts to drive innovation and overall experience.

Compucom is increasingly focusing on how its offerings can support specific client outcomes, and we expect to see contractual XLAs being deployed through its XLI-based approach in support of client outcomes.

We also expect to see increased tailoring of its services by industry, including a more persona-based focus on frontline workers and industry-specific roles across the workplace and via its GTM with key ecosystem partners and hyperscalers.

NelsonHall recently attended Compucom’s Analyst and Advisor Event 2022 in Paulsboro, NJ.  As in-person meetings and events resume, it was great to engage with Compucom executives, including CEO Mick Slattery, face-to-face once more.

Founded in 1987, Compucom provides end-to-end digital workplace services for enterprises, midsize and small businesses. In December 2021, it was acquired by Variant Equity Advisors, giving new impetus and investment to its focus on improving the employee experience in support of the future of work.

Digital workplace services are becoming increasingly important in driving the overall employee experience, and organizations continue to invest in digital workplace services at pace. In a recent NelsonHall study of multiple IT stakeholders across industries, 91% identified digital workplace services as highly important in improving the employee experience and supporting hybrid ways of working across the enterprise. In addition, 93% rated greater personalization of services as key to improving collaboration in support of hybrid working.

Compucom is aiming to enhance its clients’ employee experiences by:

• Assisting clients to move beyond XLIs to XLAs
• Using its CXO office to drive improved resolution
• Accelerating its investment in automation of its digital support processes.

Moving beyond XLIs to XLAs

As hybrid working becomes the norm, a key goal for Compucom is to provide a holistic employee experience, enabling its clients to achieve experience parity between working from home, office, and other locations in support of hybrid working collaboration.

Accordingly, Compucom is increasing its focus on XLAs (Experience Level Agreements) and contracting on risk/reward in the areas it can control to support business outcomes. Heather Lockhart, Chief Marketing Officer, showcased Compucom’s new branding and reiterated the company’s focus on employee experience and the direct correlation between EX and, ultimately, CX for clients.

Compucom seeks to be the key enabler for XLA development across its client base and evolve Experience Level Indicators (XLIs) into XLAs working jointly with clients on business outcomes.

Current XLIs developed by Compucom include:

• Technology issues: age of devices and browser usage
• Self-sufficiency: self-service, knowledge use, and contacts per user
• Support quality: sentiment, response times, and onboarding
• Flexible workspace: cloud utilization, VPN usage, and peripheral access.

These XLIs will further translate into XLAs linked to contractual engagements to improve business processes and outcomes. The company will continue to expand these across its client base.

Compucom will increasingly focus on how its offerings can support specific client outcomes, and we expect to see more focus and investment in providing end-to-end experience across the workplace. Its persona-based approach will enable it to define personas by industry further and develop personalized experiences across the workplace.

In addition, digital workplace services have a key role in clients’ ESG agendas. This includes using remote support, immersive technologies, and Advanced Exchange to reduce onsite support to benefit carbon emissions and utilize Green apps to give end-users visibility of their carbon footprint.

Using its CXO Office to Drive Improved Resolution

Compucom has established a Customer Experience Office (CXO) to provide a holistic approach for continuous improvements, increasing service efficiency and customer experience.

It created the CXO office to look across its clients and enable more analytics and automation to drive a faster resolution or increased self-help. It has dedicated teams building automations and improving proactive resolutions. Through ITSM, it seeks to improve customer experience efficiency by driving SLA attainment, incident resolution, and reducing MTTR and contact volume while driving a knowledge management program to assist operations and improve customer experience through metrics including FCR and knowledge consumption.

Compucom’s CXO includes a single-pane view to track employee sentiment and performance across clients’ investments in end-user analytics tools such as 1E Tachyon, NexThink, Systrack, Medallia, and Qualtrics. This further enables the measurement of UX across devices, applications, networks, and home office WiFi environments.

Accelerating the Automation of Digital Support models

Compucom is investing in digital support models with more automation, self-service, and predictive AI-powered, natural language support options. This includes remote technician support, swapping deskside for remote support, and dispatches with remote and Advanced Exchange; in addition, looking at different telemetry and events from the devices deployed across the workplace and aggregating this data to view patterns and deliver appropriate automation as required.

