Gartner projects that businesses will spend $61.5B on mobile devices in 2024, up 1.4% from 2023, according to Gartner Market Data Book 1Q24. Gartner also projects that companies will purchase 155 million mobile devices, including phones and tablets, for their workforce in 2024.

The scary part about Mobile DEX

Digital Employee Experience Management, or DEX, is a hot topic right now. Every observability vendor touts their abilities to gather telemetry on device and application performance and usage, associate that with employee sentiment and organizational context, and then employ AI or ML techniques to proactively identify and resolve employee issues, while providing insights into better performance and changes in behavior.

Here’s the thing: most of these vendors are focused on ensuring excellent DEX for employees who use laptops, PCs, or thin-client devices. They don’t have the ability to ensure a positive Mobile DEX. With 155 million mobile devices in use, that’s a pretty sizeable blind spot. Especially since these mobile users are the point people–they’re the ones interacting directly with customers or patients or citizens. So, if IT lacks visibility into their Mobile DEX, they really have no idea of whether issues are affecting revenue, productivity, satisfaction, or even healthcare outcomes.

Mobile DEX for corporate-owned Android and iOS devices

For front-line workers and other employees who rely on mobile devices for their jobs, poor digital experience negatively affects productivity and customer service. IT is responsible for the digital experience of these employees, just as they are for employees who use laptops and PCs, but they lack visibility to proactively identify and resolve issues affecting the full range of mobile apps and devices used by the workforce.

Solving key challenges in assuring mobile digital experience

Riverbed’s Mobile DEX solution, Aternity Mobile, enables IT teams to proactively identify digital experience issues on Android and iOS mobile apps and devices and take prescriptive, targeted actions, improving employee productivity, customer service and business results. Aternity Mobile provides a comprehensive view of mobile app and device performance across Android and iOS for multiple vendors and enables IT to improve employee experience by engaging with them to get feedback and send contextual help.

Only Aternity, the digital experience solution of the Riverbed Platform for unified observability and optimization, provides a cohesive view of digital employee experience throughout their day, even as they switch between devices. Watch this video to see how it works:

Riverbed fills the Mobile DEX gap

Mobile DEX is a gap that most management solutions don’t address. Enterprise Mobility Management solutions don’t provide enough visibility into actual app and device performance. They can tell which mobile apps have been deployed to mobile devices, but they can’t see their performance. They know the device specifications, but they can’t do detailed device or network monitoring. Agent-based DEX solutions can’t instrument Android or iOS apps, so traditional DEX vendors can’t understand the performance of the majority of mobile devices being used–only Windows devices. And mobile SDKs can only monitor native mobile apps owned by the organization. Vendors of specialized mobile devices, like Zebra, have some mobile DEX capabilities, but only for their mobile devices, not others.

Proactively identify and resolve mobile issues

Aternity Mobile gathers more than 150 metrics on mobile device, app and network performance that enable IT to proactively identify and resolve digital experience issues. Unlike other solutions, Aternity gathers this performance data across Android and iOS for multiple device vendors, including rugged mobile devices and free-standing mobile kiosks.

With Aternity Mobile, IT can identify problems with hardware and battery health, device configuration or network connection and proactively take action to improve employee productivity and customer service.

Detect and resolve individual device issues

With Aternity Mobile, IT can drill down into a specific user’s device to identify and resolve issues affecting productivity. Aternity Mobile enables IT to analyze device health metrics such as storage, RAM, CPU and battery strength and drain rate. It also provides telemetry on signal strength and health of Wi-Fi and cellular networks used by the employee. Analyzing usage patterns of apps and websites enables IT to ensure compliance with corporate usage policies.

Monitor mobile app performance to ensure employee productivity

Aternity Mobile also monitors usage and crashes for every corporate mobile app used by the workforce. Aternity provides detailed information such as the traffic generated by each app, the start and stop time of the app, and the domains the users were accessing with their mobile device, to ensure the mobile device is being used only for company-approved apps. This provides IT with deep insight into how mobile app performance and usage affects productivity and security.

Improve employee engagement with bi-directional communication 

With Aternity Mobile, IT can send contextual and personalized information to employee mobile devices to gather feedback on service quality issues and to provide guidance on ways employees can improve their mobile app and device performance. Aternity Mobile enables IT to proactively inform users of outages, provide information upon app installation/first use, or based on user location, and send warnings when corporate policy usage limits are about to be reached.

Learn more

Now with Mobile DEX, Aternity is the only digital employee experience solution that provides a unified view of actual employee experience, for every enterprise app running on any type of device – laptops, PCs, virtual and mobile–for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and Chromebook. With Aternity, digital workplace leaders gain insights into the digital experience of their entire workforce, no matter where they work, to ensure employees are productive and engaged.

To learn more about Aternity, please visit: riverbed.com/aternity-mobile

Or better yet, watch the replay of our Global Webcast where we cover this, along with other new capabilities from our recent product launch.

In the current landscape, delivering an excellent digital employee experience (DEX) is more important than ever. DEX plays a critical role in an organization’s day-to-day operations, and enterprises must invest in this area as a key business strategy. In fact, outdated technology, a driving factor of poor DEX, is costing American organizations over a trillion dollars in lost productivity.

While the case for improving an organization’s DEX is clear, it’s often an uphill battle. Digital infrastructures and tech stacks are more complex with hybrid workforces, combinations of cloud and on-prem services, and a mix of modern and legacy technology. Companies must also navigate the higher digital expectations of the next generation workforce. This shift has essentially led to chief information officers (CIOs) playing a key role in talent management and retention too, a reflection of the growing importance of IT departments in business innovation.

In the Riverbed Global Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Survey 2023, Riverbed polled over 1,800 global IT and business decision-makers to better understand generational expectations for the digital experience and obstacles and strategies in delivering an outstanding DEX. Let’s examine the key findings:

Digital experience expectations are higher for Millennials and Gen Z

The DEX survey found that 91% of decision-makers believe they’ll need to provide more advanced digital experiences to meet the needs of younger employees, and 89% say younger employees place increased pressure on IT resources. Failure to meet the DEX needs of younger generations can result in business disruption or reputation damage according to 63% of those surveyed. Additionally, leaders say that if digital experience demands of Millennial and Gen Z employees are not met, 68% would consider leaving a company.

Delivering a better digital experience is getting harder

Almost unanimously, 95% of surveyed decision-makers identified at least one major obstacle to delivering a seamless DEX. While no two companies are the same, the survey results revealed that most companies are struggling with five common issues:

• Budget constraints—36% 
• Talent shortages—35% 
• Inadequate observability tools—29% 
• Lack of suitable cloud services and SaaS applications—29% 
• Too much data—28% 

There is an interesting intersection in these issues. We found that 86% of survey respondents believe unified observability tools and automation can help bridge their skills gap. However, many decision-makers identified inadequate observability tools and budget constraints as obstacles. This could indicate that companies need to find a way to optimize their investments and prioritize initiatives that significantly impact DEX, like adopting more comprehensive unified observability solutions.

IT is pushing business innovation forward

Increasingly, organizations are acknowledging the importance of consulting with their IT departments; over 80% of ITDMs surveyed said they have a seat at their organization’s C-suite table. Much of this move to center IT departments can be traced back to the COVID-19 pandemic when organizations shifting to hybrid work modes quickly realized how critical the IT perspective is in day-to-day business decisions and the ongoing development of strategy.

Companies increasingly relying upon the skills and expertise of their IT departments coincides with a greater investment in technology. We found that 88% of respondents plan to invest in technology over the next 12-18 months to support the hybrid workforce. Ninety-six percent of leaders believe that doing so will help support their organizations’ ability to recruit and retain talent, and remain competitive.

Unified observability is crucial to DEX

Throughout the Global DEX Survey, respondents consistently noted the importance of end-to-end visibility and unified observability in their digital infrastructure. A significant 94% of IT and business leaders acknowledged that unified observability is essential to their company’s ability to stay competitive and deliver DEX. And 86% of leaders agreed that not having unified visibility over their digital employee experience was one of the greatest risks to their organization’s ability to grow and maintain talent and customers.

Investment in emerging technologies is business critical

In addition to the important role of unified observability, the survey found that 45% of leaders believe that artificial intelligence (AI), followed closely by cloud (43%), automation (35%), digital experience management (35%), and application acceleration (33%) will play a critical role in enhancing their business operations in the next 18 months.

Investing in these technologies can provide crucial support to DEX and digitizing processes, streamlining workflows, and improving efficiency — helping organizations “shift left” and save time, money, and effort.

Data tells a story

When it comes to DEX, it’s important to keep track of trends and changes across organizations. After all, when companies fail to invest in providing a hassle-free digital experience, it’s often a death knell for their business. It’s crucial for IT and business leaders to understand the common challenges affecting decision-makers to spark conversations in their organizations (and beyond) and improve the global digital employee experience. One final encouraging point the survey uncovered – 92% of leaders say investing in DEX is among their top priorities over the next five years.

Want to learn more about the Riverbed Global DEX Survey 2023 and what it tells us about the current state and future of digital employee experience? Access the full report and infographic here.

Identifying areas to improve service and cut costs requires understanding the targets. What does “good” look like? How does your organization compare to industry benchmarks? Where is the “low-hanging fruit?”–the areas within easy reach that can be made better with less effort and investment. Luckily, organizations can rely on data from analysts, industry, and Digital Employee Experience (DEX) management tools like Digital Experience can help them address these challenges.

This blog covers five key end user services metrics and the role that Aternity DEX plays in helping organizations improve them.

