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17/03/2022
Magazine

Choosing a Digital Workspace: what are the criteria to rely on

Magazine

Choosing the Digital Workspace that offers the most guarantees based on your company’s needs is not easy. It’s like choosing business insurances, operating lease companies or financial partners: possible solutions are wide and varied. Therefore, we have decided to suggest some criteria to take into account when selecting a digital workspace for your company.

Digital Workspaces are increasingly widespread and represent an element of strength, competitiveness and efficiency. Their value in terms of involvement and satisfaction of the company’s people is also well known, with a consequent increase in the attractiveness of talent and productivity of the workforce. 

On the other hand, identifying the best digital workspace for your company is by no means simple: the market offers many different solutions. And, among them, there are many valid and reliable ones. Some of them are offered by well-known brands, often producers of “wide-ranging” IT solutions, and others belong to companies that operate in more circumscribed fields with specialized and targeted skills.

In this article, we will try to indicate what, in our opinion, are the priority criteria to be taken into account when making an initial selection of potential Digital Workspaces and want this selection to be the most correct and suitable for our needs.

1) The first criterion: ease of use.

A Digital Workspace is a collaborative workspace that gives its users all the information, files, applications, tools and resources they need to do their jobs efficiently and collaborate effectively with colleagues and managers, at any time, from anywhere and on any device. If we keep in mind that what has just been expressed is a portrait of what a digital workspace must offer, then it is clear that it is a complex tool but that users must be able to use it with ease. Otherwise, any benefit is damaged or erased.

A Digital Workspace is used by people in the company every day, with high frequency, in many of their daily activities and therefore must ensure specific characteristics.

(a) Easy adoption of the Digital Workspace.

While the benefits of digital workspaces are well known, it is also clear that the adoption of these tools involves a change in the firm’s operational procedures and organizational patterns. That is why, beyond the necessary training in the use of technology linked to these tools, the choice of a Digital Workspace must consider the ease of approach by users (facilitated, for example, by a conversational interface).

(b) Easy entry into the workspace and access to all tools.

It is crucial to be able to access the interface easily, quickly, at any time and from different devices, having all the applications at hand, without having to enter login credentials repeatedly, and being able to share information and data with other team members naturally and intuitively.

(c) Easy task execution.

The Digital Workspace is an ally in the user’s daily operational activities, also a collaborative tool. It must guarantee a simplification of teamwork, optimizing flows, automating processes, and immediately identifying and sharing information and documents.

(d) Easy management of procedures.

The tools with which a digital workspace is provided must also ensure efficient and rapid procedures that enable tasks to be managed effectively, progress to be tracked, and approvals and feedback to be managed. That makes work-sharing and team activity more productive and organized.

If you want to address the need for easy-to-use Digital Workspaces, it is helpful to look at two elements that serve to facilitate the intuitive, everyday use of this powerful tool:  

  • Conversational User Interfaces (CUI): thanks to the use of advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence and voice assistants, these interfaces can guide or accompany the user in the use of the workspace itself and of the individual tools it offers through authentic automated dialogues that support those who are using the Digital Workspace with precise and relevant answers, also improving the user experience.
  • Digital Virtual Assistants: these are real digital assistants, which exist in two types: 
    • rule-based, helpful especially when the need is to indicate precise and delimited actions to the user.
    • based on Artificial Intelligence, which processes and simulates conversations in a fluid and natural way, analyzing the user’s request and guiding him, carrying out part of the processes, speeding up and optimizing the workflow.

Evolved Virtual Assistants use A.I. to learn from the requests received from their users, thus becoming more and more efficient: they can analyze and understand the context and the need behind the questions, even complex or structured ones, providing a targeted, constant and personalized support. Not only do virtual assistants simplify the use of Digital Workspaces, but their use itself is simple: one can converse with a Digital Virtual Assistant in natural language, using a written form or conversing by voice. 

2) The second criterion: the possibility of customization.

As we said, there are many Digital Workspaces, but there are certainly even more companies. And each company, regardless of its sector and size, is similar and, at the same time, different from the others. In the same way, its operational needs, strategies, procedures and even ambitions are similar but also different. Another criterion for selecting potential Digital Workspaces is flexibility, meaning the possibility to customize the tools of the digital workspace to meet the specific needs of that company, enhancing its operations and productivity. 

The elements that can be customized in a Digital Workspace can be different, among them: 

  • user profiles and permissions. 
  • devices from which to access.
  • the available tools.
  • manageable automation. 
  • communication and sharing tools.

The Digital Workspace, as a business tool, must be able to interact optimally and securely with the company’s other IT and technological resources, software and hardware. 

When choosing a Digital Workspace, it is, therefore, advisable to evaluate and ask which features of the tool can be adapted for use in your company, based on the problems you want to solve, the procedures you plan to make more efficient, the results you want to achieve. That is why the Digital Workspace provider needs to offer a targeted and preventive consultation, which allows them to frame the impact that their specific digital workspace, with the necessary customizations, can guarantee the company.

3) The third criterion: security.

When it comes to shared data and related tools, as in the case of Digital Workspaces, it is clear that security occupies a prominent place among the requirements. The concept of security as applied to digital workspaces should be considered from several perspectives.

(a) Security within the Digital Workspace.

As we have said, the digital workspace contains not only the modules that users need to use for their tasks but the entire wealth of company information needed by the individual user, the workgroup and, perhaps, even external experts or technicians to make operations more efficient. Everything within the Digital Workspace needs to be available to those who need it and reliably guarded. 

(b) Security outside the Digital Workspace.

A Digital Workspace is not a closed, self-referenced system. As we have said, it must be able to communicate with the company’s other IT tools and, at the same time, it must be able to send and collect data towards other hardware and software resources. What’s more, it must work accurately and efficiently on devices of different brands and types, both those of the company and those of the users. So it’s easy to imagine the amount of access and information coming in and out of a digital workspace. For this reason, the connection and interaction methods used by the Digital Workspace must ensure maximum inviolability.

In addition to practices that regulate access, for example, by assigning different privileges to users and allowing them to use only the areas and tools of the digital workspace they are responsible for, there are many technologies applied to Digital Workspace security that have been designed and tested to provide security, prevent vulnerability and reduce the risk of the data breach

Therefore, it is important to check with the Digital Workspace vendor about the technologies and systems used to provide the necessary security in the various areas of use of this tool.

The first step in choosing the best Digital Workspace for your business.

In addition to the criteria for judging a Digital Workspace that we have suggested in this article, the first fundamental step to choosing well is to thoroughly understand your needs and goals, identifying what contribution the digital workspace will be able to offer. What are the processes that can be improved? What procedures can be made more efficient? In what tasks can the workforce be supported effectively?

Of course, to find the most comprehensive answer to these questions, the advice of someone who knows the potential of their own Digital Workspace is invaluable, who can assess the possible benefits and bring examples of results achieved through successful use cases. 

Request a consultation to understand better how our Digital Workspace can increase your company’s competitiveness: click to request a consultation.

Or request a demo in which one of our experts will guide you to discover the features and benefits offered by Keethings: click to request a personal demo.

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