This is a guest blog post by Mark Wayt, Worldwide Client Platforms Architect at HPE. A version of this post was originally published on the HPE website.
SaaS tools have evolved into disparate systems that don’t interface well. Now, innovations from Citrix and HPE Pointnext Services are taking the integrated digital workplace to the next level.
When I started in IT in the early 1990s, if I wanted to take leave, I would have to find and fill out a form, usually stored in an admin file box in the IT office. If it was the last blank form, I would also have to find the copier in the main office to copy the form and restock the file box.
Then I would complete the form, find an envelope, and send it to my boss, who would manually check the stack of approved leave forms to ensure no one else requested leave at the same time. Then he would approve the form, update his planner, and send the form to an assistant, who would file the original and send me a copy of the signed form. It was time-consuming, but it was the best process available because of the limited technology at our disposal.
We didn’t have email. We barely had a network. Only the corporate line-of-business apps would use the LAN. There was no internet access apart from one dial-up machine in the IT office; no file servers (apart from a single Novell NetWare server used by the SunAccounts application in Finance); and file sharing was done by physically exchanging floppy disks.
Tech to the Rescue – and the Rise of SaaS
We had similar procedures for expenses. To comply with legal requirements, we had to fill out a form, staple receipts to the corner, and post it off to the finance department.
As new solutions and services have emerged, we’ve adopted them to make our day-to-day work easier. The consumerization of IT has meant that tools to make a job easier have also been brought into the work environment by our employees, rather than implemented by IT.
We’ve seen a move away from managing and maintaining legacy on-premises hosted instances over to the SaaS model (usually cloud-hosted) that provide specific and defined tools and workloads. Almost all of us have used elements of Salesforce, Office 365 or G Suite, Workday, ADP or SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba, SAP Concur, Workday, or Oracle. The list could go on forever, and therein lies a problem.
SaaS Re-Assessed: A Look at the Downside
These apps deliver huge benefits and are designed for a specific job rather than as general, catch-all tools. There is a downside, though — the platforms have grown fast. Many organizations now have dual cloud versions of legacy apps, which tend to have quite a bit of bloated functionality. While we’ve moved data to the cloud, we haven’t rationalized what the apps actually do. They’re trying to be all things to all people but end up overly complex.
It’s not a problem for power users. But for the average employee, doing a simple task such as filing an expense report, booking leave, or filling out a timesheet requires navigating confusing menus while switching among different, disconnected web apps. All to complete a simple task. And with such a wide proliferation of SaaS tools, there is just no way to become an expert in them all.
This can have the negative effect on our employees. They become disengaged, dealing with too many apps and too much complexity, searching for the right way to complete a task, and spending time hunting around to fill out forms within the application. A simple expense approval request can take five minutes to complete (maybe quicker if it’s single sign-on but definitely slower if you have separate passwords for each app). It leaves employees less productive and more distracted. Remember my leave form? We seem to have come full circle.
The Integration Revolution – and a Big Leap Forward
In 2014, Sapho created a platform that ties together the various SaaS apps we all use into a single pane of glass. Citrix saw the value and acquired Sapho and announced the integration of new personal workflow capabilities into Citrix Workspace at Citrix Synergy 2019. Now, Citrix Workspace has an intelligent, personal work feed, giving you a list of cards, tasks and updates, similar to how we ingest information in our consumer apps. The cards come from the different SaaS apps you use every day – for example, SAP Concur for your expenses, Workday for your leave, Salesforce for your sales opportunities and ServiceNow for your IT support desk.
Citrix Workspace intelligent feed exposes actions and notifications from these various apps. The difference? Unlike an email, you can perform actions directly in Workspace view without having to switch to the native application. That’s a huge time saver and cuts down on context switching between applications
If you’re a manager and you have an expense report to approve, Citrix Workspace will enable you to drill down into the detail within Workspace, see the content of the report, and approve or reject (with comments) without having to switch apps.
Because simple workflows occur throughout the day, it adds up to more than an hour a week per person. If you’ve got a few thousand employees, this has the potential to dramatically improve your bottom line.
But it gets better. With Citrix Workspace’s virtual assistance capabilities, you can type “how much time off do I have” and it will query the system that manages your leave and return the result. You can even ask to book leave. Virtual assistance will do it for you.
Your Expert Partner for the Next-Gen Digital Workspace
Where do HPE Pointnext Services fit? The logic that delivers notifications in Citrix Workspace comes from microapps that interface with your SaaS applications and surface the activity cards for employees to interact with. Many of the large SaaS tools are customizable, but one size doesn’t fit all. That’s where we can help you.
HPE Pointnext Services digital workplace analysts will work with the teams that own your SaaS apps, as well as key stakeholders, to optimize your Citrix Workspace implementation. Our vast experience with and understanding of the best and most efficient ways to implement workflows, along with our expertise in developing connectors for complex apps both on-premises and in hybrid-cloud deployments, mean we help you optimize for your SaaS apps but also link your on-premises legacy apps.
We can help you understanding your business pain points and which task flows would present the most value by leveraging out-of-the-box integrations in addition to customizing additional microapp integrations. Plus, when your SaaS apps change, HPE Pointnext Services will be at your side, updating the microapps and ensuring your users have a seamless experience.
And fear not. You don’t have to be a Citrix customer or even a virtualization customer to implement Citrix Workspace. HPE Pointnext Services can help you provision and configure Citrix Cloud and even provide licensing. We have experts to train your end users and show them how to get the best value out of your IT infrastructure.
We aren’t just replicating the functionality of Citrix Workspace. This is about getting the most value from all your IT investments in a single view and enabling your employees to focus on generating value for your business rather than filling in forms and context switching all day.
“Citrix is pleased to extend our long standing partnership with HPE Pointnext to transform the employee experience with the new intelligent workfeeds and personal workflows offered with Citrix Workspace,” said Vishal Ganeriwala, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Citrix Workspace. “Our customers around the world will benefit from the expertise and capabilities of HPE Pointnext Digital Workplace professionals to deliver digital workspaces that unleash the full potential of their employees and teams. Unlocking business productivity, innovation and breakthrough results for world class organizations.”
In addition, HPE Pointnext has world-class experience in deployment of other Citrix offerings such as Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, along with our own Greenlake VDI Lighthouse “VDI-as-a-service” platform. This can deliver the benefits of the cloud and integrations with Citrix Cloud (and the full benefits of Citrix Workspace), while compute workloads reside in either your own data center or in the cloud.
Learn more about HPE Pointnext Services and our best practices in leading digital transformation for today’s most innovative organizations.
