Hype Cycle for Digital Workplace

Hype Cycle for Digital Workplace

Flying taxis and deliveries through drones through a far off notion yet seemingly possible make for a fascinating concept. Even more so while considering the digital progress the world is making today. The same applies to the digital transformation of the traditional workplace to a digital office which involves the use of the virtual equivalent of a physical workplace to enhance the efficiency and productivity of businesses.

Understanding 'Digital Workplace'

Typically, ‘digital workplace’ is a broad term technically including any business that uses computers and software with the objective of using technology to improve communication, collaboration, content management, and business processes. This involves the use of digital innovations to improve operational efficiency while meeting the business goals by aligning technology, people and business processes both in and outside of the office.

The output of a digital workplace that is workforce digital dexterity. Any business with high digital dexterity boasts of employees having optimal cognitive ability and social practice to influence media, information, and technology in uniquely creative and innovative methods. Such organizations like the best B2B agency have many options to help their workforce drive better business outcomes via the use of emerging technologies and novel ways of working that successfully make it into the last phase of the Hype Cycle.

What is the Hype Cycle?

Hype Cycle is a graphical or cyclic depiction of the various stages or phases any new technology goes through right from its conception to maturity and to its widespread acceptance followed by its adoption into the mainstream. Fundamentally, the Hype Cycle identifies five overlapping stages in a technology’s lifecycle that consists of, the ‘technology trigger’ phase depicting the conception of the technology; ‘peak of inflated expectation’ depicting the technology implementation; ‘trough of disillusionment’ representing the flaws and failures of the technology; ‘slope of enlightenment’ professing the scope of the technology to develop further applications; and finally, the 'plateau of productivity' involving the widespread implementation of the technology in the market.

Digital transformation trends in the workplace

The underlying technology that’s changing and impacting most of the businesses today is cloud technology. Its ongoing journey in Hype Cycle’s ‘slope of enlightenment’ phase is a testament of the innovations Cloud is expected to introduce in the market. Not limited to moving files and data to the cloud, its broad spectrum of services as software and a platform has changed the conventional office environment over the years impacting the in-house IT department of businesses where most of their services were taken over by cloud. Progressively a paradigm shift of businesses from a hybrid cloud environment to consumption-based IT services to determine the cost and space the business’ cloud is saving is expected to be implemented this year round. Hence, cloud undeniably is the time-tested leader in the digital workplace. Only a few reliable and best B2B consultancies are progressing towards digital workplace to serve you better.

Speech-recognition, almost into mainstream adoption

Though not highly sought-after by consumers, speech recognition is making waves in the market. One can certainly hope and anticipate its implementation in the digital workplace for enhanced efficiency as it is in the ‘plateau of productivity phase’ of the Hype Cycle. Some of the value-added implementations of speech-recognition adopted by most of the businesses are chat-bots and virtual assistants where the latter uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) for automating tasks. In fact, according to one of the surveys conducted by the creators of the Hype Cycle concluded that 4% of the businesses have already implemented Conversational Interfaces like chat-bots while 38% would likely experiment with this upcoming technology for enhanced digital workplace dexterity.

The transcendence of 'Enterprise Social Networking'

Since its inception in the 1990s and the gradual evolution of online communities and interaction in online ‘chatrooms’ to Myspace and Facebook, Enterprise Social Networking has now transcended as an emerging digital workplace trend fast adopted by many businesses today. In fact, many businesses encourage the use of social networks among its employees to promote co-operative and collaborative interactions among its workforce. SaaS along with cloud computing is now a value-added program that employers are keen on as these technologies are the popular enterprise social networks. Businesses use these networks to exchange information which is equivalent to exchanging documents in real-time.

Conclusion: Digital transformation and technology go hand-in-hand; every innovative technology must literally pass the various phases of the Hype Cycle to derive the status of being successfully promoted and implemented into the mainstream. As it is an ongoing journey determined by the lifecycle of the technology one can assume that the ones that reach the last phase, it will influence and positively impact the market for a longer span as a contributor towards the efficiency and productivity of the digital workplace measured in terms of high dexterity.