This also includes triggering actions to propose preventative measures to improve configurations and predict, prevent, detect, and fix potential issues before they reach the service desk. Compucom also provides a catalog of automation, including scheduled maintenance for core applications and a simple interface for single-click resolutions and requests for assistance. Through analytics and telemetry, it is helping clients move from a group policy administration model to an Autopilot-driven approach that enables greater device choice.

Outlook

Compucom is ramping up digital re-skilling and hyperscaler certifications, and we expect it to continue investing in AI-based platforms and tools to enable a self-heal framework and increase autonomous remediation. In addition, we anticipate that Compucom will shift from a traditional L1/1.5/2/3 mindset to a real-time data insights-driven approach supported by site reliability engineers (SRE).

In general, we expect to see newer skill sets emerging, including machine coaches developing algorithms for AIOps systems, business value specialists, automation and AI architects, and experience and innovation leads. It will be important for Compucom to continue to ramp up its digital re-skilling, hiring, and retention initiatives to ensure the requisite skills are in place to meet future clients’ requirements and support business outcomes.

In addition, Compucom recognizes that the ever-increasing shift to SaaS and the increasing number of devices that require network connectivity is bringing new security and networking challenges to edge locations and continues to enhance its capabilities on the edge along with security. 

We also expect to see more emphasis on partner ecosystem and hyperscaler GTM initiatives and a greater focus on how Compucom’s offerings can support specific client outcomes.

NelsonHall recently attended Unisys’ Analyst and Advisor Event 2022 in Boston, MA. As IRL meetings and events begin to resume, it was great to engage with Unisys executives face-to-face once more.

The $1.2bn sale of its Federal business to SAIC back in February 2020 is being partly used to fund acquisitions and portfolio investments for Unisys’ digital workplace and cloud & infrastructure solutions businesses. Unisys has made three acquisitions to date: two have enhanced its digital workplace services capabilities, the third its cloud and infrastructure management services capabilities.

Unisys has well-established capabilities in cybersecurity, particularly Stealth and digital workplace services. There is now an increasing emphasis on cloud-native applications and taking a more consultative-led approach across Unisys.

There has been a nearly total refresh of the senior leadership over the last 18 months, with new appointments for CFO (Debra McCann; former CFO Mike Thomson is now COO), CTO (Dwayne Allen), CMO (Teresa Poggenpohl), CCO (Maureen Sweeny), and new heads for Digital Workplace (Leon Gilbert), Cloud and Infrastructure Solutions (Manju Naglapur) and Enterprise Computing Solutions (Chris Arrasmith). All are external hires (Naglapur came with CompuGain, acquired in December 2021). We note much greater diversity in the senior leadership.

The tagline for the event was ‘what’s next – accelerating success’. CEO Peter Altabef focused on Unisys’ new emphasis of driving outcomes that enable enterprises to be more profitable with supporting hybrid, cloud, and multi-cloud environments playing a pivotal role.

Digital workplace solutions: focus on the proactive UX

Leon Gilbert, SVP of Digital Workplace Solutions, highlighted the traction gained since his appointment in February 2021 and the increased focus on driving proactive experiences across the workplace and helping clients transform through next-gen capabilities. Unisys has enabled all existing clients with the latest technology, including journey analytics, at no charge. It also exited some non-strategic DWS contracts in 2021. Unisys claims to be enabling ~1.4m end-users with proactive experiences, up from 50k just 18 months ago.

Two recent acquisitions enhancing Unisys’ digital workplace services capabilities are:

• Unify Square, acquired last June for $150m, whose cloud-based PowerSuite solution for Enterprise Communications and Collaboration captures an individual's experience and can operationalize and improve that experience in real-time through analytics. Unify Square also brought in ~50 digital workplace consultants who can support Unisys’ consulting-led approach
• Mobinergy, a much smaller acquisition last November, has enhanced Unisys’ UEM capabilities and its positioning around modern device management.

There is an ongoing emphasis on VDI (Dell, VMware, Azure) and cloud-native VDI services to support secure and modern workspace environments and AIOps in support of first-time fix across field services, AR, and automation in service desks. Again, there have been several recent senior hires supporting these capabilities.

Priorities for Unisys’ digital workplace services include aligning offerings by geography, optimizing hybrid working models, and driving more outcomes-based engagements.

