Keeping up with technology change

Technology changes are becoming increasingly frequent, meaning workforces need to be equipped to absorb changes well. Change management is crucial to the success of these roll-outs, particularly when your end users are frequent travellers.

If companies are unable to stay up to date with the latest versions of software and hardware they run the risk of being exposed to cyber attacks, viruses and possible data breaches. You only need to look at the news this past year to see the scale of the impact that this can have on brand and reputation.

Traditionally, operating system updates have been deployed to large global organisations with an imaged-based approach, which involves a user going to IT to get the new operating system added to their device, or if eligible, getting a new device. Both  of these require their profile and settings migrated which can be lengthy process and is impractical when your employees are working for clients around the world. If you can update your phone in an airport or in a hotel whilst on a business trip, then why aren’t you be able do the same with your work laptop? There is a growing need for large companies to empower employees to move away from a static upgrade approach and provide a stable self-service upgrade.

With the growing need to upgrade more frequently and flexibly, here a few insights from my recent experience deploying a self-serve upgrade approach to a global professional services organisation:

• If you have a number of bespoke company applications and multiple hardware types, testing with users to gain real feedback is very important. Incrementally increasing your user testing pool and gathering feedback will help reduce the risk of issues causing a major impact to your workforce and hopefully provide some persuasive statistics that you can add to your communications.
• Adoption of self-serve upgrades will be helped by highlighting the benefits that a new operating system will bring; if the upgrade doesn’t bring many new features, have a think about how you are going to get your employees to buy into the need to upgrade. Security and patch support tends to be a big driver of upgrades but what does this mean for your employees?
• Upgrade time is a big driver of employee satisfaction. Be realistic about the time it could take, to set expectations accordingly.

In a world where cars can drive autonomously, self-service upgrades within the business environment should be easy right? Well, it really depends on the scale or your organisation and the number of tailor made applications, but with the rate of technology change and level of security threats can you really afford not to?