The silver lining of 2020 is the way it has encouraged all organizations to undergo digital transformation.

This transformation allowed businesses to survive a turbulent year, but as we move forward in 2021, it is also far from over. Too many organizations are reliant on quick-fix digital solutions that are ultimately unsustainable.

A global study from my company surveying 9,000 executive and employee respondents across 11 countries found, for example, that most executives believe their organization would be unable to adapt within 30 days in the event of another major disruption. That’s in part because 91% of executives admit they still have offline workflows, including document approvals, security incident reports and technology support requests.

This reality illustrates just how fragile, manual and inflexible many of our systems remain. As our “new normal” becomes simply normal, we must invest in technologies that create a seamless employee experience and enable a productive, resilient and distributed workforce in return. Here are three areas in which organizations should invest:

Intuitive user interfaces

Simplicity is the calling card of a consumer experience. One touch, one query, one voice command and voila — you get what you need. Look a little deeper, however, and this simplicity is a clever mirage.

Something as straightforward as asking Siri to find a coffee shop actually relies on a number of complex backend workflows. Consumer companies excel at hiding these workflows by integrating information into an intuitive user interface that provides a seamless experience overall.

There are a variety of reasons why this has yet to take root fully in the enterprise world, but there’s at least one very good reason to believe that’s about to change: Organizations have no other choice.

With a dispersed workforce, the impact of complex and difficult-to-learn enterprise technologies on resiliency and productivity becomes clear. These systems force humans to pick up where technology falls off, and today, that’s a significant barrier to getting work done.

In this world, you can’t count on easy access to institutional knowledge, and this knowledge allows organizations to make up for poor enterprise experiences. Perhaps that explains why just 41% of employees believe remote work has allowed their company to make better use of technology. Although that may seem counterintuitive, it makes sense when you consider that institutional knowledge is often disseminated via casual office run-ins and in-person conversations.

That’s difficult to replicate today, and it makes intuitive user interfaces a key component of excellent employee experiences that translate directly to productivity, resiliency and revenue.

Intelligent virtual agents

Artificial intelligence offers another avenue for simplifying and consumerizing the employee experience. Intelligent virtual agents do so by enabling simple self-service — whether that service is replacing broken equipment, finding software documentation or submitting expense reports.

Imagine, for instance, you need a new keyboard. Traditionally, that requires calling the information technology help desk and spending an afternoon on hold, or if you’re in the office, bribing a friend in IT to expedite the process. Today, however, it’s as simple as messaging “my keyboard is damaged” to a virtual agent that kicks off an automated workflow that ships a keyboard to your door.

This concept is applicable to most service delivery functions, and it allows enterprises to automate repetitive tasks while providing employees with accelerated services at scale. When we can’t count on getting in touch with the individual need right away, it’s imperative we automate what should be automated — in other words, work that doesn’t require higher-order thinking.

Right now, that’s largely limited to replacing hardware, searching for human resources policies or extracting information from large knowledge bases. Soon, however, it will evolve to more prescriptive business support in which artificial intelligence provides “next best steps” to remediate recurring problems or tasks.

Separate business logic from UI

Intelligent virtual agents are a cutting-edge way for employees to interface with systems, but it’s inevitable they will one day be replaced by the next cutting-edge technology. The pandemic has shown how fast such changes can occur, and as a result, organizations must future-proof in anticipation of shifts to what constitutes a “best-in-class” employee experience.

Microsoft Teams, for example, has taken on a strategic importance that was hard to imagine pre-pandemic. Though it seems like the key to a great employee experience right now, Teams itself will eventually become obsolete — and even at the moment, it is just one of many possible systems of engagement.

That’s why it’s imperative organizations clearly separate their business logic from their engagement layer. This lets organizations “future-proof” their plumbing so they can rapidly transition when new modes of collaboration and engagement arise. There’s an additional benefit, too, in that organizations can now provide employees with choice on how to engage, which is a hallmark of the consumer experience that, if not mandatory, is appreciated by employees, nonetheless.

When organizations place these employees first and do so by simplifying, automating and future-proofing their systems, they prepare for today’s normal but also for the next normal — whatever that may be.

Dave Wright is ServiceNow’s chief innovation officer and acts as an evangelist for how to improve workplace productivity. He has worked with thousands of organizations to implement technologies that create efficiencies, streamline business processes and reduce costs. He wrote this article for SiliconANGLE.

Image: geralt/Pixabay