Metric 1: Number of contacts per service desk agent

The first data point comes from Gartner’s report, IT Key Metrics Data 2023: End-User Services Measures — IT Service Desk Analysis (subscription required). This research contains high-level Service Desk cost efficiency and staff productivity benchmarks based on data collected throughout 2022 from a global audience of CIOs and IT leaders. It shows that the average service desk agent handled 4,444 contacts per year in 2022, about the same as in 2022. Note the wide distribution in the data by size of the environment. That’s a lot of contacts! The data point out the intense nature of service desk work–especially with increasingly demanding end-users who expect a consumer-like experience for their corporate IT. The data also points out the importance of automated remediation in enabling service desk staff to deal with large numbers of contacts.

How Aternity DEX helps improve Metric 1

The first goal of any service desk is to improve the quality of service delivered in order to reduce the volume of inquiries and issues. The second goal is to reduce the time required to resolve inquiries and issues through self-service and automation. Aternity comes with an extensive library of pre-built automation scripts that can be applied to a single user’s device or to a group of devices. Aternity automated remediation enables IT to automate the recovery actions necessary to resolve the most commonly expected end user issues. Watch this short video to see how Aternity automated remediation enables IT to proactively identify and resolve end user issues.

Watch Video

Metric 2: Number of devices per digital workplace services staff

The next data point comes from a different Gartner document based on the same 2022 survey. Like the research above, the report IT Key Metrics Data 2023: End-User Services Measures–Digital Workplace Services Analysis (subscription required) contains cost efficiency and staff productivity benchmarks, but this time focused on digital workplace teams. Survey data show that investment in digital workplace services is 8.8% of total IT spending. Similarly, digital workplace services Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) represent 8.4% of total IT FTEs, including contractors. That’s not a lot of staff. Especially when you consider that a digital workplace services staff member supports 394 end user devices on average. Again, that number varies widely based on the size of the organization. Digital workplace teams must support a wide range of devices–laptops, PCs, virtual devices, and company-provided tablets and smart devices. And with macOS devices now reaching 23% in the enterprise, these teams require tools that enable them to support a broad range of vendors.

How Aternity DEX helps improve Metric 2

Automated remediation certainly helps digital workplace teams manage larger numbers of devices per FTE. Aternity also integrates with ServiceNow Incident Management, so that digital workplace staff never have to leave ServiceNow to analyze Aternity device health and performance data or user information when resolving an issue. Not only can they see Aternity digital experience data right in the ServiceNow Incident Management interface, they can also execute Aternity automated remediation actions from there as well. This helps reduce resolution time, improving service, reducing costs, and enabling digital workplace services staff to support a larger environment. Watch this short video to see how it works:

Watch Video

Metric 3: Task allocation for digital workplace services staff

A second datapoint from the digital workplace services report shows the breakdown of how these staff members spend their time. In 2022, digital workplace teams spent 67% of their time on incident resolution and service requests, up from 63% in 2021. The four percent increase came out of engineering time. The data clearly show that when staff members are overwhelmed with fire-fighting and responding to routine service requests, they have less time to devote to higher value innovation or digital transformation projects.

How Aternity DEX helps improve Metric 3

Aternity provides a variety of capabilities that enable digital workplace teams to quickly identify digital experience improvement areas that will have the biggest payoff. Aternity Experience Insights provide digital workplace services with a list of issues, sorted by impact to employee productivity, so they can identify which improvement projects should be tackled first. Here’s another short video to show how this works:

Watch Video

Riverbed Aternity Digital Experience Index (DXI) automatically identifies digital experience hot spots across your enterprise impacting employees and customers, then sets you on a path to action and improvement. You can establish goals for particular areas, based on industry benchmarks, and prioritize the importance of each area affecting digital experience. You can benchmark your own digital experience against your industry peers and compare the digital experience of different parts of your organization. Aternity DXI can serve as the foundation of your continuous improvement program for digital experience. Here’s how it works:

Watch Video

Metrics 4 & 5: Wasted SaaS licenses & prevalence of shadow IT

SaaS usage has skyrocketed in organizations of every type. That’s no surprise. In 2008, Gartner reported that worldwide SaaS revenue hit $6.4 billion. This year, SaaS spending is projected to reach $195 billion, up from $167 billion in 2022. And the Gartner End User Services report referenced above shows that in 2022, SaaS comprised 40% of digital workplace services software spending, up from 34% in 2021.

The Zylo 2023 SaaS Management Index Report provides more detail. According to Zylo, the average organization has 291 applications in their SaaS portfolio and spends $50M annually on SaaS. This equates to about $4600 per employee. While companies have committed to SaaS to run their business, Zylo reports significant waste. On average, organizations use only 56% of their SaaS licenses. The remaining 44% are wasted. Do the math. That’s an average of $22M in wasted software spending, every year. 

The Zylo 2023 SaaS Management Index goes further to identify who is buying these SaaS licenses. It’s not IT. IT purchases only 31% of SaaS by spend and 18% by number of applications. Shadow IT is a big issue. While only 6% of application spend is on shadow IT, the category accounts for 37% of total application quantity, according to the report.

How Aternity DEX helps improve Metrics 4 and 5

One of Aternity’s key capabilities is IT asset cost reduction. Aternity automatically discovers every application in use in the enterprise, no matter what type it is. Thick client, web, SaaS, even Shadow IT. Aternity enables you to track actual usage of every type of application in your enterprise, and save money by identifying the software licenses that are unused or under-used.

Get your end user services teams started with Aternity today

You can explore how Aternity enables you to address these key end user services metrics by registering for a Request Demo of Riverbed Aternity. Download our software to understand how our approach to DEX helps you reduce costs, improve productivity, and deliver better customer satisfaction.

Companies can measure digital employee experience (DEX) through various methods, including:

• Surveys: Companies can use surveys to gather feedback from employees about their digital experience, such as the usability of software, availability of technical support, and accessibility of training materials.
• User analytics: User analytics can track how employees interact with digital tools and systems, such as login frequency, time spent on different pages, and click-through rates. This data can provide insights into areas where employees may be experiencing issues or frustrations.
• Performance metrics: Performance metrics, such as productivity, error rates, and customer satisfaction, can be used to assess the impact of digital tools on employee performance.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS measures the likelihood that an employee would recommend a company’s digital tools to a colleague. This metric can provide insights into the overall satisfaction of employees with the digital tools they are using.

By using these methods, companies can gain a better understanding of their employees’ digital experience and identify areas for improvement to enhance their overall digital employee experience.

What are the pros and cons of the various ways to measure DEX?

Of course, each of these methods of measuring digital employee experience has advantages and disadvantages. The following table summarizes them.

Given the pros and cons of various methods of DEX measurement, organizations should look for a DEX that provides a combination of these approaches. The Aternity Digital Experience Management platform combines objective measures of actual user experience with subjective measures of employee sentiment to provide IT and HR teams with the best of both worlds. Watch this short video to see how Aternity combines qualitative and quantitative measures of DEX to provide the best overall view of employee experience:

Watch Video

Six business reasons why you should pay attention to DEX

Paying attention to digital employee experience can lead to a more engaged and productive workforce, reduced turnover, and improved business outcomes, making it a critical factor for organizational success in today’s digital age. The business drivers for addressing digital employee experience include the following.

1. Increased Productivity: An employee’s experience with digital tools can have a significant impact on their productivity. When digital tools are easy to use and efficient, employees can work more effectively and efficiently, leading to increased productivity.
2. Improved Employee Engagement: Digital tools that are designed with the employee experience in mind can help foster a sense of engagement and satisfaction among employees. When employees feel that their tools are working for them, they are more likely to feel invested in their work and committed to their organization.
3. Enhanced Collaboration: Digital tools that facilitate collaboration can help employees work together more effectively, regardless of their physical location. This can lead to increased knowledge sharing, better decision-making, and more effective teamwork.
4. Reduced Turnover: A positive digital employee experience can contribute to employee retention. When employees feel that they have the tools and support they need to do their jobs effectively, they are more likely to stay with their organization.
5. Cost Savings: A positive digital employee experience can also result in cost savings for organizations. When digital tools are easy to use and efficient, employees require less support and training, reducing the time and resources required to maintain them.
6. Competitive Advantage: In today’s digital economy, organizations that prioritize digital employee experience are better positioned to attract and retain top talent. By providing employees with the tools and support they need to work effectively, organizations can differentiate themselves from competitors and create a more attractive work environment.

How does digital employee experience work?

Digital employee experience is a subset of employee experience, which includes all aspects of an employee’s experience within an organization. Employee experience includes factors such as work culture, management style, physical workspace, training, opportunities for advancement, and benefits. Digital employee experience focuses specifically on the experience an employee has with digital tools and technologies used in the workplace. This includes ease of use, performance, accessibility, integration with other tools, and training and support for digital tools.

Overall, these factors can have a significant impact on the employee’s digital experience. Organizations that pay attention to these factors and prioritize the employee experience are better positioned to create a more engaged and productive workforce.

What is the difference between DEX and DEM?

Digital employee experience (DEX) and digital experience management (DEM) are related but distinct concepts.

Digital employee experience (DEX) specifically focuses on the experience an employee has with digital tools and technologies used within the workplace. This includes factors such as ease of use, performance, accessibility, integration with other tools, and training and support for digital tools.

Digital experience management (DEM), on the other hand, is a broader concept that encompasses all aspects of the customer or employee’s digital experience with a company. This includes not only digital tools and technologies but also digital marketing, e-commerce, and customer service.

In other words, while DEX focuses specifically on the employee’s experience with digital tools and technologies in the workplace, digital experience management encompasses a wider range of digital experiences that customers or employees may have with a company.

You can access the complimentary Gartner Research document “How to Successfully Deploy a DEX Tool” for further information on implementation and measuring ROI. According to Gartner, many organizations are adopting new DEX tools or evolving existing deployments beyond tactical use case but miss key implementation steps that ensure ongoing ROI. IT leaders can use this research to successfully deploy a new DEX tool or expand the use of existing ones.

