Why collaboration is key to transformation in today’s working world

By Ben Williams, - Employee experienceFuture Workplace

The way we work continues to change fast.

People have more freedom than ever: we’re liberated from the four walls of the office, and unshackled from a 9 to 5 day. There’s no doubt in my mind that this workplace transformation is a good thing and, implemented correctly, will enable our customers to attract and retain high quality skilled staff.

The digital workplace increases employees’ sense of engagement, which is crucial, since we know that organizations with engaged employees deliver 147% more profit than those with disengaged employees.

Plus, the freedom of a digital workplace drives creativity and innovation which means Fujitsu’s customers will have an advantage in an increasingly competitive global market.

But how can businesses successfully undertake workplace transformation? What’s the secret?

I think it’s collaboration. And in this blog post, I’m going to explain why.

Connect, collaborate, innovate

At Fujitsu, we’ve been partnering with Citrix for 17 years, working together to help our customers realize their transformation goals.

To get there, organizations need to give their people the tools to connect, collaborate and innovate more easily at work.

This means enabling intelligent access to applications and data for insightful decision-making, in ways that enable a great employee experience and productivity.

Key to success in assisting customers with their digital transformation journey is ensuring good collaboration between all stakeholders within the business. Technology provides a way to break down many of the boundaries which are inherent within organizations and which, more often than not, are counter-productive.

Today we, as consumers, are all too familiar with how technology can be used to simplify our personal lives. We expect there to be “an app for that”, we expect services to be personalized to the way we wish to consume them.

We have an up-and-coming generation who have not known a world where information cannot be served to them immediately via the internet on a device of their own choosing.

Employees are a company’s largest and most important asset. Businesses must learn from successes within the consumer market and build on them in order deliver a digital workplace with a rich user experience that delivers personalized, flexible and seamless solutions enabling employees to be productive.

It is this aspect of the digital transformation journey that Fujitsu and partners like Citrix are helping our customers address.

A workplace tailored to each individual

I believe that collaboration is also about making workspaces personal, so people can work better together.

This week at Synergy, Citrix announced an important new development in their portfolio. The Intelligent Experience (which is an evolution of its current Citrix Workspace) changes the game in terms of a personal workspace.

It not only provides the user with access to applications and data they interact with frequently in one screen, it also redefines the nature of work by simplifying and automating many of the time-consuming tasks we perform on a day-to-day basis across a myriad of business applications.

Though understanding how people are working and the types of tasks they are performing we can use technology such as Citrix Workspace with Intelligent Experience to remove distractions and focus people’s time on what is important. This means more productive employees, higher levels of collaboration, better and more timely decision making and increased security – all wrapped into a platform designed to deliver a rich user experience.

Start with your customer’s business challenges

Getting personal doesn’t mean employers losing control.

I believe one of the biggest challenges for IT people is the need to reinvent ourselves to be in closer partnership with the businesses we support. We must understand the demands being made of these businesses, and our customers, to remain relevant and competitive within their market.

Traditionally, IT has been far more concerned with control and standardization and less concerned with personalization and delivering user experiences which drive productivity.

At Fujitsu we provide a solution, Workplace Anywhere, which delivers on these modern principles while maintaining the controls which are important to our customers.

Partner solutions like Citrix Workspace with Intelligent Experience establishes a single cloud-based distribution point for delivering tools, performance, interactions and collaborations with ground up security. It ensures individual workspaces are aligned with enterprise business strategies such as cloud policy, so cost control and performance objectives are understood and met.

Of course, in many ways the Intelligent Experience is evidence that human centered design principles are key. Technologies like Intelligent Workspace redefining the way we all work.

I’m also thrilled that the Intelligent Experience by Citrix Workspace itself is a reflection of the lasting partnership between us at Fujitsu and Citrix.

A happy workplace starts with collaboration

As Citrix and Fujitsu customers know very well, the benefits that can be achieved through the successful adoption of the digital workplace are very real.

Technologies which underpin the digital workplace break inhibiting work structures, and empower users through integrated, automated and personalized workspaces. They deliver solutions which allow employees to engage with each other, their suppliers, their consultants, and their customers, and collaborate to achieve better outcomes.

Fujitsu’s vision for a connected workplace underpinned by technology partners and solutions like Citrix Workspaces aims to deliver more value to our customers by enabling them to maximise their investment in people and achieve greater levels of productivity.

For employees, the digital workplace offers an opportunity to deliver an enriched user experience which aims to make work enjoyable.

After all, when people have a sense of personal responsibility and satisfaction, they are more likely to be creative, greeting the challenge of change with transformational ideas and innovations.

For my money, this should be the destination for any business: productive, happy employees.

And the journey all starts with collaboration.

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