Exoprise, a leader in digital experience monitoring (DEM) solutions, announced the findings of its latest research survey, which identifies the role of IT in shaping digital employee experience (DEX) for a hybrid working environment. In the recent partner survey, which covered more than 2,000 digital workplace employees and 1,000 IT decision-makers (ITDM) in Northern America, Exoprise found that enterprises still struggle to manage a work-from-anywhere (WFA) audience and deliver a positive digital experience.
Critically, 70 percent of IT leaders that responded believe DEX needs to be prioritized in 2023. Otherwise, they risk falling behind their competitors. The report also found that unreliable IT equipment and services were the second most important factor behind employee burnout and turnover. Additionally, 15 percent of employees would leave their jobs due to poor experience with everyday productivity tools like Microsoft 365, Salesforce and more. Finally, an astounding 90 percent of knowledge workers continually face technical and remote network problems, whether from home, in the office or in-between, which hurts productivity, introduces delays and reduces satisfaction.
“Today’s companies are at an interesting juncture where collaboration between IT and business leaders has grown like never before,” said Jason Lieblich, Exoprise CEO. “The reliance on digital tools and real-time collaboration continues unabated with increased support demand, expectations, and cost. Our research shows that despite the possibility of tightened tech spending next year, corporations will have to invest in DEM solutions like Exoprise Service Watch and doing so will have a positive return-on-investment.”
Additional key findings from the research include:
Endpoint Device Issues Impair Digital Experience – Because of COVID-19, digital work shifted to the home office. According to the 2022 statistics, about 40 million Americans depend on their laptops for daily job activities. Research showed that virtually all knowledge workers in the United States want a better experience with their technology usage. As a result, IT needs to optimize an employee’s world by keeping the remote endpoint in mind and offering a better root cause analysis effort. The results also showed that older monitoring tools do not fit with the overall goals of a WFA enterprise.
Seamless Network Connectivity Matters – In an era where employees need flexibility and work from home, digital friction has remained prevalent. Problem areas include dropped calls from platforms like Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Cisco Webex, slow page loading, application crashes, unresponsive endpoint devices and more. Seventy-five percent of respondents indicated that slow network response time and unpredictable application performance were the biggest impediments to productivity. These disruptions tend to occur several times a week if not captured, diagnosed and resolved in a timely manner.
Resolution Times Range from Hours, Days to Weeks – Lack of application and network visibility increases employee frustration and inhibits business growth. Almost half of the survey respondents indicated their devices operated more slowly outside the company’s network, affecting their productivity and engagement levels. Most of these respondents either try to solve problems of inferior performance by themselves or get validation from their co-workers. Only a few (12 percent) indicated they escalated to the helpdesk or submitted tickets. That number is low because the problems go unfixed or take longer to resolve, sometimes days or weeks, with a lack of resolution.
Confusion Over DEX Responsibility – Although organizations have started to invest in DEX/DEM solutions internal employees are not clear who is responsible for implementation and service-level agreements. A quarter of employees feel that IT is involved in creating a better digital experience, while the rest feel a new team outside of IT is doing so. Three-quarters of ITDM believe it is their team that must support a hybrid workforce facing day-to-day technological challenges.
For more information, visit Exoprise at www.exoprise.com