Digital Experience Management vs Digital Experience Monitoring

To make things extra confusing, there’s more than one DEM. In addition to digital experience management, there’s digital experience monitoring. The latter category of software involves monitoring the performance and availability of digital systems and applications in order to ensure a high-quality digital experience, for employees and customers. And, in the case of Internet of Things (IoT), even non-human digital agents, like instrumented bridges or gas turbines. Digital experience monitoring focuses specifically on identifying issues and incidents that may affect the digital experience and providing real-time insights and alerts to help resolve them quickly.

What are important digital employee experience tools?

With low unemployment rates, companies are focused on attracting and retaining top talent. So multiple vendors claim capabilities for DEX and DEM. Every company that provides solutions for some type of IT monitoring discusses their products in the context of improving digital experience. When evaluating digital employee experience monitoring products, consider the following capabilities to ensure that the platform meets the needs of your organization.

• Real-time monitoring: Look for a DEX product that provides real-time monitoring of application performance, infrastructure, and user experience. This will allow you to quickly identify and address issues as they occur.
• User-centric analytics: When it comes to digital experience, it’s not about device or application performance metrics. It’s about what humans experience when they use those devices or applications. Look for a DEX product that provides user-centric analytics, such as user journey mapping. This will allow you to understand the end-to-end digital experience of your users and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Multi-channel monitoring: Employees use all types of applications throughout their day. Not just web and mobile, but thick-client applications and those that run on virtual environments too. Look for a product that supports monitoring across multiple channels, including web, mobile, and other digital channels. This will allow you to gain a comprehensive view of the digital experience across all touchpoints.
• Root cause analysis: Monitoring digital experience is only the first step. IT teams must focus on identifying and resolving issues. Look for a DEX product that provides insights into root cause analysis, so you can quickly identify the underlying causes of performance issues and take corrective action.
• Automated remediation: Most leading DEX products provide automated remediation to address the most common user experience issues. This enables IT to resolve issues quickly and automatically, improving service and reducing costs.
• Integration with other tools: IT shops rely the tools from multiple vendors in their operations centers. Look for a DEX product that integrates with other tools in your IT ecosystem, like ServiceNow. This will allow you to gain a comprehensive view of IT performance and ensure that issues are quickly resolved within the workflows you’ve implemented for your teams.
• Proactive identification: Look for a DEM product that provides proactive analytics capabilities, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This will allow you to proactively identify potential performance issues and rapidly resolve the issue before users complain. Riverbed IQ is designed to do just that.

Get started with digital employee experience today

You can explore digital employee experience management now with by registering for a Request Demo of  Aternity. Download our software to understand how our approach to DEX helps you reduce costs, improve productivity, and deliver better customer satisfaction.

End User Experience Management is an important consideration for businesses of all sizes, as it can have a significant impact on the productivity of the workforce, the satisfaction of customers, and ultimately the success of the organization. At its core, EUEM is focused on providing a positive experience for end users, whether they are employees, customers, or partners. This can involve a range of capabilities, including monitoring, analytics, and implementing strategies for improving the performance of system, application, and devices.

As clear as this sounds, vendors and thought leaders in the market make it confusing by using a variety of related terms to describe this goal. Digital Experience Monitoring, Digital Experience Management, and Digital Employee Experience Management are all different names for similar categories of software. Review the Gartner Market Guide for Digital Experience Monitoring for a good overview of representative vendors.

The role of monitoring in EUEM

Monitoring is a key foundational element of End User Experience Management. This involves tracking the performance of various components of the technology environment that affect user experience, including devices, servers, applications, and network resources. By collecting data on these elements, and correlating them together, businesses can gain insight into the root causes of performance issues negatively affecting end user experience and identify opportunities for improvement.

For example, if users are experiencing slow load times when accessing a particular application, IT can use end user experience monitoring tools to track the performance of the application and identify any bottlenecks or other issues that may be causing the problem. Products like our Riverbed Aternity Digital Experience Management Platform enable IT to isolate the source of slowness to the employee device, the network, or the back-end application service. IT can then further investigate the root cause and take appropriate action to improve it. It’s important to note that monitoring metrics that indicate the performance of devices, systems, and applications is necessary, but not sufficient for effective end user experience management. Device performance management is not the same as end user experience management. It’s just one of the factors.

How analytics drives End User Experience Management

Another important element of EUEM is analytics. By collecting and analyzing data on user activity and system performance, businesses can gain insight into how their technology systems are being used and identify opportunities for improvement. This can involve analyzing data on user behavior, such as how often they access particular applications or the application response time they experience when performing certain tasks within a business-critical application.

Most EUEM products enable IT to proactively identify and address issues before they become major problems. By monitoring system performance and analyzing user behavior, businesses can identify potential issues early on and take steps to prevent them from causing significant disruptions. Products like Riverbed Aternity contain automated remediation capabilities to address the most commonly expected end user issues. With automated remediation, IT can often remedy an end user experience issue even before employees notice. Watch this short video to see automated remediation in action:

What is an example of end user experience?

The performance of an application or website is a common example of end user experience that everyone is familiar with. End users expect applications and websites to load quickly and be responsive. If an application takes a long time to load or is slow to respond to user inputs, user experience suffers. This can have a major impact on the business. For example, data from Hobo shows the following:

• The ideal website load time for mobile sites is 1-2 seconds.
• 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.
• A 2-second delay in load time resulted in abandonment rates of up to 87%.

Other technical factors that can impact the end user experience include network connectivity, server availability, and the quality of the user interface. For example, if a user is accessing an application over a slow or unreliable network connection, this can lead to poor performance and frustration. Similarly, if a server is experiencing high levels of traffic, this can lead to slow load times and other performance issues.

The challenge for IT is that with so many employees working from home, factors such as Wi-Fi signal strength and ISP bandwidth and performance also affect end-user experience. But those factors are outside of the direct control of IT. IT requires a monitoring system like that ingests telemetry from all across the IT environment, then analyzes them to identify issues.

Why is improving end user experience important?

Using End User Experience Management to provide a seamless and responsive user experience enables businesses to improve their workforce productivity and customer satisfaction. Benefits include the following:

For employees:

• Increased productivity: If employees have access to technology systems that are fast, reliable, and easy to use, they can perform their tasks more efficiently, which improves productivity.
• Reduced frustration and stress: If employees are able to use technology systems without experiencing performance issues, they are likely to feel less frustrated and stressed, which can improve morale and job satisfaction.
• Improved job performance and retention: Employees who are satisfied with their technology systems are more likely to stay with their current employer.

For consumers:

• Enhanced satisfaction and loyalty: If consumers have a positive experience when using a company’s technology systems, they are more likely to be satisfied with the company’s products or services and become loyal customers.
• Increased sales and revenue: Customers who have a positive experience are more likely to make repeat purchases and recommend the company to others, which can lead to increased sales and revenue.
• Improved brand reputation: Companies that prioritize end user experience and provide a positive experience for their customers are likely to develop a strong reputation for quality and customer service, which can help attract new customers and retain existing ones.

How has hybrid work changed the importance of end user experience management?

The prevalence of hybrid or remote work has increased the importance of end user experience management for several reasons:

Increased reliance on technology

With more employees working remotely, businesses are relying on technology systems to facilitate communication, collaboration, and productivity. With this, end user experience has become even more critical, as employees need technology systems that are fast, reliable, and easy to use in order to perform their tasks effectively.

Greater complexity

Hybrid or remote work environments can be more complex than traditional office environments, with employees accessing systems and applications from multiple locations and devices. This added complexity can make it more difficult to manage and optimize the end user experience.

Heightened security concerns

Remote work also brings with it heightened security concerns, as employees may be accessing sensitive company data from unsecured networks or devices. Ensuring a positive end user experience while maintaining robust security measures requires businesses to find a balance between security and ease of use.

Increased competition for talent

With the rise of remote work, businesses are no longer limited to hiring employees from their local area. This means that businesses are competing with a wider range of companies for top talent, and end user experience can be a key factor in attracting and retaining employees in a low unemployment market.

Here’s an overview of how Riverbed helps address these hybrid work challenges.

Five steps to improve end user experience

Improving end user experience can be challenging when IT budgets are tight. However, there are several practical ways that businesses can improve end user experience while watching expenses.

1. Conduct an end user experience assessment: Assessing current systems and processes can help identify areas of inefficiency or frustration for end users and can provide insights into how to improve the overall experience. Companies use periodic surveys to gather employee experience data, but they can also do the same with their EUEM tools.
2. Prioritize user feedback: User feedback is an invaluable tool for improving end user experience. By prioritizing user feedback and making changes based on that feedback, businesses can demonstrate that they value their employees’ and customers’ feedback.
3. Optimize existing systems: Often, businesses have existing systems and processes that can be optimized to improve end user experience. This might include removing unnecessary steps from a process, streamlining workflows, or optimizing the performance of existing technology systems.
4. Implement self-service tools: Self-service tools, such as knowledge bases or chatbots, can help reduce frustration for end users by providing them with quick and easy access to information or assistance. These tools can be relatively inexpensive to implement and can help improve end user experience by reducing wait times and increasing accessibility.
5. Provide training and support: Providing training and support to end users can also help improve the overall experience. This might include offering training sessions on new systems or processes or providing dedicated support personnel to help troubleshoot technical issues.

Overall, improving end user experience doesn’t necessarily require a large investment of money. By prioritizing user feedback, optimizing existing systems, implementing self-service tools, and providing training and support, businesses can make meaningful improvements to the end user experience even in restricted budget environments.

Take the first step to better end user experience now

You can explore end user experience management now by registering for a Request Demo of Riverbed Aternity. Download our software to understand how our approach to end user experience management helps you reduce costs, improve productivity, and deliver better customer satisfaction.

One example of hybrid working could be a team that consists of both in-office and remote workers who collaborate through digital tools and communication channels. For instance, the team may use the office for important meetings, team building activities or project kick-off, and then switch to remote work.

