Business Advantages for the New Digital Workplace
We live in a world that is rapidly changing. Since the digital era started, there’s been a tremendous shift from how we communicate to how we work. Every day, successful businesses adopt more convenient workplace trends brought on by the digital transformation.
The number of businesses conforming to workplace trends is likely to increase as researchers estimate that investments in digital will reach up to $2.3 billion globally by 2023. Businesses that transition to a digital workplace have a competitive advantage with improved efficiency and decreased costs. It’s no wonder that 83% of employers think the digital workplace has boosted their business success.
What is the Digital Workplace?
The digital workplace is a virtualized environment that allows employees to collaborate, communicate and connect with tools and others from anywhere. According to Gartner expert Carol Rozwell, it’s a business strategy that enhances employee agility and engagement.
You may have started to transition to a digital workplace without even knowing. You may already use a few new workplace trends, including cloud applications, printers that connect to the internet, and communication tools that connect remote employees with those in the office. Businesses that overlook these digital opportunities and don’t incorporate them in their business operation plan may fall behind their competition.
How Will My Business Benefit?
Businesses that transition to some form of a digital workplace may see several benefits, including:
Increased Employee Productivity
The overall design and structure of a digital workplace are meant to reduce the physical limitations of employees and enhance their accessibility to tools, systems, and colleagues. The digital workplace helps increase employee productivity by removing barriers that make it difficult to connect if they’re not physically in the office.
For example, in a digitally transformed work environment, employees don’t have to worry about going to file cabinets to find a document or discuss project changes over the phone. The digital workplace makes it easier and faster to process and complete tasks. According to a survey by CoSo Cloud, 77% of remote employees reported increased productivity.
More Efficient Workflows
The efficiency of the workflows is one of the significant changes that a digital transformation brings with it. Gone are the days when an important document in your company had to be printed or scanned. Digitalizing the workplace has streamlined workflows and creates an environment for increased performance by removing common roadblocks that get in the way. New and improved collaborative tools, like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, cut down meeting times and give employees more time to focus on innovation.
Updated and Improved Legacy Processes
According to the 2021 IT Trends Study issued by the Society for Information Management, replacing legacy applications was one of the top 10 IT budget items that businesses budgeted for in 2020. You may think that hanging on to legacy technology will save money, but it could cost you more.
However, a legacy application doesn’t necessarily need to be updated to deliver a better customer experience. Digital transformation enables your business to effectively update and improve your legacy process through new integrated technologies.
How Are Businesses Affected by the Digital Workplace?
Let’s face it. Our workplaces were never expected to stay the same forever. Nothing is. That is perhaps one of the reasons organizations are transitioning to a digital workplace. Transitioning your business doesn’t come without challenges. There are areas of your business that are likely to be impacted by the digital workplace:
Cloud computing
According to a study by Forbes, nearly half of the US workforce is now working remotely. This gives businesses enough reason to incorporate more cloud-based systems and helps them transition to a digital workplace.
Advanced cloud computing tools integrated with quick communication technologies create a vast network to support the entire digital workplace. Businesses are now moving towards more viable solutions, including cloud migration, that improves employees’ productivity and communication when working with those technologies.
Internet of Things
The internet of things (IoT) is a massive network of interconnected things that create multi-dimensional relationships, including people-to-people, things-to-things, and people-to-things. Simply put, it’s anything that has an on and off switch and can connect to the internet, for example, your watch, your TV, etc.
Since most businesses are now operating digitally, the role of the IoT in digital workplaces can’t go unnoticed. Integrating virtual workplaces with the IoT has transformed every aspect of our lives. As more businesses evolve digitally, the number of IoT is expected to grow three times, from 8.74 billion in 2020 to nearly 25.4 billion in 2030.
Digitized print workflows
Transitioning to a digital workplace has proved to be an opportunity for people to shift from their old ways of work and move to a more efficient digital structure. Many print workflows have been digitized, and employees seem to be adapting to new ways of operating. Realizing the benefit of cost and time savings by reducing the amount of day-to-day printing, organizations are working with managed print service providers and document management solutions to streamline digital print workflows.
Software integration
In modern workplaces, the need to find viable solutions to integrate software is critical for the success of organizations. Digitally transformed companies are using multiple software systems that communicate and share data to carry out specific functions and operations, including:
- Slack for team building
- Salesforce for customer management
- Outlook to send messages and file
- Google Drive to store data
The list of available applications businesses can use to build and support a digital workplace continues to grow. For this reason, software integration is necessary for advanced virtual workplaces. Experts believe that software integration is critical to enabling seamless communication for an organization.
Activate automation
The founder and CEO of Popcart, Omri Traub, says with a limited number of employees in specific fields, investments in automation processes will continue to grow. He believes that more and more companies will rely on the cloud to speed up automation.
The digital workplace facilitates business automation with the help of several automation tools. Automation tools can help supplement the reduced number of employees. According to a study by Bain & Company, companies that activate business automation see a 20% decrease in cost.
Adoption of services
By transforming to digital workflows, your business can connect all the printing devices to the internet and view them via a dashboard while monitoring the operating costs.
Transitioning to print services can help reduce the cost of copy machines, toners, pages, and other office supplies by bundling them into a monthly charge for the digital and print services.
It’s not hard to understand why companies are finding ways to create a digital workplace that can lower costs, improve employee productivity, and enhance work efficiency.