Driving application modernization and containerization

Unisys is also investing in its cloud and infrastructure business and recently acquired CompuGain, bringing 400 employees with capabilities across cloud-native, application modernization, and data analytics.

Unisys continues to invest in its CloudForte portfolio, including CloudForte CMP AIOps for AI-led operations. In addition, CloudForte Containers automate the end-to-end container infrastructure, application modernization, and DevSecOps deployment processes. This enables applications to be brought quickly into production and provides automation across the entire lifecycle, including security. It is also investing in Stealth and its hybrid cloud-managed security solution (MDR), providing AI-enabled threat response.

Unisys continues to ramp its investments across automation, self-healing, and AI/ML capabilities in support of cloud services.

Outlook

Unisys has overhauled its senior leadership team and is looking to pivot to a business-unit-led organization to increase traction in selected markets and geographies. There will be a stronger focus on using a consulting-led approach and on driving client outcomes: expect to see a further increase in dedicated business consultants. Also expect to see additional bolt-on acquisitions in support of application and data modernization capabilities, plus further developments in its CloudForte container services roadmap, and a greater focus on DevSecOps and automation enablement across the entire lifecycle. We also expect to see more joint-IP and GTM offerings with key hyperscalers.

With digital workplace services, expect to see greater traction across Unisys’ XMO organization, proactive experience, dedicated XLAs through the PowerSuite platform and partner ecosystem, and expansion of modern device management with Mobinergy capabilities. This should enhance field services, including AR/VR and immersive technologies. We also expect to see further acquisitions supporting digital workplace transformation advisory and a greater focus on AIOps and SRE-led operations.

Unisys will be rebranding this year: expect to see a greater emphasis on how Unisys’ offerings can support specific client outcomes.

John Laherty and Rachael Stormonth

NelsonHall recently completed an in-depth analysis of advanced digital workplace services, in which we spoke to multiple leading IT services vendors and their clients. This blog looks at some of the key themes from this research, the investments vendors need to make to meet client demand, and how the market will evolve over the next 12 to 18 months.

The three overarching themes from this study were:

• Applying a human-centric approach and placing employee experience at the center of everything
• Enhancing digital support and increasing predictability of services
• Ramping digital re-skilling and empowering end-users.

Let’s look at these key focus areas in more detail.

Employee experience is paramount

In addition to the recent market analysis, NelsonHall carried out a study of multiple IT stakeholders across industries. Here, 91% identified digital workplace services as highly important in improving the employee experience and supporting new hybrid ways of working across the enterprise. In addition, 93% rated greater personalization of services as key to improving collaboration in support of hybrid working. Within employee experience, the main sub-themes we identified included:

> Identifying and measuring employee experience and establishing roadmap (includes the use of analytics and dedicated experience centers)

Vendors need to support their ability to drive the customer experience by continuing to invest in end-user analytics tools to measure employee sentiment and performance, with typical tools including 1E Tachyon, Nexthink, SysTrack, and Qualtrics. These measure UX across devices, applications, networks, and home-office WiFi environments. We expect to see more use of Microsoft Viva through APIs to measure employee HR, wellbeing, cultural sentiment, and combining this with sentiment analytics and measuring across dedicated experience frameworks.

Over the next 12 months, focus on dedicated experience centers will increase, supported by SRE teams that look at the experience aspect of IT service delivery and proactively monitor the sentiments of end-users as they engage across services and XLAs (and work with clients to create specific XLAs by persona).

> Delivering employee experience (through personalization and holistic experience)

Here, vendors should look to enable a hyper-personalized approach at the start of client engagements to understand clients’ business and customize solutions accordingly. Also, it is essential to define personas by industry and personalized experience services across the workplace and wider enterprise ecosystem.

Also, it is important to focus on providing a holistic experience in both physical and virtual environments to drive location-independent collaboration in support of hybrid working. This will increasingly involve the deployment of AR/XR, including Microsoft Mesh Services and HoloLens.

Overall, it is now critical for organizations to provide a holistic employee experience, with experience parity between working from home, office, and other locations in support of hybrid working collaboration.

Other key investment areas include building XLAs to support business outcomes (e.g., automation effectiveness, virtual agent effectiveness, accurate technical resolution, chat uptake, self-service, and knowledge article first-time resolution).