In this scenario, the remote workers have the flexibility to choose when and where they work, based on their job responsibilities and personal preferences. They can use digital tools and collaboration platforms to stay connected with their in-office colleagues, share files and information, and collaborate on projects. Meanwhile, the in-office workers have the opportunity to work face-to-face and build relationships with their colleagues, while also benefiting from the flexibility of remote work.

Overall, the hybrid working model enables teams to have the best of both worlds by allowing for flexibility, collaboration, and an optimal work-life balance. This example of hybrid working can apply across multiple industries—technology, creative services, professional services, etc.

What does a hybrid workplace look like?

A hybrid workplace can take on different forms depending on the organization’s needs and the preferences of its employees. However, most hybrid workplaces have some common features:

1. A combination of in-person and remote work: By definition, a hybrid workplace allows employees to work both from the office and from remote locations, such as their homes or co-working spaces. When, and how often they do so, depends on the organization’s hybrid workplace policies.
2. Flexibility: Employees have the flexibility to work in different environments, depending on their job responsibilities, personal preferences, and the model of hybrid work addressed below. The choice of where and when to work may not be entirely up to the employee. They may have the option to work from the office for important meetings or team activities and work remotely for the rest of their workweek.
3. Digital tools and communication channels: To enable remote work and collaboration, a hybrid workplace relies on digital tools such as video conferencing software, messaging platforms, and cloud-based collaboration tools.
4. Adequate infrastructure: A hybrid workplace requires adequate infrastructure, such as high-speed internet, secure VPN connections, and laptops or other mobile devices, to support remote work. The technical infrastructure enables employees to work productively and securely while remote.
5. Work-life balance: Hybrid workplaces aim to provide employees with a better work-life balance by offering more flexibility in their work schedules, reducing commute times and costs, and allowing employees to work from home when needed.

Different types of hybrid working

Multiple hybrid working models exist. The best model for each organization will vary depending on the organization’s industry, customer base, and requirements for how the work gets done. Businesses can customize their hybrid working arrangements to meet the unique needs of their employees and organization.

1. Rotation Model: In this model, teams rotate between working in the office and working remotely. For example, a team may work from the office for two days a week and remotely for the remaining three days. Many organizations are adopting this model to ensure that a critical mass of employees is in the office on particular days. This can help foster collaboration and a strong company culture.
2. Flexibility Model: Here, employees have the flexibility to choose when and where they work, depending on their job responsibilities and personal preferences. For example, an employee may work from the office for important meetings and work from home for tasks that require more concentration. This model works best when employees are highly self-directed and when a high degree of trust exists within the organization. Managers have to be comfortable with empowering their employees to know when they need to come into the office.
3. Task-Based Model: In this model, employees work remotely or in the office based on the nature of their job responsibilities. For example, an employee may work from the office for tasks that require collaboration and work remotely for tasks that require more independent work. Or, employees with certain roles may be required to be in the office most days.

Do employees prefer hybrid work?

Even as we put the COVID-19 pandemic in the rear-view mirror, many employees prefer a hybrid work model. A survey by McKinsey Company found that 75% of remote workers prefer a hybrid work model. PwC’s US Pulse Survey found that 72% of employees would like a mix of remote and in-person work.

The reasons for this preference vary, but some potential advantages of hybrid working for employees include a better work-life balance, lower commute times and expenses, increased flexibility, and the ability to avoid office distractions while still maintaining social connections with coworkers. The pandemic has shown that remote work can be effective, and many employees now value the flexibility that it offers.

Individual employee preferences vary, and some may still prefer full-time remote work or full-time in-person work depending on their job responsibilities, personal preferences, and individual circumstances. Management should consider the needs and preferences of their employees when designing their work arrangements.

When do employees prefer in-office work?

While many employees prefer hybrid or remote work models, some still prefer to work in an office. Some aspects of in-office work which may appeal to employees, or which are fundamental to the nature of the job include:

1. Face-to-face interaction: Some employees prefer to work in an office because they enjoy face-to-face interaction with colleagues and the social atmosphere of a workplace. They may feel more energized and engaged when they are surrounded by people. On-the-job learning is far more effective in person, and the in-office environment is especially useful for younger people just entering the workforce, or those who are new to their jobs.
2. Structure and routine: Employees who prefer to work in an office may also value structure and routine in their workday. They may prefer the clear separation between work and home life that an office provides. There’s a certain feeling of satisfaction and relief in being able to leave the job behind when you go home for the day.
3. Collaborative environment: Some employees may work better when they collaborate with colleagues in person. They may prefer the ability to bounce ideas off of others and work together on projects. Teams involved in creative problem solving are more likely to do better in an office environment where the ideas can flow freely, and non-verbal communication can thrive.
4. Specific resources or equipment: Some employees may require access to specific resources or equipment that are only available in an office environment. For example, they may need access to a laboratory, specialized software or hardware, or specific tools for their job. There’s just no getting around the workplace when you work on an assembly line, a blast furnace, or in a biopharmaceutical lab.
5. Difficulty focusing at home: Some employees may find it challenging to focus on their work when they are at home. They may find it difficult to avoid distractions, such as household chores, family members, or to be sure, napping on the couch!

The IT challenges of hybrid work and how Riverbed addresses them

The shift to hybrid work presents several challenges for IT organizations as they strive to support their fellow employees. Some of the main challenges include:

1. Security: With employees working from remote locations, there is an increased risk of security breaches and cyber-attacks. IT organizations must ensure that their remote workers have secure connections to company networks, and that company data is protected from unauthorized access. When security operations teams conduct forensic analysis of security threats, they need full-fidelity insight into every packet and flow, such as that provided by Riverbed Network Performance Management.
2. Technology infrastructure: Hybrid work requires reliable and robust technology infrastructure to support remote work, such as high-speed internet, VPN access, cloud-based applications, and video conferencing tools. IT organizations must ensure that their systems can handle increased traffic and that remote workers have access to the necessary technology. Riverbed Acceleration enables organizations to accelerate any application over any network, to employees wherever they work.
3. Device management: With employees using a variety of devices and operating systems to access company data, IT organizations must manage and secure these devices to ensure data protection and compliance with company policies. Only by measuring actual employee experience, like with Riverbed Aternity, can digital workplace teams ensure that they’re providing their employees with the devices and applications that enable them to be productive, wherever they work.
4. Collaboration tools: Hybrid work requires effective collaboration tools that enable remote workers to stay connected with their in-office colleagues and collaborate on projects. IT organizations must provide reliable and easy-to-use collaboration tools that are accessible from any location. IT teams must manage the entire portfolio of collaboration tools on which their employees rely. Riverbed Aternity enables them to do that.
5. Support: With remote workers, IT organizations must provide effective and timely technical support to address any issues that arise. This requires a different support model that can respond quickly to remote workers’ needs. The highly distributed nature of complex remote work environments makes this a challenge. IT teams can leverage Riverbed IQ to proactively identify and resolve complex issues, while minimizing the need for expensive “war room” troubleshooting processes.
6. Training and education: With the adoption of new technologies and tools, IT organizations must provide ongoing training and education to their employees to ensure they are using these tools effectively and securely. Gartner refers to this as the “Digital Dexterity Gap.”

You can learn more about Riverbed’s solutions for managing the complexity of hybrid work by visiting our hybrid work solution page. Even better, you can start a Request Demo of our software to determine if it’s right for your organization.

Hybrid work involves a combination of in-person and remote work, while remote work is entirely location-independent. Understanding the differences between these two models is essential for businesses and employees as they consider the most effective and sustainable ways to work in a post-pandemic world.

This blog covers the differences between hybrid work and remote work and the advantages and challenges associated with each model. It also provides insights into employee preferences on hybrid vs remote work, how businesses can choose the right model for their workforce, and the challenges for IT organizations in supporting hybrid work.

What is remote work?

Remote work is a work model that enables employees to work from a location other than a traditional office setting. In remote work, employees can work from home, a coworking space, a coffee shop, or any other location with an internet connection. Remote work can be full-time, part-time or occasional and is enabled by technology such as video conferencing, messaging platforms, and cloud-based collaboration tools that allow employees to communicate and collaborate with their colleagues.

Remote work has become increasingly popular in recent years due to the flexibility it provides to employees and the benefits it offers to employers, such as reduced overhead costs and access to a broader pool of talent. With remote work, employers are no longer constrained to the workforce located geographically close to their offices. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of remote work, as many companies had to transition their employees to remote work to maintain business continuity while ensuring the safety of their workforce. Now that we’re emerging from the pandemic, companies are evaluating and evolving their remote work policies.

What is hybrid work?

Hybrid work combines remote work and in-person work in a flexible way. It allows employees to work either from a physical office or from a remote location, such as their home, co-working spaces or other remote locations.

In a hybrid work model, employees have more flexibility to choose where and how they work, depending on the nature of their work and personal preferences. This can be achieved through the use of technology such as video conferencing, messaging platforms, and cloud-based collaboration tools that enable remote work.

The hybrid work model has become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many companies to adopt remote work practices. Hybrid work provides companies with the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances while maintaining a collaborative work culture and achieving business objectives. Post-pandemic, many employees have continued to express a preference for hybrid work, as evidenced by commercial office vacancy rates remaining below pre-pandemic levels.

Do employees prefer hybrid work vs remote work?

The preference for hybrid vs remote work varies among employees and can depend on various factors, including job responsibilities, personal preferences, and individual circumstances. Some employees may prefer remote work because it allows them to have a more flexible work schedule, reduces commuting time and expenses, and provides a better work-life balance. Other employees may prefer hybrid work because it allows them to have a balance of in-person collaboration and the flexibility of remote work.

Several surveys conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic suggest that many employees prefer a hybrid work model, which allows them to have the best of both worlds. For example, a survey by McKinsey Company found that 75% of remote workers would prefer a hybrid work model in the future. PwC’s US Pulse Survey found that 72% of employees would like a mix of remote and in-person work. However, it’s important to note that individual preferences may vary, and some employees may still prefer full-time remote work or full-time in-person work.

