Executive Summary
The role of enterprise service management technology has
changed. For many years, the focus has been on improving
IT efficiency through process automation and industrialized
IT. While this approach has many benefits, it doesn’t go far
enough to address the needs of the modern digital business.
Productivity is the new measure of success.
Optimum enterprise productivity relies on an empowered
workforce, enabled by transformative technology to help
people work smarter, faster, and more easily. It is the
intersection of people and technology. Engaging, intuitive
user experiences define the success of this intersection.
To support this way of thinking, it is imperative that service
management functions embrace a set of tools that empower
the workforce on both sides of the service desk and drive
new levels of productivity.
• Full mobility – With more mobile devices than people on the
planet and increasingly mobile workforces, it’s essential to
equip the workforce with the full power of the service desk
on every device.
• Consumerized self-service – Business users demand an
intuitive, engaging self-service experience that improves the
way they work.
• Embedded social – Social collaboration and crowdsourcing
capabilities must be embedded within standard workflows to
maximize adoption and harness the power of the crowd.
• People centric – The user experience should be focused on
empowering people, keeping process enforcement behind
the scenes.
The result is a modern approach to service management that
can make both business users and IT more productive.
This white paper discusses four key elements for
modernizing service management through engaging
user experiences, including:
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1
THE MILLENNIAL EFFECT
By 2020, millennials (those born after 1980) will account for 50 percent of the workforce and by 2025, they will comprise 75
percent1. This generation has grown up with the Internet, smartphones, social networks, immediate feedback, and exceptional
levels of service. Consumer IT has been outpacing enterprise IT for a decade now. The technology from many of the world’s
largest enterprises typically affords employees less productivity than the technology available to employees in their
personal life. Many millennials are shocked to find out just how large the gap is when they enter the workplace.
The millennial effect is helping fuel the rise of digital workplace initiatives in the enterprise. More than just virtualization and
bring-your-own-device (BYOD) strategies, many digital workplace initiatives now span social, collaboration, app store, chat,
digital marketplace, and smart office capabilities. The modern service management function should be equipped to drive and
unify these requirements.
Growth of Millennials in the Workforce
50%
75%
2020
2025
MOBILE DEVICES DRIVE INNOVATION
Today, there are more mobile connected-devices in the world than there are people2. Mobilizing employees has created
radical new ways for professionals to work:
• Field engineers always have access to the latest data
• In-store customer support agents can walk the floor and are no longer constrained to kiosks
• Business users can make service requests from anywhere, at any time
• Service desk agents can work remotely
But the impact of mobile devices has been far more extensive than pure mobility. Smartphones and tablets have inspired
revolutionary new ways for people to interact with applications. Formless, touch-screen interfaces have replaced the traditional
form-based data input screens of yesteryear; built-in cameras let users add photos to applications; GPS makes applications
location-aware; voice recognition allows hands-free typing; and the list goes on.
The pace of innovation for mobile apps has fueled the consumer IT market and forced developers to compete for users’
attention. The best user experience typically emerges as the victor. While the enterprise may have been watching patiently from
the sidelines, it’s now time for enterprise IT and consumer IT to converge.
One area of service management that has already embraced many consumer IT trends is self-service. Service desks have
provided self-service capabilities for many years but enterprises have historically been littered with unrealized business cases
that failed to significantly drive down calls to the service desk. For occasional self-service users, the old-style experience of
logging on to the intranet, navigating through screens, and trying to find solutions through form- and list-based user interfaces
was not only unintuitive but far more laborious than sending an email or making a call. Mobile applications have revolutionized
self-service by giving users a modern, engaging experience that helps them to help themselves quickly and easily.
1
How Millennials Could Upend Wall Street and Corporate America, Brookings Institute, May 2014.
2
Number of Mobile Devices Surpasses World Population, The Business Journals, October 2014.
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