Workplace Optimization in the times of Covid-19

805 views

April 20, 2020

Amidst the growing cases of Covid-19, organizations around the globe continue to enable more employees to work from home which has been made possible by a commendable job done by IT, HR, Risk and Compliance, Admin, and Delivery teams who are working tirelessly behind the scenes.

The coerced movement toward remote working setups did not permit further advances to be made in due time. While working from home is the need of the hour, shifting to a work-from-home culture, especially during a time of crisis, brings unique challenges for all the parties involved. While the enterprises will be focused on making the remote working enablement infrastructure more agile, adaptive, and scalable, the employees are likely to face a variety of issues as well.

Many enterprises have enabled their workforce with mobility-focused devices and workplace services that work towards helping retain productivity even through extended periods of remote work. Irrespective of the location of use, these machines are still prone to the usual issues like slow PCs and browsers, lapses in internet connection, difficulty in searching some plugin, application crashes, and so on.

The habits of reaching out to the IT team for every minute issue is no longer an option in the current scenario as the service desks are overloaded due to resource crunch and increased number of requests as most of the workforce is in unchartered waters. This may arise as a major hurdle toward attaining a target state of effectively and productively working from home.

Thus, investing in digital workplace services and tools that allow the end user environment to be better managed would significantly reduce IT costs and enhance end user experience. Unfortunately, most enterprise end user enablement solutions fail to provide a unified and seamless experience while using machines and only offer loosely coupled automation for remediation of issues.

DRYiCE OptiBot is an employee enablement and workplace optimization software, which focuses on enhancing user experience (UX), thereby making work life simpler while reducing the burden on IT. OptiBot minimizes calls to the IT support function by pre-emptively resolving various commonly occurring system or application issues through unassisted automation using the “Sense Heal” mechanism.

OptiBot consists of four discrete bundled with a targeted Behavior Change Management program designed and developed for millennials to improve their efficiency, adoption rate, and overall workplace satisfaction. These four stations of the OptiBot framework are:

  • Healing Station: A solution which brings in self-healing capabilities and acts as a do-it-yourself tool that automates routine computer maintenance
  • Reset Station: A solution that allows an end user to self-reset his password remotely from a web browser without calling the help desk
  • Live Station: The ability for the end user to chat with a service desk agent if the organization has enabled chat as a support channel
  • Knowledge Station: An enterprise knowledge repository from where users can request any self-help article which empowers users to address their most common issues themselves

Business Benefits

  • Enhanced end user experience and productivity
  • Process automation for operational efficiency
  • Cost savings on IT support
  • Intuitive and user-friendly interface 
  • One-stop-shop for all employee IT needs so that the user need not go anywhere
     

The Covid-19 pandemic will have short and long-term implications in the way we work. Looking at the overall picture of the current state of events, ensuring a properly functioning end point device with minimal issues and downtime can go a long way. With employees trying to cope with other factors like staying motivated, adapting to newer ways of working, and constant distractions, among others, a consistently positive UX is the least that enterprises can ensure for their remote workforce while expecting to uphold productivity and business continuity.

Aparna Laddha

Aparna Laddha, Product Manager, DRYiCE OptiBot

Aparna Laddha is the Product Manager in the Digital Workplace Business Unit. With more than 3 years of industry experience, her areas of expertise include new proposition development with market leading vendors across various technologies and also working closely with partners to create "Go to Market" strategy and tailor made offerings for client specific needs in Workplace Services domain. Aparna is also responsible for end to end development and management of DRYiCE OptiBot product.