Whether we’re creating or managing on the fly with microservices, serverless compute, or containerization and APIs, digital rules everything around us. From IT operations, service delivery and asset management to even the fundamental makeup of our company’s core products and services, it’s all gone—or going—to the cloud.

Let’s assume that the average Australian university graduate enters the workforce somewhere between the ages of 21 and 24, bringing with them a qualification (or two, or three), a fierce determination to establish a secure career, and a finely-tuned radar for what’s authentic and what’s fake news.

Technology is helping enterprises simplify process and supercharge the everyday. A good employee experience (EX) is built on efficient ways of working, freeing employees from repetitive tasks to create a more rewarding workday – one that is spent on interesting, high-value projects. But for business leaders looking to deliver the experiences that employees now demand, where should they start? The short answer: good EX thrives on well-designed automation.

Many promising sprinters face a mental roadblock as they develop. Physical training and repetition propel them faster and faster, yet despite pushing their body harder each month, most still plateau. It often takes a wise coach to switch a sprinter’s mindset from simply moving quickly to moving their body with purpose, using better technique, and taking longer strides. Finance teams face a similar predicament with their monthly financial close process.

2019 was an exciting year for ServiceNow—not just in terms of business results, but in how we led a series of important conversations about the future of technology and work. On our Workflow site, thought leaders across the company weighed in on a range of timely issues, from a new manifesto for IT to a new sense of purpose for employees. Here’s some of the best thinking on Workflow from 2019.

For many employers, Gen Z is a bit of mystery. There’s no question that these young employees – between 18 and 24 – just entering office workplaces are driving the desire for more technology solutions integrated into the company. Communication, collaboration and scheduling tools are all on the list of what Gen Z wants. It’s not a surprise, given that these workers spend 10 hours on their mobile devices – every single day.

Blackhawk Network may be the most omnipresent company you’ve never heard of. As the market leader in card-based financial solutions and the largest provider of 3rd party prepaid cards, you’ve probably purchased or used one of Blackhawk Network’s gift cards, without ever knowing it was them. That’s how they like it.

Six key trends are transforming customer service—Here’s how to translate them into real business value Today, digital transformation across the enterprise is impacting customer service. The most successful companies are evolving customer service from single-channel or non-integrated multichannel into a dynamic platform for customer experience.

The new customer-centric customer service model—it’s all about resolving customer issues not efficiency and savings Are your customer service strategies shifting to align with enterprise digital transformation efforts across the business? If you’re still measuring customer service success based on how efficient and cheap it is to meet the needs of your customers, the answer likely is no.

Customer service is changing. As we mentioned in our last blog post, channels don’t matter as much—the focus has shifted to customer service effectiveness instead of efficiency.  ThinkJar’s Esteban Kolsky recently spoke to customer service practitioners as part of his annual research project about the state of customer service. According to Esteban, practitioners identified six critical trends fueling customer service innovation.