If we can track our lunch deliveries down to the minute and pick up online orders at the store in a matter of hours – why should it be difficult for your workforce to get what they need from IT, or time consuming for IT to provide it?
The answer, of course, is that it shouldn’t be. If your IT department isn’t delivering this level of service, that doesn’t mean the restaurant down the street has better IT. They’re just delivering a better experience using the resources and technology available to them.
Instead of handling endless phone calls for the same requests – placing orders, requesting customization, asking what’s on the menu – everything is within reach from an online app or portal and their staff is free to take care of other business needs.
The situation is similar in a traditional IT environment. Your technical staff is busy with repetitive requests. Employees may not even know what services are available to help them succeed, or they may simply view IT as a repair shop. Overall, you are neither getting the most value from your IT department, nor providing the best experience for employees.
With the right approach you can provide a customized, consumer-grade experience that is easy for employees to use, drives adoption of IT standards and reduces phone calls and support costs — freeing up IT to innovate and add more value to your organization. Here’s how:
Use a Self-service Marketplace to Handle Day-to-day Requests
Think about the process you go through to order lunch online. You open a food delivery app or the restaurant’s website and it’s easy to find what you want. Hungry for a sandwich? That section of the menu is a click away and your options are clear.
A self-service IT marketplace works the same way, acting as a digital storefront for IT that makes it simple for employees to find what they need and get on with their day. Everything from ordering a replacement laptop to requesting developer resources, software licenses, tutorials and more are easily accessible from a “shoppable” interface.
Most of the time, employees can find what they need anytime they need it without involving an IT professional, but when direct assistance is needed, requesting help is simple via the same interface.
This approach alleviates many of the day-to-day IT requests, but a digital IT marketplace alone isn’t enough. It takes automation and personalization to get the most value from your digital services management toolset.
Let Automation Do the Heavy Lifting
If your self-service marketplace is the storefront, automation is the fulfillment engine. Just as your takeout order is automatically routed to the right places (sandwich order is sent to the kitchen, drink order to the front counter), automation combines repeatable tasks and company policies to drive end-to-end resolution of IT requests.
For example, if an employee needs a replacement laptop, they can simply log in to the marketplace and “shop” the hardware or bundles available to them. Since IT can define equipment parameters based on personas or roles, employees will only see options that are tailored to help them get their job done efficiently.
Would you like fries with that? Automation also helps predict additional resources that may enhance the request, like a docking station or an extra power cord while traveling.
Based on your company policies, automated workflows can handle approvals of standard requests and move them directly to fulfillment. Exceptions that need review can automatically route appropriately. With this process, IT benefits from an efficient balance between role-based enablement and cost control, and employees can easily locate order status and tracking information.
The same process can be applied to software license requests or developers needing virtual machines, containers, or additional development environments.
Personalize the IT Experience for Enhanced Utilization
When an online storefront lets you customize your order, remembers your past purchases and makes recommendations that you actually want, aren’t you more likely to return? In the same way, personalization plays a key role in ensuring employees have a great experience with IT services, devices, applications and infrastructure.
Personalization also allows IT spending to be optimized by role, and when combined with key integrations you can facilitate frictionless workflows for procurement, data ingestion and more to further optimize the support and device lifecycle experience for both IT and employees.
Optimize IT Operations and Experiences with Strategic Integrations
Beyond personalization, strategic integrations add a little magic to the support experience for users and IT professionals. Consider integrating platforms like Dell Premier for optimizing procurement workflows and Tech Direct for modern PC management.
In addition, third-party integrations enable a multi-channel experience, making your self-service marketplace available directly within the tools your employees use the most. For example, integrating with Microsoft 365 or Teams provides your workforce with a familiar interface to easily locate the resources, applications, devices and support they need to get work done.
Empower Your Workforce with Consumer-grade Experiences
From ordering a sandwich to replacing a broken peripheral – tailored, automated digital experiences have never been more important, nor more attainable. With the right technology, tools and processes you can increase workforce productivity, IT efficiency and worker satisfaction while providing the consumer-grade experience we’ve all come to expect from our technology interactions.
Please reach out to a sales specialist to discover how Dell Technologies can help you implement the right combination of Digital Services Management technology, Workforce Personas, automation and proven processes to accelerate your next generation IT marketplace.