The prevalence of hybrid work varies across industries

The prevalence of hybrid work varies across industries based on several factors such as the nature of the work, the level of customer interaction required, and the extent to which technology can facilitate remote work. Some industries are more likely to embrace hybrid work arrangements, while others may be more hesitant.

Here are some examples:

• Technology: The technology industry has been at the forefront of remote work and hybrid work arrangements, given the nature of the work and the tools available. Many tech companies have been able to seamlessly transition to hybrid work during the pandemic, and some have announced permanent hybrid work arrangements.
• Finance: The finance industry has traditionally been more resistant to remote work due to the need for face-to-face client interactions and the security concerns associated with handling sensitive financial information. For example, Goldman Sachs’ CEO David Solomon is a strong proponent of in-office work, and 65% of the Goldman Sachs employees now report to the office 5 days a week. However, the pandemic has forced many finance companies to adopt remote work and hybrid work arrangements, and some have found that it can be done successfully.
• Healthcare: The healthcare industry has also been slow to adopt remote work due to the nature of the work and the need for in-person patient care. However, some healthcare companies have found ways to incorporate hybrid work arrangements for administrative staff and other non-clinical roles. The Centers for Disease Control report a significant increase in the use of telemedicine.
• Education: The education industry has also had to adapt to hybrid work arrangements during the pandemic, with many teachers and professors teaching remotely or using a hybrid approach. However, some aspects of education, such as lab work and hands-on training, are more challenging to do remotely.
• Manufacturing: The manufacturing industry has traditionally been more resistant to remote work due to the need for physical presence on the production line. However, some manufacturing companies have found ways to incorporate remote work for administrative and support staff.

The technology challenges of hybrid work

Hybrid work can make the job of the IT team more challenging in several ways:

1. Supporting remote and in-office workers: With hybrid work, the IT team needs to support both remote and in-office workers, which can require additional tools and infrastructure to ensure that everyone has access to the same resources and can work seamlessly together. Digital Experience Management software, such as Riverbed Aternity, provides visibility to digital workplace teams to ensure that employees get a great experience no matter where they’re working.
2. Ensuring network security: Hybrid work can increase the risk of cyber-attacks, as remote workers may be using personal devices or working from unsecured networks. The IT team needs to ensure that the network and data are secure, even when employees are working remotely. When security operations teams conduct forensic analysis of security threats, they need full-fidelity insight into every packet and flow, such as that provided by Riverbed Network Performance Management
3. Managing multiple collaboration tools: With hybrid work, employees may use multiple collaboration tools, such as video conferencing, messaging apps, and project management tools, which can make it challenging for the IT team to manage and secure all of these tools and ensure that they work well together. Aternity supports the leading collaboration tools, such as Teams, Zoom, and Webex.
4. Balancing flexibility and control: Hybrid work requires a balance between flexibility and control, as the IT team needs to ensure that employees have the tools they need to work effectively while also maintaining control over the network and data. This can be a delicate balancing act that requires careful management.
5. Addressing technical issues: With remote work, employees may experience technical issues that are more difficult to resolve remotely. In addition, with remote work, technical issues can be caused by factors outside of IT’s control, such as Wi-Fi signal strength, ISP bandwidth, or SaaS performance. The IT team needs to be able to address these issues quickly and efficiently to minimize disruptions to work. Learn more about how Riverbed enables teams to “shift left” with automated remediation, to resolve issues at the lowest level possible and as fast as possible.

Overall, hybrid work can make the job of the IT team more challenging, as they need to support a more diverse and distributed workforce while maintaining network security, managing multiple collaboration tools, and addressing technical issues. Learn more about Riverbed’s solutions for hybrid work that make it possible to manage these challenges and enable a successful hybrid work environment. You can start a Request Demo of our solutions to see if they make sense for you.

Here’s why.

How’s the weather where you are?

We’ve all experienced it. You’re on the phone with a contact center agent who works for your favorite retailer, insurance company, or bank. You provide your account number and verify your identity. There’s an awkward pause. Then the inevitable question. It could be about the local weather. “How did you do in the big freeze (or rain storm caused by the latest atmospheric river) last weekend?” It could be about how your local sports team did in their last game. “What did you think of the Superbowl?” or, how you feel about this year’s Grammys. “Isn’t it amazing that Beyonce passed Georg Solti and won her 32nd award? But, don’t you think she must be disappointed after not winning album of the year for the fourth time?”

We all know why the contact center agent engages us in small talk. They’re waiting for their applications to respond so they can continue helping us with the transaction or query we’re trying to make. It’s easy to be frustrated with them, but it’s not their fault. Poor performing applications—whether CRM, or EHR, or inventory—have a negative impact on both customer experience and employee experience. I wonder whether AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT will be programmed to ask us these types of innocuous questions to fill up the time taken by slow performing business applications. Even they can, IT organizations will still need to augment ChatGPT with Digital Experience Management.

Employee experience and customer experience are tightly connected

The interaction between customers and employees in the contact center scenario shows the tight connection between employee experience and customer experience. Both types of digital experience depend on the technology, the applications and infrastructure, that connect the user journeys of employees and customers. A poor experience in one area causes a poor experience in the other. Especially for industries that rely on omni-channel interactions with customers or patients or citizens. Digital Experience Management is required to deliver excellent customer experience and employee experience, even with the advent of ChatGPT.

ChatGPT and Digital Experience Management for customer experience

Here’s the first example: While LLM-powered chatbots like ChatGPT will certainly be of value to guide customers along their intended journeys, ChatGPT will be able to answer many of the expected (and even unexpected) questions that customers have when they interact with a company. However, it won’t be able to answer all the questions that businesses have around ensuring an excellent customer experience. Organizations will continue to rely on Digital Experience Management to answer questions like:

• What are the most prevalent user journey paths taken across my website?
• What steps in the customer journey are taking too long?
• What is the business impact of slow-loading web pages, in terms of revenue or abandonment rate?
• What is the projected business benefit if we invest to improve page performance by 2 seconds?

Riverbed’s Digital Experience Management platform, Riverbed Aternity addresses the questions and more through Aternity User Journey Intelligence. Watch this short video to see it in action:

ChatGPT and Digital Experience Management for employee experience

While ChatGPT will prove to be a useful tool for contact center staff to leverage in their interactions with customers, it won’t help eliminate the cause of poor application performance. Small talk about the weather, sports, or culture will still be required. I suppose ChatGPT can certainly help there too! But IT teams will still require Digital Experience Management products like Riverbed Aternity to proactively identify and resolve issues associated with the full range of business-critical applications on which employees rely. With Aternity, companies can establish Experience Level Agreements based on targets for response time for the most common business processes employees do. Things like looking up a customer record, processing a claim, or checking inventory.

Here’s another short video:

Get started today

As you think about incorporating ChatGPT into your customer service strategy, also think about how Digital Experience Management can help you achieve your goals. Unlike other vendor’s products, Riverbed Aternity delivers full-spectrum digital experience management, by contextualizing data across every enterprise endpoint, app and transaction to inform remediation, drive down costs and improve productivity. To see how Aternity can help you on your journey to improve digital experience, register to begin a Riverbed Demo today.

Most organizations have treated employee experience separate from customer experience, but they’re more connected than you think. Let’s start with the definitions.

Employee experience encompasses all of a worker’s perceptions throughout their journey as part of their organization. It includes everything from their recruitment as a job candidate to initial onboarding, to career development, learning, mentorship, and career advancement. It extends to when they leave their organization. Three factors affect employee experience: culture, physical work location, and technology. The rise of remote work and the influence of Generation Z in the workplace has increased the effect of technology as a driver of employee experience. HR and IT jointly own responsibility for employee experience.

Similarly, customer experience summarizes a customer’s feelings resulting from interactions with a brand’s products and services throughout the buyer’s journey and across the multiple channels throughout which customers interact. Omni-channel strategies require a unified approach to measuring and analyzing customer experience across social, web, mobile, contact center, and in-person interactions. Like employee experience, technology plays a key role in customer experience. Because of that, customer experience is often owned by a combination of marketing, line of business and IT.

Employee experience and customer experience are connected in an omni-channel world

Intuitively, we understand the tight connection between employee experience and customer experience. We experience this all the time through our direct interactions with customer-facing employees in retail, insurance, healthcare, or even government. Retailers like Nordstrom, L.L. Bean, or Zappos have earned strong reputations for empowering their employees to go out of their way to deliver excellent customer service. And their brands are deeply associated with it. In fact, despite its acquisition by Amazon, Zappos maintains its own brand to preserve the equity it has built up over the years.

Technology plays a key role in connecting employee experience and customer experience

A closer look at the three levels of these interactions reveals the role that technology plays.

1. User journeys: The paths that customer-facing employees take throughout their day to serve customers, or the paths that a customer takes in navigating a company’s website, interacting with a chatbot, or browsing a store. These journeys intersect in an omni-channel world. When a customer is unable to complete their journey on the website on their own, they reach out to an employee in a contact center to help them do so.
2. Business processes: The individual steps that make up the journey, such as “look up account” or “check inventory” or “add to cart.” Individual steps in the business processes may be shared by both customers and employees, depending on who is taking the action.
3. Business applications: The applications used by employees executing the business processes while serving customers, or the applications used directly by customers themselves. In many cases, the applications used on the website are the same as the applications used by employees in the contact center or the retail store or branch office.

In an omni-channel world, the journeys, business processes and applications intersect. Business applications can be the same, used by customers via the website or on-line portal, or by the employees serving them.

Happy employees mean happy customers

We understand the linkage between employee experience and customer experience, but what does the data say? Harvard Business Review published an analysis done by Glassdoor researchers who quantified the relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. To do so, they associated Glassdoor employee reviews of hundreds of large U.S. companies with ratings from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). ASCI records the opinions of 300,000 U.S. customers on products and services.

