With ‘digital natives’ forming the largest part of the current workforce, enterprises are faced with a new challenge. The modern workforce expects user-friendly applications that are beautiful, easy-to-use, and enable seamless access to information from anywhere, and on any device. Hence, user experience and engagement are critical to encourage them to be more productive and also inspire their intuitive and creative side. Without doubt, this acts like a catalyst for employees to think differently about new products and solutions that leads to inventive design and future strategic thinking. All this is possible by creating a conducive work environment that mimics the experience that comes with ‘beautiful applications’ that is part of their daily lives.
Let’s take a closer look into the key aspects that contribute to successfully delivering all these technologies and meeting the expectations of this new age workforce –
Beautifully designed
Historically, consumer and enterprise software was a classic case of opposites – while the former was beautiful and user friendly, the latter was known for being extremely technical and feature rich only. This may have been a fall-out of the fact that the executives who bought the software didn’t have to actually use it. To keep up with the new-age workforce, it is crucial to consumerize technology in a manner that is consistent with the personal experience of the employees.
Going beyond experience, there should be emphasis on the way users interact with the software as well – it has to be made simpler to use and more intuitive. Only this will ensure that more people use it, directly having positive impact on the collective business value. Change management within the organization is easier when people are excited about the software that they use at the workplace.
Smartly delivered on Cloud
The new age workforce places great emphasis on a flexible, mobile-friendly work culture. Cloud enables this by allowing workers to access and share files, data and applications from anywhere and from multiple devices. Cloud also facilitates collaboration and the use of social media, two other technologies valued by millennials that can be leveraged effectively in the enterprise.
Companies are slowly realizing that attracting and retaining the new age employees is directly related to deploying cloud applications—supercharged with the modern, easy-to-use interfaces that are practically part of this generation’s DNA. According to an IDG study, 48% of organizations polled use the cloud as part of a strategy to attract this modern workforce.
Paves way for collaboration
It is important for organizations to redefine the way people work and think about work. It is quite unfortunate that with technology – ‘the users’ and ‘the choosers’ are usually two different sets of people but that is now slowly changing. For instance, engineers on the shop floor of a manufacturing unit require a high level of understanding amongst them for greater coordination and faster time to market. This level of cooperation comes directly from the application that connects all of them, starting from logistics, assembly, quality check and right up to the delivery in the market.
Traditionally, enterprise applications have been driven by two forces: engineering (the functionality that’s possible to build) and sales (the requirements imposed by IT decision makers). This explains why we were left with clunky, inflexible and impersonal software.
With changing times, it is a prerequisite for enterprises to aggressively court talented modern day employees and to do this, it is crucial to create a friendly and productive work environment by embracing cloud and the many technologies it enables, and provide the perfect combination of beauty and brain in their software applications. A superior experience is what the the end users today value and it is a huge parameter that will shape your employee relationships, so what are you waiting for?
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(Disclaimer: This is a guest post submitted on Techstory by Ashish Dass, Vice President & Managing Director, South Asian Subcontinent, Infor. All the contents and images in the article have been provided to Techstory by the authors of the article. Techstory is not responsible or liable for any content in this article.)
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