Digital workplace aligned to industry-specific personas

The traditional workplace is undergoing major transformations as enterprises around the globe adapt to more agile work strategies. In doing so, organizations are getting stuck between a complex web of systems, implemented in silos addressing only specific needs of the business, without the benefit of a holistic digital workplace strategy.

With enterprises adopting Work From Anywhere reality, and with the advent of the digital age, Digital Workplace has truly evolved to be digital and is here to stay. Digital Workplace solution needs to be envisioned with end-users forming the core of the solution. It is crucial for an organization to ensure that each end-user has a seamless workplace experience regardless of time and space.

To build an effective Digital Workplace solution with the end-user being at the center, it is imperative for an organization to focus on persona-based services. To achieve this, a well-planned discovery exercise needs to be initiated. Discovery has to be an iterative process that gets refined progressively and incrementally with continuous user feedback.

Accurate Persona mapping is the base for creating truly customized and efficient digital workplace solutions for different verticals.

• Personas are end-user prototypes that represent the requirements of groups of users, with users aligned with the enterprise’s business goals and therefore exhibiting a specific set of user characteristics. They act as ‘substitutes’ for real users and help guide decisions on strategy, functionality, design, and development
• Personas help in designing the solution by identifying the user motivations, expectations, and goals responsible for user behavior. They are based on knowledge of real users and imitate the end-user in the digital world
• Personas also provide a reliable and realistic understanding of how a business could expect a group of employees to embrace the new solution

The problem

The primary reason for discontentment within enterprises that deploy digital workplace solution is their one size fits all approach irrespective of the users’ requirements, their industry segment, technological maturity, and its user’s willingness to adapt to change. The ever-changing technological landscape combined with work from anywhere has made it challenging and complicated for workplace solutions to provide a consistent end-user experience.

Some of the top industry-specific persona examples include and not limited to:

Banking

Supporting on-demand customer requests and managing high customer expectations in remote work scenarios arising due to pandemic-induced lockdowns. A digital workplace solution curated for Banking Professionals enables them to connect with the banking systems remotely and securely for transactional activities in a seamless manner. The solution enables unified collaboration within the staffing ecosystem easing the processes such as inter-departmental approvals, financial transactions, and reporting.

Manufacturing

Managing and maintaining production capacity and other activities with a lower workforce and quick turnaround in case of breakdowns or IT issues. To facilitate remote resolution, the production engineer should have access to event logs, live execution system status, and augmented reality-based smart remote support. Digital Workplace solutions can enable the engineer to seamlessly resolve the breakdown through persona-driven access.

A well-researched and regularly updated set of end-user personas allows in preparing a solution that can manage the scale and complexity of the modern workplace while ensuring end-user delight and cost-saving. ITC Infotech’s E3 framework builds a strong foundation for the ‘Digital Workplace’ to be leveraged, a differentiated framework for transforming the end-user workplace. This framework comprises of

• Experience: Identify User experience journeys through Value Stream Mapping
• Efficiency: Drive Extreme Automation for an efficient self-service experience
• Effectiveness: Accelerate adoption for benefit realization

Author:

Shreet Das,
Pre-sales Lead, Digital workplace,
ITC Infotech