In our final episode of The Change Makers, we learn that with enough ambition, drive, and backing, IT practitioners can challenge the status quo and create a new era of IT efficiency. “Transformation isn’t a start and a stop process. It’s a continuous evolution, continuous change.” That’s Derek Rose, Group Head of IT and Deputy CIO at V.Group. After joining the maritime services company in 2019, he set about overhauling its entire IT operations.

KPIs and Metrics are Essential Transformation Yardsticks—But So Is Experience. Although many IT leaders launch into projects with set goals, there’s no telling what sort of unexpected consequences will emerge. In episode 4 of The Change Makers podcast, you’ll see how you can plan and predict certain benefits, but several successful business outcomes arrive serendipitously. Take Lucy Hallam, Service Desk Manager at Croydon Health Services NHS Trust.

As a modern enterprise your digital infrastructure – in all likelihood – is a multi-tiered, evolving, and expanding combination of services built on next-gen technologies. This dynamic configuration of servers, networks, applications, routers, etc. provides you with the agility to respond to rapidly changing customer demands. But it also tests the resilience of your digital infrastructure. Each microservice, each integration, each little update can snowball into a major outage.

IT Transformation Is More Than Technology—Its People, Culture, and Policy If you think introducing a shiny new tool or service is transformation. Think again. Our changemakers wrought fundamental change in how people work, communicate and collaborate. In episode 2 of The Change Makers we investigate how changemakers plan their work; set up their vision, objectives, and roadmap. And we learn how IT transformation often begins with something other than technology.

The new normal has brought in new opportunities and new challenges. Technology plays an integral role in keeping your employees engaged in this new normal. It’s not enough to have any old technology but the right technology that drives engagement and helps your employees succeed in this digital workplace. Engaged teams are 17% more productive, show 24% to 59% less turnover and 21% greater profitability than the disengaged teams.

A broad enthusiasm for AI is already evidenced by the technology’s adoption within many organizations in 2021. In a recent multinational survey conducted by IDG, we found that more than one-quarter (27%) of the survey respondents have fully deployed AI-enabled ITSM/ITOM solutions, and another 34% have made initial deployments in select use cases and departments. At the same time, another 32% are exploring AI-based solutions or gathering information about them.

“Winning doesn’t always mean being first. Winning means you’re doing better than you’ve ever done before” – Bonnie Blair, five-time Olympic gold medalist. By that definition, Freshworks is a clear winner. Recording a personal best, Freshworks has been positioned on the Challengers quadrant in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for ITSM Tools.

It all starts with asking yourself how you would rate the IT portal’s employee experience at your organization. Think about it. Do your employees love using your IT self-service portal? Or do they simply put up with it to get work done? In a recent webinar on IT self-service portals and their effect on employee engagement, 42% of organizations said their employees aren’t the biggest fans of their organization’s IT self-service portal but still use it.

An employee’s last day at work is almost as significant as their first one. It commemorates all the learnings, experiences, and memories they have gathered during their journey in a company. Imagine on a day like that, when you are full of nostalgia and maybe relief (wink wink), having an offboarding process that has you running around the office like Jerry can be such a mood kill.

Employee expectations of the workplace are rapidly evolving, and consumer-like experiences quickly become a benchmark to measure internal support teams. A research report from Harvard Business Review Analytics Services and Freshservice found that 82% of those surveyed say employee happiness is impacted by how well workplace technology performs.