> User training (use of MarTech and Microsoft Viva)

We expect to see more investment in MarTech, used for contextualizing the workplace for users, targeting ads to an end-user in an enterprise for training and adoption services, and continuing focus on OCM to drive digital adoption. User learning will be further enhanced by greater utilization of Microsoft Viva and targeting installed M365 client bases with Viva to improve productivity and UX.

Driving predictability across the workplace through digital support services

Vendors are increasing investments in proactive and predictive support services, including AI-led service desks, to facilitate the move to a fully automated ‘zero-touch’ service desk capability. They need to provide end-users with access to digital support through a single touchpoint (e.g., Teams). Within self-serve, vendors need to increase the resolution capability of virtual agents and integrate self-heal capabilities to enable greater self-remediation of issues. It includes self-heal scripts and self-help libraries, including one-click automated solutions, knowledgebase articles, and targeting self-healing at L0, L1, and L1.5 incidents. This is supported by utilizing data from the log files of the different devices deployed across the workplace and aggregating this data to view patterns. This is used to trigger actions to propose preventative measures to improve configuration and predict, prevent, detect, and fix potential issues before they reach the service desk.

Automation is key in:

• Direct automation of incidents, driving continuous transformation through a data-driven approach and automating the bulk of L1 incidents
• User support, extending AI virtual agents across the enterprise (e.g., in HR for onboarding and offboarding), facilities management, and procurement functions.

Over the next 12 months, we anticipate more focus on AIOps and the interoperability with existing and new environments through a catalog-based service and bot store for reusable automation assets. As more insights are gained across the end-user environment through analytics, ML, and AI, it enables greater adoption of self-healing technologies and auto-remediation capabilities. It will improve predictability across IT environments, rectify issues before an end-user realizes they have an issue, and support the transition to a future No-Ops model.

Digital re-skilling continues at pace

We continue to see traction in digital re-skilling initiatives and hyperscaler certifications supporting digital workplace services. We are seeing a shift from traditional L1/2/3/mindsets to a real-time data insights-driven approach supported by site reliability engineers (SRE) approving machine recommendations. New skillsets are emerging, including machine coaches developing algorithms for AIOps systems, business value specialists, experience and innovation leads, automation, and AI architects.

Over the next 12 to 18 months, we expect to see more focus on end-user empowerment using low code/no-code platforms and managing M365 through the Microsoft Power Platform. Vendors also need to expedite resources, building automation use cases and system capability by industry to meet clients’specific business needs. There is also an opportunity for vendors to hire from a much larger digital skills pool than previously, driven by remote working.

There will also be more focus on Evergreen-as-a-Service, and supporting SMEs enabling clients to keep up to date with the latest features and updates from hyperscalers and the provision of advisory services through Evergreen CoEs to help clients adopt new features and transform the way end-users work. This includes greater utilization of modern management to provide a centralized solution for all devices, including PCs, tablets, IoT devices, smartphones, and Macs, bringing all endpoint management together into a single unified service to manage all devices from one solution. Invariably, cloud-based management toolsets will manage the full lifecycle of all endpoints from onboarding to retirement.

Outlook

Investment in digital workplace services will continue at pace, driven by the need to enhance the employee experience and the opportunities created by digital support services, SaaS (M365 and Intelligent Collaboration tools), VDI, and AR/VR. We anticipate increasing adoption of fully-cloud-based digital workplace platforms driven by ongoing hybrid remote working requirements.

In addition, we expect to see more investment in decarbonization measurement, including reducing onsite support to benefit carbon emissions and utilizing Green apps to give end-users visibility of their carbon footprint. This will also include avoiding costs related to unused hardware and engaging and educating employees to influence sustainable practices.

5G, edge technologies, and IoT-enabled solutions, including health testing and biometric building entry, and voice and gesture control, have a key role in facilitating a safe return to the office. These technologies are often integrated with third-party platforms, particularly the ServiceNow safe workplace suite.

Overall, the transformation of digital workplace services will be underpinned by increased uptake of Windows 365 Cloud PC, Windows 11, Apple DaaS, and modern management toolsets. In addition, there will be more focus on joint IP and GTM initiatives with hyperscalers in support of hybrid working environments.

