A true digital workplace goes beyond fancy pantries or biometric security systems. It enables users to share data safely and securely across multiple devices, as well as to automate workflows and processes to bring faster returns on investment. But this is only achievable with a flexible and scalable IT infrastructure that is customized to the specific business needs of an organization. The good news is that now, more than ever before, this infrastructure is much easier to build.

To help businesses to embark on this journey, we suggest five simple steps (see graphic) that marry people, technology and processes.

The first step would be for businesses to understand their business needs and review their IT infrastructure and system to ensure its agility and flexibility in this fast-changing digital workplace. One way to achieve that is to develop an IT roadmap as part of their long-term business strategy. Apart from its IT infrastructure, conceptualizing data and application architecture is another major piece in the formula to enable data availability to support the transforming business environment. The next step is to actualize these plans by implementing selected solutions, while bracing for the organizational and technological shift that follows. Lastly, businesses should also continuously monitor the performance of the solutions against premeditated KPIs, and review the workplace to ensure they are consistent with the requirements of the business.

Working with a wide range of industries, we have seen sectors across the region such as education and logistics benefitting the most from digital workplace transformation. Digitization in schools brings significant increases in student engagement. A recent collaboration with a local institute of higher learning saw us implementing a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). It was managed and hosted over a cloud environment to optimize management, control and support. The solution provides a cost-effective and flexible model for the education institute via a pay-as-you-use model.

We are also seeing cloud-based platforms revolutionizing the logistics and supply-chain industries by streamlining inventory management and communications.

With technologies like automation, AI, VDI and cloud computing maturing in recent years, this spells opportunities for the workplace to undergo digitization for achieving tangible benefits such as boosted productivity and efficiency. In order to unlock these benefits, businesses need to prioritize their pain points and identify the right solutions that best help them. To compete in the age of automation, the time to start your digital workplace journey is indeed now.