Digital Workplace: Trends, challenges and procedures

In many industries, the IT workplace is the access point for almost all company employees in their daily work. That is why companies need to offer a modern working environment that meets increasingly complex technological and IT security-related requirements.
Intero Consulting has been supporting various clients in all phases of different workplace projects for years - the following section presents the most important findings, best practices and current market trends.

An IT workstation is equipped with the necessary technical and digital resources to perform IT-related work processes. The main components are

1. Hardware: Computers, storage solutions, peripheral devices (including monitors, headsets, keyboards, printers).
2. Software: Operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux), application software (e.g. core business applications, development environments, office programs), communication & collaboration software (e.g. e-mail, video conferencing, telephony).
3. Network access: Internet connection, intranet, VPN.
4. Security: Antivirus and anti-malware software, firewalls, encryption, access controls.
5. Working environment: Ergonomic office furniture, good lighting and air conditioning.
6. Support and maintenance: IT support - remote and on-site -, regular updates and maintenance.

A well-equipped workplace increases efficiency and productivity across almost the entire value chain.

A change to the existing workplace concept may be necessary for a wide variety of reasons. As a result of the Covid-19-crisis new work models are no longer just options, but are decisive factors for many employees when choosing their employer. The IT workplace must also be correspondingly future-proof and flexible, which in turn places new demands on workplace managers in their day-to-day work.

Trends such as work-from-anywhere, bring-your-own-device (BYOD), shared desk and home office must be given a foundation. The increasing trend of moving software and infrastructure to the cloud requires solutions to be rethought. This is accompanied by the trend that more and more solutions are no longer offered on-premise, but are only available as cloud solutions. Finally, economic reasons also play a role - scalability, near- or offshoring or a change of provider. Last but not least, security and regulation are also increasingly driving the change.

When designing the IT workplace, companies can choose from a wide variety of operating models and their gradations. For example, it is possible to provide everything in their own data center and in-house operation, as well as to use the majority of the workplace as a managed service to a cloud-based provider with offshoring solutions (depending on the industry, the extensive regulatory requirements must be observed here).

The following table provides an overview of the various dimensions that need to be considered:

When redesigning or even just modernizing the IT workplace, managers regularly face extensive and diverse challenges. A selection includes the following topics:

• High visibility: workplace issues usually affect a large proportion of the workforce - including (top) management. A visible change that does not work right away can hinder everyone's work and quickly lead to significant reactions.
• Dependencies: The IT workplace is often interwoven with an organically grown IT infrastructure and application landscape based on long-standing interfaces. Changes can sometimes have effects that are difficult to predict.
• Responsibilities and size: In a complex environment with many stakeholders, it is not always easy to identify the right contact persons. This results in complex projects with a large number of stakeholders and even more interested parties.
• Collaboration with service providers: Particularly in cases where all or part of the workplace is outsourced, complex project management with many internal resources and (at least) one service provider is required. Especially when one service provider is replaced by another, this can lead to increased friction losses
• Scarcity of resources: as in many areas of IT, resources in the IT workplace environment are often very well utilized with their respective line activities. Additional workloads caused by large change projects are therefore not always a welcome topic.

Thanks to our many years of project experience in a wide range of workplace projects, we can provide our customers with comprehensive support. End-to-end projects in the workplace sector are often divided into four (three) phases:

• Conceptualization:
  The first step is to examine which changes are to be made, how feasible they are and what they will cost.
  Intero Consulting provides support here in addition to holistic project management (read more about this in our blog article), for example in the creation of business cases. In addition, such projects require the extensive involvement of various stakeholders, from technical specialists to (top) management. Thanks to many years of experience in comparable projects, Intero Consulting helps to identify dependencies and risks at an early stage and to find mitigation options.
• Invitation to tender:
  Especially when it comes to outsourcing significant parts or even the entire workplace, a tender is often necessary. With the experience of our Competence Center Purchasing, we can provide competent support both in the preparation of documents and in the selection of suppliers (read our blog article on IT outsourcing).
• Implementation:
  Whether after a tender or directly after conception - changes must also be implemented. Particularly in regulated environments such as banks and insurance companies, extensive industry experience helps to identify potential (regulatory) pitfalls and address them in good time. With the content-related experience from our various Competence Centers, we can also support the implementation of new accounting logic, as well as the transformation through change management and agile methods. Of course, we also use all common (customer) tools such as Jira.
• Handover to the line: 
  The project phase is followed by the productive name and the handover to the line. Here it is crucial to document the changes properly and to enable the new content owners so that the implementation also leads to the desired result.