Find out more about NelsonHall’s ‘Advanced Digital Workplace Services’ market assessment report here or contact Guy Saunders. 

We recently spoke with Infosys on its sustainability strategy, where its philosophy is to ensure its business, clients' businesses, and ecosystems are all sustainable. It approaches sustainability at the enterprise level across Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) dimensions.

Infosys started its sustainability journey in 2008 and says it became carbon neutral in 2020, some 30 years ahead of the 2050 timeline set by the Paris Agreement. Recent achievements include a 55% reduction in per capita electricity consumption compared to the 2008 baseline and 50% of electricity coming from renewables. The company has achieved 60 MW of total installed solar capacity and a 64% reduction in consumption of water across campuses. Overall, Infosys has achieved an 83.6% reduction in Scope 3 emissions, including reductions from business travel, employee commute, upstream leased assets, waste, and work from home. Infosys claims by 2022, for every project, there will be a sustainability aspect for clients.

We have also seen recent ESG developments from other IT services vendors, including Capgemini's commitment to achieving carbon neutrality for its operations no later than 2025 and its ambition to be net-zero by 2030. Also, Atos announced end-to-end decarbonization capabilities to enable clients to accelerate their journeys to net-zero. Atos invests in decarbonization measurement, including reducing onsite support to benefit carbon emission and utilizing the Atos Green app to educate and give end-users visibility of their carbon footprint.

Infosys capabilities and IP

Infosys is positioning itself to be clients' end-to-end sustainability partner, combining IP and a consulting-led approach. Key capabilities include its ESG platform (ECOWatch), powered by Microsoft applications in Azure to enable data capture and analysis of sustainability KPIs and ESG metrics, IoT-based energy, water, and waste management solutions, and KRITI 4.0 for asset maintenance. Additional Infosys capabilities include integrated command and control center (AR/VR in the field), Smart Spaces platform, and PLM and circular commerce material compliance. The Infosys Wingspan Platform is used for knowledge and change management, and Infosys Meridian for sustainability events and communities.

Infosys has recently announced a strategic partnership with The Economist Group to enable and accelerate sustainability solutions and drive impact through a business-to-business model and unlock long-term sustainability thinking across global enterprises, and is aiming to deliver the following benefits to its clients:

• Making an impact on the triple bottom-line of people, profit, and prosperity
• Attracting a new wave of sustainability-minded clients, supply chain partners, and employees
• Enhancing ESG attractiveness to investors and brand reputation
• Securing resiliency in uncertain conditions.

Infosys sees six distinct aspects to clients' sustainability journeys: sustainability plan, growth plan, digital & physical assets, addressing the supply chain, offset strategy, and sustainability-first culture.

Focus on smart buildings capability

From an ESG perspective, buildings account for 40% of GHG emissions. Consequently, we are seeing a number of vendor capabilities in support of smart buildings and offices using workplace safety platforms and IoT-enabled wayfinding solutions. This includes providing health testing and biometric building entry, including voice and gesture control to facilitate a safe return to the office for clients. These services are often integrated with third-party platforms, particularly the ServiceNow safe workplace suite.

Here, Infosys is partnering with several global hyper-scalers to offer its Smart Buildings and Spaces offering, managing the lifecycle of solutions, including pathfinder and visitor management. In addition, Infosys offers Azure health and wellness platform focused on occupancy wellbeing and health and safety. Also, Infosys has capabilities to enable the physical workplace to become digital by installing and managing IoT devices, beacons, sensors, and wayfinding solutions. Employee-centric solutions include AR/XR experience, intelligent workplace platform/return to the workplace, employee experience, and touchless experience. These solutions are complemented by an integrated command center, IoT-enabled occupancy analytics, connected field services, Infosys intelligent workplace solutions, and low-carbon eco spaces. From a sustainability perspective, key capabilities include water management, carbon monitoring & control, solid waste management, energy assessment and consulting, and Greenfield building consulting (LEED).

Infosys enabled RXR Realty, a leading real-estate owner, investor, operator, and developer with a commercial portfolio of 26 office buildings in and around NYC, to deploy an Azure-based health and wellness platform focused on occupancy wellbeing and health and safety, incorporating Face Mask Detection, Social Distancing, Indoor Air Quality, Monitoring Occupancy, Energy Management, and Remote Operations.

