At the forefront of digital transformation are no longer the power users, but the end users who, according to survey data, are disengaged and yearning for a more user-friendly and ultimately, more productive workspace. Disengagement is costing enterprises trillions of dollars per year in lost work time, and Citrix Systems Inc. is looking to decrease that number by cultivating an experience with users across generations in mind.  

“I’ve been in this industry for a long time,” said Carolina Milanesi (pictured), founder of The Heart of Tech. “And I’ve been preaching for a long time about how looking at consumers and putting the user first is important. We’re just starting now to come around to the idea that consumer satisfaction is important, that employee satisfaction and employee engagement is important.”

Milanesi spoke with Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) during the Citrix Synergy event in Atlanta, Georgia. They discussed how Citrix is putting end users first by not only making application software more user-friendly, but also by securely tailoring their personal experience (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following answers have been condensed for clarity.]

Martin: Historically, enterprise software has been designed for power users, which makes up 1% of the population. So, putting users first now … what are your thoughts on that?

Milanesi: That’s my passion. When I talk about enterprise, the people that I really want to talk about are the final users of the technologies. A lot of times, not only do corporations design for the power users, but they design for the IT manager, which is even worse, right? That is less than the 1% of a workforce.

It was fascinating during the keynote here [that] Citrix talked about a survey that Gallup ran saying that 85% of a workforce is disengaged today because they often not have the right tool for the job. They don’t have the right data available to them to understand what the task is that they’re trying to achieve. So, there is so much there that I think something like Workspace is helping to try and break into pieces and make it more user-friendly.

Townsend: We have five generations of the workforce in the workforce. So there are variant degrees of adoption. How do you think Citrix is enabling not just the consumerization or bringing consumer products into the workforce, but adoption across generations?

Milanesi: I think if you are starting with the user, you are in a good space, right? So, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Baby Boomer, Gen Z, Gen X, or a Millennial, we all want an easy life. We want something to be straightforward and not to get in the way of us being productive and getting the job done. I think if you’re starting with that in mind, making sure that you understand the goals that the company is trying to achieve, and then with the design, you’re attentive at that simplicity and baking in security so that security is at the core of designing your tool, but doesn’t get in the way.

That’s how we’ve always gone around what was available in the consumer space and we’ve brought into the enterprise either as a device or an application. I think that putting simplicity first is allowing Citrix to avoid the issues so that the IT departments don’t have to worry about renegades that are going to bring in something from the backdoor, but really embrace this technology as a new way to think about “how I work.”

Townsend: Talk about 5G and the impact of 5G on employee experience. We’re a little bit away from 5G becoming a thing, but talk to us about where it is today, and the potential of impacting employee experience when it finally arrives.

Milanesi: We’re starting to see deployment in markets. Today was the launch in the U.K. with EE, and we have Verizon here in the U.S. For me, the power of 5G is twofold. Yes, every employee will have the power of connectivity anywhere and at any time, which is good and bad because potentially you’re never disconnected. The other side is they’re talking about the intelligence in that data. There is going to be way more of that. There is going to be more data available.

So if you’re thinking from an employee perspective of the availability of data and what that can do to you as far as understanding your customer base and how to serve them, that is going to be exponentially bigger just because so many more devices are going to become connected. That is really what excites me about 5G.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Citrix Synergy event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Citrix Synergy 2019. Neither Citrix Systems Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE