It seems there’s always another work application coming over the horizon. It will make one task or process — like intra-office messaging — easier. Hurrah. However, it will be yet another app in the crowded suite many workers must use every day. When will there be one app or platform to replace all those tabs squished together at the top of the screen?

We hear plenty about how the digital transformation movement is altering companies’ products and services. It also has the potential, through advanced applications, to change how employees do their jobs everyday.

“Your people walk out the door every night, and you hope they come back the next day. So I think … spinning the digital-transformation story into more of an employee enablement and engagement story is pretty powerful,” said Jeff Frick, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio.

One way to make employees’ lives easier is to help them accomplish more with fewer open tabs.

Frick joined co-host Rebecca Knight during the Smartsheet ENGAGE event in Seattle, Washington to discuss the need to simplify and condense worker-experience software (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

DevOps for business departments

Integration is a powerful means to bring many indispensable apps or features into a single space. Smartsheet Inc. — makers of collaboration and work-management software — is known for integrating with Slack for instant alerts, among other messaging applications/platforms. Smartsheet seems to have a knack for fixing small but annoying snafus in the work space, according to Knight.

“You can slowly chip away at those impediments and the … aggravations that people feel — I think that’s not a bad business model,” Knight said. 

A single landing space is the Holy Grail of companies in the employee-experience market. Workers engage with their companies — and with one another — through applications. Having the whole company in the same room collaborating is better than having them on a dozen little islands. Knocking out walls to enable instant sharing may boost productivity, efficiency and innovation. Alongside software that accomplishes this, we may start seeing a cultural shift, according to Frick.

Department silos may be broken and turned into an agile DevOps-like chain. “We’ll see how that that impacts organizational structure,” he said. 

Here’s the complete video analysis, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Smartsheet ENGAGE. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Smartsheet ENGAGE event. Neither Smartsheet Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Smartsheet