Additional capabilities across decarbonization include smart metering, smart grids, renewables, electric cars, IoT sensor deployment, command centers, and predictive analytics (including predictive maintenance) across utilities, focusing on optimizing machinery, facilities and operations to reduce costs and overall energy and resource use.

ESG vision 2030

Through its Sustainable Business Practice, Infosys has launched its ESG vision and ambitions for 2030, which include:

• Environment: includes leveraging technology to support the transition to a low-carbon world and support climate change, maintaining 100% water recycling each year, and ensuring zero waste to landfill
• Social: extending digital skills to 10m people, including employees, clients' workforces, students, teachers, and communities by 2025. Empowering 80m lives through tech for good programs and having 45% of women in the Infosys workforce (currently 38.6%); also, delivering 33% of work through flexible/remote work options and driving employee wellness and experience
• Governance: includes building sustainable and responsible supply chains, adopting leading data privacy standards across global operations, and upholding the digital trust of stakeholders.

Summary

Infosys became carbon neutral in 2020, has a clear ESG strategy through 2030, and estimates that it has enabled clients to achieve a 30% reduction in per-capita energy consumption and a 20% improvement in operational efficiencies. 

We expect Infosys will increase its industry-specific capabilities in support of clients’ ESG and carbon-neutral strategies. Across Digital Workplace Services, there is a greater focus on supporting clients’ ESG and carbon-neutral agendas through Evergreen services, including the use of AR/VR in the field to reduce onsite field visits, remote working and onboarding, smart buildings, and use of Green apps to notify users of their carbon footprint. There is also a clear focus on employee experience and wellness and digital re-skilling to support ESG agendas. Here, we expect Infosys to see increased traction across its Wingspan learning platform, where it currently has ~2m users, as clients seek to train, re-skill, and educate employees to support future sustainability initiatives.  

NelsonHall completed an in-depth analysis of advanced digital workplace services (DWS) in 2019. This blog looks at some of the key findings from this research, in which we spoke both to leading IT services vendors and clients of their services. We will also take a look at some of the drivers and trends we expect to see as we move into 2020 and beyond.

DWS is enabling the future-ready workplace

Organizations are placing greater emphasis on overall employee experience through the deployment of digital workplace services. In addition, the role of central IT is changing, adopting the role of a service broker to enable end-users to provision the services they need, when they want, and how they want. This is increasing the need for more personalized engagement models, including self-service (mobile support apps, virtual agents, chatbots, and knowledge articles). DWS is also driving the use of proactive and predictive engagements, including self-healing, AI and automation, and specialist onsite support through Tech Cafes and smart lockers, while utilizing AR/VR in the field for remote services.

A key development is the use of DWS tools and techniques across the entire organization, with examples including the use of chatbots and virtual agents in HR for onboarding and off-boarding activities. Gamification methods are being deployed across marketing and communications departments to drive engagement and adoption of services. In addition, there is greater integration with facilities management through the use of IoT-enabled devices and wayfinding solutions to drive smart office concepts.

Intelligent collaboration services & design thinking take personalization further

Vendors are developing social and collaboration platforms to integrate multiple platforms (including Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Workplace by Facebook, G-Suite, Skype for Business, and Yammer) into one. This is driven by organizational requirements to enable employees to collaborate more effectively on projects through the platform of their choice, and improving overall UX. It also enables targeted communications to specific user groups or personas. We expect activity will ramp in this area, in particular as vendors partner more with disruptors in the market, including Google and AWS.

Many vendors are further utilizing consulting and advisory services to drive a collaborative design thinking approach to client engagements, to develop the digital workplace user experience. They are further investing in and developing dedicated design and digital studios in support of DWS initiatives. This also includes the use of immersive technologies, including AR/VR, to showcase ‘smart office’ capabilities.

Analytics is playing an even more critical role across DWS

Vendors are increasingly looking to use advanced data analytics, NLP, and ML tools to manage and analyze data, including Hadoop and Kafka, and DataRobot to evaluate different ML algorithms.

They are seeking to better understand the big data generated in the end-user environment and act on this data to stop issues in the first place, working out what to automate to drive the best outcome. This also includes the creation of automation scripts or bots to improve service quality pre-emptively.