They found a direct statistical link between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. A one-star improvement in a Glassdoor score correlates to a 1.3-point (out of 100) improvement in customer satisfaction. This effect was more than twice as large in industries like retail, tourism, restaurants, health care, and financial services where there is close interaction between employees and customers. Of course, correlation does not mean causality.

The causal link between employee experience and customer experience

Business leaders tend to underestimate the role that employees play in customer experience because it has been hard to quantify. A more recent study published in Harvard Business Review took the research to the next level by proving causality.

Rather than the broad analysis of hundreds of companies done by Glassdoor, these researchers looked at a single, large retailer with more than one thousand stores. Looking at just one company enabled the researchers to isolate important factors on customer experience.

The effects of company brand, quality of products and website effectiveness were constant across all the company’s stores. The researchers correlated HR metrics like job tenure, cross-training, and skill level with the normalized revenue and profit of each store. They controlled for factors like seasonality and the income levels of surrounding populations.

They found that measures of employee experience were significant drivers of revenue and profit. The data showed a potential 50% increase in revenue and 45% increase in profit per employee-hour by improving their HR metrics from the bottom quartile to the top.

So, investment in employee experience clearly pays off.

Forbes article references Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Kyndryl

Research is one thing. Market recognition is another. And the market does recognize this connection.

A recent Forbes article, Three Ways to Improve Employee Experience for Better Business Outcomes, discussed the key role that employees play in delivering excellent customer experience and how more business executives are recognizing the need to invest in employee experience as a result.

The article features Dennis Perpetua, CTO of Digital Workplace Services at Kyndryl, a 2021 spin-off of IBM and the world’s largest provider of IT infrastructure services. Kyndryl, a strategic technology partner of Riverbed, relies on Riverbed Aternity as part of its digital workplace service for global customers like Dow.

The Forbes article refers to research conducted by Forrester Consulting, part of research and advisory firm Forrester Research, on behalf of Kyndryl. As shown in the graph, improving customer experience remains the top priority of business executives. But they also recognize the importance of improving employee experience as a means to that end.

The Forrester study shows a tight connection between employee experience and customer experience exists even below the executive level. It dives into the view of employees who are directly involved in employee experience at their organizations. 45% of these respondents stated that improving customer experience is one of the most important benefits of improving employee experience.

Recognition in the market: 451 Research

Riverbed recently conducted a webinar with 451 Research on the connection between employee experience and customer experience in an omni-channel world. I was joined in this webinar by Sheryl Kingstone who leads 451 Research’s coverage for Customer Experience & Commerce. Sheryl shared some compelling data on how customer experience is a catalyst for digital transformation. The chart below shows the main drivers of digital transformation according to 451’s Voice of the Enterprise: Customer Experience & Commerce, Digital Maturity 2021. The areas of biggest difference between “digitally driven” organizations and “digitally delayed” organizations all relate to top line business drivers—customer experience, competitive differentiation, new business models. Improving customer experience tops the list.

The next set of data really shows the connection between employee experience and customer experience. Employee satisfaction is the top metric tracked by organizations focused on improving customer experience. In other words, top organizations understand the tight connection between employee experience and customer experience shown in the HBR research. Metrics like average handle time and average time to respond to a customer inquiry/resolution both relate to the performance of technology used by employees to serve customers.

Don’t separate employee experience and customer experience monitoring 

Despite all the data connecting employee and customer experience, and the role that technology plays in both, the market considers monitoring separate categories. As discussed in my Digital Experience Alphabet Soup blog, analyst firms consider employee experience monitoring separate from customer experience monitoring.

But the data points to the need for a comprehensive approach to digital experience management. If employee experience and customer experience are so tightly connected, then the monitoring technologies used to ensure a quality experience should be too.

This is where Riverbed’s Aternity Digital Experience  plays a role. Aternity is the only DEM solution in the market to provide full spectrum Digital Experience Management. With insights into the digital experience of both customers AND employees, Aternity arms IT with the ability to ensure a positive experience for both. To see how Aternity can help you on your journey to improve the digital experience for ALL your users, register to begin a Riverbed Demo today.

Visibility into customer experience all along the customer journey

Customer expectations around excellent service have risen over the past twelve months. In fact, a 451 Research survey shows that 86% of companies surveyed report an increase in customer expectations. (Source: 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise: Customer Experience & Commerce, Merchant Study 2022). Despite fears of recession, or perhaps because of them, companies must maintain their focus on customer experience in order to grow their business.

Organizations need actionable insights into the impact of IT performance on revenue, order fulfillment, and customer abandonment to improve customer experience. They also need visibility into the digital experience across the entire journey–from navigating unique paths across digital services on websites to interacting with employees in the contact center, branch, store, or back office.

Contact centers are on the front line

Today’s contact centers are metrics-driven departments focused on continuously improving the customer experience. From customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores to first call resolution (FCR) times, to average handle times (AHT)–the alphabet soup of customer service metrics hinges on how productively people use technology. After all, if a customer can’t complete their transaction on the portal or website, they get in touch with the contact center. There’s a direct, inverse relationship between website performance and call volumes in the contact center. And that relationship affects the key metrics. When website performance suffers, volumes rise, CSAT drops, call queues and AHT increase, etc.

IT teams need more from their monitoring tools

Omni-channel strategies create a seamless experience for customers, but underlying that seamless experience is a complex infrastructure that must be managed. IT teams struggle to support the complicated combination of legacy and newly emerging technologies, ranging from voice communications to websites, to cloud-native applications, and conversational AI.

Traditional monitoring tools have limitations that prevent organizations from achieving these goals.

1. Customer experience disconnected from employee experience. Separate domains prevent digital experience insights across the whole customer journey.
2. Floods of technical telemetry. Performance metrics disconnected from business outcomes don’t help IT prioritize where to focus.
3. Reliance on sampling to deal with enterprise scale. Failure to capture every application transaction means that IT will miss performance problems.
4. Limited coverage of enterprise business applications. Provides an incomplete picture of digital experience for the hundreds of applications used to run the business.

Total experience–improving both employee AND customer experience

Riverbed’s  Aternity is the only vendor in the market to provide full spectrum Digital Experience Management. What do we mean by this term? In short, it provides total experience management:

• Insights into the digital experience of both customers AND employees.
• The impact of digital experience on business outcomes AND technical telemetry.
• Unified performance visibility of both employee devices AND the application service, including cloud-native environments.
• A big data approach that captures and stores ALL transactions without sampling.
• The ability to measure actual employee experience for ALL types of applications.

Watch this short video to see how Aternity addresses key challenges for high-performing contact centers:

Ensure a world-class customer experience all along the digital journey

Rivebed Aternity User Journey Intelligence provides contextualized visibility and actionable insights into user journeys across complex web environments, enabling organizations to improve satisfaction and drive revenue.

With Aternity User Journey Intelligence, you can:

• Follow every path your customers take on your website, converting and non-converting.
• Track the digital experience of every user at each step of the journey across your site.
• Guide users along the highest-converting paths and optimize the ones that cause drop-offs.

A Value Leader in the EMA Radar for DEX

Industry analyst firm EMA has named Aternity a Value Leader in the EMA Radar for Digital Employee Experience Management. You can register to obtain a complimentary copy of this report rating the solutions of Aternity against eight other vendors. EMA cited Aternity’s application experience visibility as a key differentiator. As discussed above, visibility into the customer journey, website performance, and the performance of the key business applications used in the contact center can help ensure a world-class digital experience.

Watch our webinar on Total Experience with 451 Group

If you’re interested in hearing more about trends and investment in customer experience and how Aternity has helped high-performing contact centers ensure an excellent digital experience for employees and customers, please attend our upcoming webinar with the 451 Group. If you’re busy on December 8, don’t worry. You can catch it later on demand.

Or, if you’d like to register for a Request Demo of Aternity, you can get started today.

The increase in complexity and volume of alerts is exacerbated by a shortage of highly skilled expert IT resources. Troubleshooting alerts requires expert IT staff to devote an excessive amount of time, taking them away from more strategic responsibilities.

Legacy monitoring can’t keep up with today’s IT environments

The situation is made worse by monitoring tools which alert on single metrics without broader context and correlation, lacking impact in scope and severity. IT teams have used legacy monitoring tools to collect data and generate alerts on violations of fixed or rate-of-change thresholds. Setting these alerts requires understanding the dependencies of the underlying infrastructure and what constitutes unacceptable performance. Monitoring is predicated on knowing in advance what signals you want to monitor (“known unknowns”).

In today’s modern, highly distributed architectures, it’s impossible for humans to understand these dependencies. Micro-service-based architectures spin up and down in cloud-native environments, so tracing topology after an incident doesn’t help. Too many factors outside of IT’s control affect the digital experience of an employee working from home for IT to resolve the issue. With proper credit to Donald Rumsfeld, there are too many “unknown unknowns.” These challenges have paved the way for observability and AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations). Observability and AIOps are closely related, but there’s a difference between the two.

What is observability?

From systems control theory, observability is defined as the ability to measure the internal states of a system by examining its outputs. A system is considered “observable” if the current state can be estimated by using information only from outputs, namely sensor data.

In other words, building observability into a system eliminates the need to directly understand the dependencies of the underlying infrastructure, which can be treated as a “black box.” This is especially important in distributed systems like cloud-native environments, hybrid cloud networks, and even highly distributed remote work environments.

But observability is only as effective as the quantity and quality of the telemetry being provided. For IT to troubleshoot effectively, observability must include data across the full stack, including network, infrastructure, applications, digital experience, business key performance indicators (KPIs) and user sentiment. Unified Observability not only covers all these IT domains, but also captures metrics without sampling, so that full-fidelity data can be leveraged when resolving issues.

