By Alexandra Lilienthal
The digital workspace is central to the way we will work in the future, empowering transformation and business growth. One of the biggest factors that contribute to business success is collaboration—and the more connected we get the more important it will become. Collaboration enables teams to be more efficient and effective, fueling innovation and increasing productivity.
The digital workspace has already arrived. Employees want the same from their office applications as those they use in their personal lives. A seamless and intuitive user experience regardless of what device is being used. A well planned digital workplace is flexible, agile and capable of transforming processes, allowing knowledge workers to focus on higher value tasks.
The digital workplace enables people to carry out their jobs by efficiently connecting and communicating with others, regardless of time zones or borders. It enables knowledge to be shared across the organization and in some cases with external partners. The effective use of these tools and technologies is underpinned with the appropriate governance and security policies.
The digital workspace, however, isn’t just about technology. It is also very much about people. This requires a shift in thinking. The organization needs to drive the digital workplace strategy. How the digital workspace is perceived and used in any organization will dictate its success or failure.
In a truly progressive digital workspace, employees are engaged, productive and mobile, able to access information when and where they need it for informed decision making.
To build an effective digital workspace you need to put together a carefully thought out strategy, aligned with your work culture. Pivotal to this is seamless, integrated and intuitive collaboration, enabling employees to dip into the knowledge base as required or call on experts for advice on a project, for example.
As the digital workspace evolves, business will see the value in providing tools that connect organizations and provide important insight. We will see changes in the way knowledge workers access, consume and even create information. It will be much easier to distribute content enterprise wide, as well as to external partners and stakeholders.
The Digital Workspace: the New Value of Data
An enterprise’s data is now seen as one of its most valuable assets. However, this data has to be properly managed, updated, and enhanced to actually make it useful. This is why data management is now a board room issue.
The insight that can be harvested from accurate and timely data can provide enterprises with a competitive edge, such as targeting customers with the right offers or brand messages, for example.
The digital workplace is paramount in getting this data out to the right people where it can be used effectively. This requires the right collaboration tools to build a more skilled and engaged workforce.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
We are on the cusp of Industry 4.0, which will dramatically change the way that enterprises look at their data.
Industry 4.0 is the next major move in automation and data exchange. Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, big data analytics and predictive models will change the industrial landscape, speeding up and streamlining processes leading to significant cost reductions. Systems will become more connected, exchanging more information. Smart devices will talk to each other. This enables better resource management and allow for predictive maintenance, for example.
Manufacturing will become smarter and increasingly automated, agile enough to deal with rapid changes in market demands, such as spikes in the weather. This will alter the way machines and workers interact. Technology will co-exist alongside a human workforce, augmenting and complimenting their labor efforts.
Data management will be critical in managing the increasingly large amount of data the industry is churning out. This will demand a data strategy with a far more collaborative approach.
Data Flow
Context is essential to data management, so that knowledge workers can quickly find the information they want, when they need it. Solutions such as SER’s Doxis4 allow organizations to conveniently pull data together and make it available according to context.
In manufacturing there are any number of machine and system lifecycle files and documents stored in a single source of the truth. These may be stored with other data such as maintenance logs and customer correspondence from other solutions such as office application suites, enterprise resource planning, and electronic computer-aided design.
Documents held in these electronic files can easily be accessed via context, such as customer name, which dramatically speeds up the likes of customer queries and invoice checking. It also allows data to be shared with other parties for informed decision making.
Without context, data can be difficult to find and insights inaccurate. Good, solid context extracted from data through the digital workspace drives business decisions forward.
In today’s fast paced business arena, collaboration has never been more important. Effective collaboration is the only way a business can truly transform.
Based in Berlin, Alexandra Lilienthal heads the international communication team of Global ECM vendor SER Group. Contact Lilienthal at alexandra.lilienthal@ser.de.
Oct2018, Software Magazine