Another key focus area is the use of end-user analytics tools, including Nexthink and Systrack, to improve end-user monitoring and overall UX. Vendors are collecting data from log files across the different devices deployed across the workplace and aggregating this data to get a view of patterns in data. This is then used to trigger actions to propose preventative measures to improve configuration and to predict, prevent, detect, and fix potential issues before they reach the service desk.

AI-led service desk initiatives are increasing

Many vendors are expanding capabilities in support of AI-led service desk to facilitate the move to a fully automated ‘zero-touch’ service desk capability. This includes automation and self-serve capabilities (IVR, RPA, chatbots, auto-scripts, biometric password reset capabilities, including fingerprint and face recognition).

A key focus includes the development of AI-based virtual agents, using NLP and acting as an L1 agent, learning from past data, and improving through ML. These are invariably a mix of IP and third-party solutions. If the virtual agent is unable to rectify, it may log a ticket on behalf of the end-user (whether incident or request), passing the data and intelligence collected to a specific L2/L3 resolver group. Vendors are also integrating common AI interfaces into VAs, including Siri, Cortana, and Skype for Business, to improve UX.

Self-healing ecosystems will enhance predictive capabilities further

As vendors gain more insights across the end-user environment through analytics and AI, it is enabling greater adoption of self-healing technologies and auto-remediation capabilities. Typical toolsets deployed include Nanoheal and Nexthink, enabling self-heal frameworks that run interactively, helping end-users fix their own issues, or providing agent-assisted services (for example, through ServiceNow to remotely fix issues, or run silently to address issues proactively). Vendors are building libraries of self-heal scripts and self-help including one-click automated solutions, knowledgebase articles, and invariably targeting self-healing at L0, L1, and L1.5 incidents.

Future developments

The DWS market will continue to evolve with demand for even deeper personalization of services driven by increasing workforce expectations across the enterprise. It will also be key to attracting and retaining new talent.

AI-led service desk will expand

The propensity to adopt AI, ML, analytics, and self-healing technologies will increase to facilitate the transition to an AI-led, zero-touch service desk with greater predictive and preventative capabilities to further improve both the end-user experience and employee experience across the entire enterprise. This also includes AI-enabled virtual agents utilizing ML and semantic analytics and enhancing use cases to deal with more complex support issues (L3 and above), and expanding VA capability across the enterprise.

In addition, we expect to see further development in areas including proactive mass healing (L2/3), with super-users within the service desk resolving data corrections or data validation errors with site reliability engineers (SREs) approving solutions offered by self-healing, although we anticipate this will be across a more protracted timeframe.

Microsoft MMD will gain traction

Although end-of-life support for Windows 7 kicked in on January 14, 2020, we expect there will still be considerable migration activity for the foreseeable future, with laggards moving to Windows 10, which provides added security along with device flexibility and improved UX.

We also foresee more traction with Microsoft Managed Desktop (MMD), enabling organizations to allow Microsoft to manage their Windows 10 devices, providing the latest versions of Windows 10 Enterprise edition, Office 365 ProPlus, and Microsoft security services. We also expect to see more uptake for Windows Virtual Desktop on Azure, enabling Windows 10 virtual desktops to run on the Azure platform; these will also provide a real alternative to Citrix.

Other developments will include increased provision of ‘aaS’ offerings for Windows and devices, and Evergreen services for Windows 10; and also, EUC as a Service (providing Win10, 0365, DaaS, and unified endpoint management) on a price per-user basis.

IoT-enabled smart buildings will increase

We expect vendors will further enhance their capabilities in support of workplace IoT across the smart office (utilizing beacons, sensors and wayfinding solutions) for smart meeting rooms, reservations, facilities, space management; and expanding field services through AR/VR for asset tracking and worker safety, and remote technical support – in addition to using AR/VR for immersive learning, training, and development.

Greater focus on XLAs and business outcomes

It is likely we will also see greater adoption of business outcome-focused XLAs, which include end-user journey quality, zero-time-to-fix where incidents are avoided, measuring digital adoption (end-user satisfaction, engagement, omnichannel, number of liked and shared knowledge articles).

We anticipate vendors will focus on developing dedicated digital transformation centers and CoEs in areas including AI, ML, automation, data science, cognitive virtual agents, and NLP bots/chatbots – in addition to creating joint R&D capabilities and go-to-market initiatives with key ecosystem partners.