AIOps Market definitions

According to the Gartner Glossary, “AIOps combines big data and machine learning to automate IT operations processes, including event correlation, anomaly detection and causality determination.”

In the Forrester Now Tech: Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations, Q2 2022 (registration required), Forrester defines AIOps as “a practice that combines human and technological application of AI/ML, advanced analytics, and operational practices to business and operations data.”

AIOps platforms provide insights to IT staff by using AI and Machine Learning (ML) techniques to analyze telemetry and events from across the IT infrastructure and identify meaningful patterns that support proactive responses. In this way, AIOps platforms make the IT infrastructure observable to the IT teams involved in identifying and resolving issues.

The similarities between AIOps and observability

There’s a tight connection between AIOps and observability, but they are not the same. AIOps and observability have many common aspects and many vendors refer to their products as both AIOps platforms and observability platforms. So, market confusion is understandable.

1. Similar business drivers. Business transformation is increasing the complexity of the underlying IT infrastructure of new applications and services that organizations are rolling out to better serve their customers. The integration of on-premises infrastructure and cloud services creates complex, ephemeral architectures that make it nearly impossible for humans to analyze and resolve issues.
2. Shared customer requirements. IT teams need their operations from reactive to proactive. This goal is not new. IT has always striven to identify and resolve problems before end users are affected. But the increased dependence on digital performance has raised the stakes for greater availability and faster resolution times.
3. Both evolve from traditional monitoring. Because of the limitations of traditional monitoring products addressed above, organizations are evolving to tools which incorporate AIOps and observability capabilities. Especially in response to the challenges of managing cloud-native environments. In response, vendors are evolving their Application Performance Monitoring (APM) products into both areas.
4. Common use cases. Many products in the AIOps and observability segments address use cases for DevOps and site reliability engineering (SRE) teams. Again, traditional APM vendors have focused on use cases for these teams.
5. Both are subject to over-hype. Both categories are listed in the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” according to Gartner Hype Cycle for Monitoring, Observability and Cloud Operations, 2022 (20 July 2022 ID G00770623, registration required)

Riverbed’s focus: customer pain points

Confusion will continue to exist in the market about the difference between AIOps and observability. At Riverbed, we’re focused less on the specific names of market categories, and more on addressing the needs of our customers. Unlike other observability solutions that limit or sample data, Riverbed’s Riverbed Unified Observability portfolio captures full-fidelity user experience, application, and network performance data on every transaction across the digital ecosystem. It then applies AI and ML to contextually correlate data streams based on indicators of problems to provide actionable insights.

Our newest unified observability service, Riverbed IQ automates the investigative workflows of IT experts, empowering staff at all skill levels to solve problems, fast. With Riverbed IQ, IT can eliminate data silos, resource-intensive war rooms, and alert fatigue. They can enable cross-domain decision-making, apply expert knowledge more broadly, and continuously improve digital service quality. You can register for a complimentary evaluation today.

Digital experience market confusion

The primary capabilities of Digital Employee Experience (DEX) tools, according to Gartner’s Market Guide for DEX Tools (registration required, G00764030, 31 August 2022), are as follows:

• Data Collection and Aggregation: Products should collect quantitative data on device and application inventory, performance and usage. They should also collect qualitative data on employee sentiment. Business context, such as employee location, department, as well as labor cost add value to the data above.
• Analysis and Insights: Collecting the data is just the start. Products must provide IT and the business with insights on the impact of the telemetry on digital experience. Trends in usage, performance, sentiment aligned to personas and business context help IT identify and resolve digital experience issues. Benchmarking a company’s metrics against others in the industry or geography helps in identifying and prioritizing digital experience improvement initiatives.
• Action: Actions enable IT to automate the recovery actions to issues affecting digital experience, while engagement supports interacting with employees to inform them or recommend a next step. Automated remediation is a primary means of building action into digital experience management products to reduce Mean Time to Repair and improve service for commonly expected user experience issues.

The alphabet soup of different digital experience categories

Along with the demand-side factors discussed above, digital experience has become an area of focus for a variety of vendors. As illustrated in the Gartner Market Guide for DEX Tools, several market segments overlap in digital experience management capabilities.

All the acronyms are confusing. And to make matters worse, different analyst firms and vendors define the market segments differently. To make sense of the digital experience alphabet soup, here’s an overview of various categories.

DEM: Digital Experience Monitoring

This is one of the more confusing categories. According to the Gartner Market Guide for Digital Experience Monitoring, “digital experience monitoring technologies monitor the availability, performance and quality of an end user or digital agent experiences when using a device or application.” So, the Gartner definition includes all types of end users – both employees and customers. It also includes non-human end users, in the context of Internet of Things, such as gas turbines or utility meters which may process digital services. You can obtain a complimentary copy of the Gartner Market Guide for DEM at the link above.

Now analyst firm Forrester defines DEM more narrowly. For Forrester, digital experience monitoring refers to the digital experiences of an organization’s customers, not their employees. Forrester uses a different term, End User Experience Monitoring (EUEM) when the end users are employees. See below for more on that term.

CEM: Customer Experience Management

Customer Experience Management (CEM, or sometimes abbreviated as CXM) is a broader term. Gartner defines CXM as “the discipline of understanding customers and deploying strategic plans that enable cross functional efforts and customer-centric culture to improve satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.” So, it’s a more strategic practice. CXM extends beyond IT initiatives for measuring and managing the digital experience of customers. For both Gartner and Forrester, DEM is a practice that supports CEM.

DEX: Digital Employee Experience

From the Gartner Market Guide for DEX, “DEX tools help IT leaders measure and continuously improve the technology experience that companies offer to their employees. Near-real-time processing of data aggregated from endpoints, applications, employee sentiment, along with information on organizational context, helps surface actionable insights that drive self-healing automations and engage employees, moving them toward optimal behaviors.”

So, what distinguishes DEM from DEX? Good question. I think there are two main distinctions. On the one hand, DEX goes beyond DEM by adding in the actions – the automated remediation or employee engagement – that enable IT and the business to actually improve employee experiences. Rather than simply monitoring it, DEX enables improvement through a cycle of telemetry, insights, and actions. On the other hand, DEM extends beyond DEX because it includes the digital experience of customers and non-human digital agents (think IoT), whereas DEX is solely focused on improving employee experience.

EUEM: End-User Experience Management

The Forrester Wave End-User Experience Management, Q3 2022 profiles several vendors (including Riverbed) whose capabilities enable organizations to deliver a great digital employee experience (DEX). So, for Forrester EUEM capabilities support the goals of DEX. Just like with Gartner. Unlike Gartner’s definition of DEM, however, Forrester’s definition of EUEM means that “end-user” in this case are just employees. Not customers. That’s CEM in Forrester speak. You can obtain a complimentary copy of the Forrester Wave for End-User Experience Management at the link above.

Forrester also includes capabilities like automated remediation in their evaluation criteria for EUEM. As discussed above, Gartner would include this function as part of DEX, not DEM.

UEM: Unified Endpoint Management

Are all these letters swimming around in your soup bowl making you dizzy? Well, what happens when you drop off the first “E” from EUEM to get Unified Endpoint Management? Vendors in this category collect performance telemetry that enables IT to understand the state of an employee device—laptop, PC, virtual desktop, or company-managed tablet. They also include automated remediation scripts that enable IT to speed the recovery from commonly expected performance, security, and configuration issues.

So, products in this category know lots about the devices used by employees. But they generally don’t collect metrics on actual user experience—what employees actually see when they use applications in the course of their daily jobs.

HCM: Human Capital Management

This category serves as the counterpoint to UEM. UEM focuses on device performance, but less directly on the experience of the person using the device. Human Capital Management focuses on a broad set of practices related to people resource management such as workforce acquisition, management and optimization. HCM practices encompass all aspects affecting the employee experience and overlaps with the categories above only around how the performance of their technology affects it.

Riverbed’s focus: addressing customer challenges

No matter what letters are used to describe the market, at Riverbed, we’re focused on the challenges of delivering an excellent experience, for both employees AND customers.

• Enabling IT to proactively identify and resolve issues fast, and at the lowest level possible, through AI and automated remediation.
• Empowering IT and the business with knowledge of where to invest for the biggest impact.
• And to measure that digital experience, before and after the investment, to validate the impact of change.

Unlike other vendor’s products, Riverbed Aternity delivers full-spectrum digital experience management, by contextualizing data across every enterprise endpoint, app and transaction to inform remediation, drive down costs and improve productivity. To see how Aternity can help you on your journey to improve employee and customer experience, register to begin a Riverbed Demo today. And let me know how you’re managing the alphabet soup of digital experience.

As background, DEJ based their report on survey results from over 3,300 organizations around a variety of IT performance management topics. Register here to receive a complimentary copy of the DEJ Top 20 IT Performance Monitoring Vendors report. Riverbed is prominently featured as one of the top 20 vendors, and as a Leader in eight key areas.

The importance and definition of “visibility” for IT performance management

DEJ’s study shows that 64% of organizations have either deployed observability solutions or are considering it. The difference between observability and monitoring is not that clear.

As DEJ says, organizations need to assess their environments, rethink their monitoring approach, and ensure they eliminate “blind spots” that can deteriorate business performance. This is exactly what Riverbed’s vision for Unified Observability is all about. Check out this video to learn more.

Observability is more than just APM

The market tends to use observability as an evolution of Application Performance Monitoring (APM). Used in the context of addressing the challenges of managing cloud-native environments, observability tools can help DevOps and Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) address key use cases.

But cloud-native environments are not the only highly distributed infrastructure for which IT is responsible. And this has an impact on the definition of observability within IT performance management. With tens of thousands of employees working remotely, the digital workplace has become a massive distributed system. With complex hybrid networks, network teams also need observability to address the challenges of managing modern environments.