Market disruption

Finally, we expect Amazon and Google will continue to become major disruptors in the DWS market, already evidenced by a number of recent collaboration initiatives with vendors.

NelsonHall recently completed an in-depth analysis of advanced digital workplace services (DWS). This blog looks at some of the key findings from this research, in which we spoke both to leading IT services vendors and clients of their services.

Changing workforce expectations are driving DWS transformation

Organizations are deploying digital workplace services to improve productivity and efficiency while also improving the overall employee experience with more self-service tools, more personalized support, and gamification methods. Offering a digital workplace is also key to attracting new talent.

Employees’ experiences in their personal lives in using mobile devices and AI assistants such as Alexa and Cortana are driving similar expectations at the workplace. There are three engagement models for offering personalized support:

• Proactive & predictive (remote monitoring, self-healing, RPA, AI and intelligent automation, predictive analytics)
• Self-service (portal-based, mobile support apps, virtual agents, knowledge items)
• Specialist on-site support (e.g. Tech Cafes, smart lockers, IT vending machines, video support, smart FM).

There is also an increasing focus in contract agreements on business-aligned ‘XLAs,’ or experience-level agreements (i.e. on user journey quality including zero-time-fix, user hours saved and marginal gain methodology).

Maximizing value from DWS requires collaboration across the enterprise

The buying profile of organizations is evolving as they endeavor to enable more collaborative working by their employees. Where traditionally central IT would drive services as a means to improve cost, IT is now adopting the role of a service broker, offering self-serve capabilities to end-users to provision the services needed, when the end-users want, and how they want.

Recent developments include engaging with marketing and communications departments and using gamification as a means to improve adoption of self-service tools, and with HR for more efficient on-boarding and off-boarding of employees. In addition, collaborating with facilities management to drive the adoption of smart offices (smart conference and booking facilities) and intelligent space management and wayfinding solutions through beacons and sensors.

Design thinking takes personalization even further

Many vendors are now engaging with their clients through collaborative design thinking workshops to generate ideas to improve the end-user experience. This includes the use of ethnographers to understand the profile of target clients and their needs and priorities, including self-serve portal creation. We expect vendors will ramp their design thinking capabilities over the next 12 months.

Social collaboration tools are an important part of UX

There is also growing demand to enable workers to collaborate more effectively through tools such as Yammer, Workplace by Facebook, Slack, Hangout, G-Suite, Skype for Business, SharePoint, WhatsApp, and Microsoft Teams to drive better collaboration across projects and improve end-user experience. Vendors are developing social and collaboration platforms to integrate various social collaboration platforms into one and partnering with disruptors in the market, such as Google. It is evident some vendors are further ahead of the curve than others in this area, with some having already implemented dedicated social collaboration platforms to improve UX.

Windows 10 migration services will continue to ramp

Windows 10 migration has been high on the agenda for some time now, with the end of Windows 7 support in January 2020 forcing the move to Windows 10. Windows 10 provides added security, along with device flexibility and improved UX. There will be a significant uptick in migration rates for the laggards.

Recent developments have also seen the introduction of Microsoft Managed Desktop (MMD), which enables organizations to allow Microsoft to manage their Windows 10 devices. Microsoft also introduced Windows Virtual Desktop on Azure, allowing organizations to run Windows 10 virtual desktops on the Azure platform.

Field services will play an important role in targeting IoT-enabled workplace opportunities

The role of field services is evolving with an increasing deployment of field engineers on servicing IoT-enabled solutions such as wayfinding type ones for smart offices and smart facilities. Their activities include installation, management, and maintenance of sensors and beacons in support of these initiatives. We anticipate vendors will also develop further use cases for AR/VR services in the field for remote technical support and training.

Future developments

The DWS market has evolved considerably in recent years with changing workforce expectations driving a greater personalization of services with a higher propensity to adopt AI, cognitive, ML and analytics technologies through a collaborative approach to improve the employee experience.

This evolution continues, with greater use of models including zero-touch service desk enabled through AI, smart offices, and increased use of IoT-enabled devices, AI and AR/VR in the field.

Also expect to see new technologies such as Microsoft Managed Desktop (MMD) and VDI on Azure gain substantive traction, and Amazon and Google becoming major disruptors in DWS.