This broader application of observability has been validated by analyst firm IDC in its recently published survey of 1,400 IT professionals. As covered in a blog summarizing IDC’s research, the definitions and use cases of observability extend far beyond just DevOps and cloud-native environments. Register for a complimentary copy of IDC’s report, “The Shift to Unified Observability.” Note that Riverbed is a sponsor of this research.

Putting everything in the business context with IT performance management

Organizations are deploying new technologies and redefining their approach to IT performance management. DEJ’s research shows that 70% of them reported that the tools they are using do not provide business context. The research also shows that organizations are losing millions by not aligning software initiatives to business outcomes. This is a process issue, not an IT performance management technology issue.

Providing insight into the business impact of IT performance has always been a priority for Riverbed. The Riverbed Aternity Digital Experience Management Platform measures digital experience as employees interact with applications in the context of a business workflow, such as “process a claim” or “look up a patient record.” In this way, IT can track the impact of slow performance on employee productivity.

Aternity User Journey Intelligence (UJI) enables application owners to measure the revenue impact of improving page performance on their customer-facing websites. Based on actual transaction data, Aternity UJI enables IT to conduct “what if” analysis to show the potential benefit of improving web page load time.

Optimization and visibility into inefficiencies

Business and IT executives surveyed by DEJ reported improving efficiency as the #1 business goal for 2022. In order to achieve this goal, organizations need to gain visibility into the areas where they are experiencing inefficiencies. As shown in the graphic below, lack of visibility causes overspending in a variety of areas, including performance, underutilized assets, engineering staff costs and cloud services, among others.

Customers use Aternity for smarter decisions about IT asset cost reduction. Because Aternity measures actual employee experience, it enables digital workplace leaders to employ a “smart device refresh” policy. Rather than replacing employee devices based solely on the age of the device, IT teams can replace only those devices which no longer provide an adequate user experience. For example, for some employees, a five-year old laptop may still provide excellent user experience. There’s no need to replace it. This approach is especially useful in an era where IT budgets aren’t increasing, and the chip shortage is interfering with supply chains. For example, one global bank used Aternity to reduce the cost of device upgrades by $10M a year through a smart refresh policy.

Get started today

If you’re not yet an Aternity customer, you can explore these capabilities by registering for a Request Demo running in your environment. You’ll see how your organization compares to the market with the benchmarking insights from millions of end points monitored in via Aternity SaaS. You’ll see how your Service Desk can drive down costs and improve service with AI-driven automated remediation. And you’ll get a view of employee experience for every app running in your environment – even SaaS and Shadow IT.

Recruiting and retaining the right talent, aligning people resources with business goals, reducing time spent on addressing performance incidents, and visibility into technology adoption by employees are some of the key focus areas. 57% of organizations see automation as the key enabler for closing the modernization skills gap in managing IT Operations. Riverbed is prominently featured as one of the key vendors in IT performance management.

The top IT performance management needs: correlating IT performance to business outcomes

The report summarizes DEJ’s survey on the importance of hundreds of technology capabilities. Topping the list of IT performance management needs, 84% of organizations selected “correlating IT performance to business outcomes.” DEJ reports that what organizations are really looking for is a capability that connects operational improvements to business outcomes in a clear and measurable way. The study shows a 32% increase in the number of organizations that are using “ability to quantify the business impact” as the key selection criteria over the last 18 months. Riverbed scored as “Leader” in this area, as well in seven other areas of key capabilities.

Enabling unique customer experiences with IT performance management

Creating and managing differentiating customer experiences is the key goal for 77% of digital businesses. As the graphic below shows, over the last 18 months, there has been a 41% increase in the mentions of enabling new and unique customer experiences as a key driver for investing in IT performance management technologies.

Riverbed’s Riverbed Aternity Digital Experience Management Platform takes a unique approach to managing digital experience from the user’s perspective. Through our “full-spectrum DEM,” we enable IT to measure and manage the digital experience of BOTH employees AND customers. Aternity has been cited by other analyst firms, such as Forrester in its recently published Forrester Wave End-User Experience Management Report, Q3 2022, for this unique approach to digital experience management.

Register to obtain a complimentary copy of the Forrester EUEM Wave Report.

War for talent

It’s no surprise that organizations are finding it hard to attract and retain top talent. Much has been written about the “Great Resignation” and the flexibility in work practices that newly empowered employees demand from their organizations. Survey data gathered by DEJ shows an increase of 2.5 times in the number of respondents who say that finding and retaining employees has become more difficult over the past three years.

As the table below shows, 30% of organizations reported employee churn due to digital services issues. Human Resources teams and Digital Workplace teams now coordinate more closely than ever to ensure they provide their employees an amazing technology experience. This is especially important in hybrid work situations in which many of the factors which can affect employee experience are beyond the direct control of IT. When employees work remotely, Wi-Fi signal strength, network bandwidth provided by the ISP, and the performance of SaaS-delivered apps all affect the user experience. IT performance management vendors like Riverbed help address these issues.

Digital workplace teams use Aternity’s capabilities for automated remediation to proactively identify and resolve issues before they affect employee experience. Self-healing capabilities enable IT teams to “shift left” and resolve issues at lower levels without escalating. Integration with ITSM tools like ServiceNow enable IT to incorporate Aternity into current workflow processes. These capabilities reduce costs, improve service, and enable IT teams to focus on the right priorities, which leads to better employee satisfaction.

Employee experience

Monitoring employee experience has become top of mind for many organizations, and as the graphic below shows, employee turnover rates are 61% lower for organizations which monitor employee experience.

In an era of rising wages and historically low unemployment rates, companies must take every action they can to hold on to top talent—especially given the challenges of ensuring a positive digital experience in “work from anywhere” environments. Digital experience management not only ensures a positive employee experience, but it also enables IT to proactively identify and resolve issues, even without employees having to call the Service Desk. Better service means happier employees, which means less frustration and less employee turnover.

Get started with IT performance management today

If you’re not yet an Aternity customer, you can explore these capabilities by registering for a Request Demo running in your environment. You’ll see how your organization compares to the market with the benchmarking insights from millions of endpoints monitored in via Aternity SaaS. You’ll see how your Service Desk can drive down costs and improve service with AI-driven automated remediation. And you’ll get a view of employee experience for every app running in your environment—even SaaS and Shadow IT.

Riverbed recently worked with consulting firm IDC to survey over 1,400 IT professionals across the world to determine the current state of observability solutions, what IT professionals want to get out of observability, and how they’re planning to invest in these solutions.  

This blog will highlight some of the key takeaways from the reporting including how IT teams look to achieve true unified observability. If you want to jump straight into the full report you can download The Shirt to Unified Observability in Management: Reasons, Requirements, and Returns. 

The current state of observability  

IDC’s survey reveals that over 90% of IT organizations currently use observability solutions. But when we drill down further, we see that IT teams aren’t exactly thrilled with current observability offerings.  

• 61% of IT teams agree their productivity and collaboration is limited by specialized tools and siloed data views.  
• 60% of IT teams believe their monitoring tools serve narrow requirements and fail to enable a unified and complete view into current operating conditions. 
• 59% of IT teams must manually troubleshoot issues to identify root causes and determine specific remedies. 
• 54% of organizations already use six or more discrete tools for IT monitoring and management. 

Current solutions simply aren’t robust or unified enough, which leads to blind spots in visibility and forces IT teams to waste a lot of time troubleshooting problems. 

Simply put, most observability tools on the market today are ineffective for addressing the changes of today’s distributed IT environments.  

Unified Observability merges silos 

When IDC asked the 1,400 survey respondents: What is driving the need to unify observability across all IT domains (applications, network, infrastructure, cloud, end user services, smart end devices)? The number one response was “Improving IT teamwork and productivity across domains.” 

For too long, discrete monitoring and performance tools have failed to connect the dots between disparate users, teams, and networks. This problem has only been exacerbated by the shift to remote and hybrid work which has added layers of complexity to an already complex IT environment.  

Riverbed Unified Observability portfolio helps break down these silos by unifying data, insights, and actions across IT. With full-fidelity user experience, application, and network performance data on every transaction across the digital enterprise, Riverbed can apply AI and ML to correlate data streams and alerts to provide actionable insights across the business.  

Unified Observability makes for happier IT talent   

Survey results indicate that Unified Observability and its ability to leverage automation in remediating tech issues would help improve working conditions within IT teams. Consider the following: 

58% of respondents agree that their organization’s most expert staff spend far too much time on tactical responsibilities. Meanwhile, 56% also agreed their organization struggles to hire and retain highly skilled IT staff.   

That is a recipe for disaster as organizations are forced to leverage their hard to find and retain staff on responsibilities far below their skill (and pay) level. It makes sense then that IDC research reveals IT managers have a strong desire to redirect staff from tactical duties to strategic responsibilities. 

Riverbed Unified Observability can help organizations do just that. It begins with capturing full-fidelity user experience, application, and network performance data on every transaction across the digital ecosystem. It then applies AI and ML to contextually correlate disparate data streams and provide actionable insights. With these actionable insights you can automate the investigative workflows of IT experts, empowering your entire IT staff to solve complex problems quickly and accurately.  

The need for Unified Observability 

Over 70% of the survey respondents believe Unified Observability is critical to delivering the best possible digital experiences for customers and employees. At the same time, 60% say that the lack of Unified Observability restricts the ability of IT teams to meet business requirements. And 59% say the absence of Unified Observability makes their job and the job of their staff and peers more difficult. 

Most IT organizations understand the promise of truly unified observability solutions but until now have been forced to patch together disparate monitoring and performance tools. With Riverbed Unified Observability, organizations can finally eliminate the data silos, resource-intensive war rooms, and alert fatigue that has plagued discrete monitoring tools for years. They can truly enable cross-domain decision-making, apply expert knowledge more broadly, and continuously improve digital service quality for their customers and employees.  

Take a deep dive into the IDC survey by downloading the report: The Shift to Unified Observability in Management: Reasons, Requirements, and Returns.