First, let me introduce myself. I joined Citrix three months ago as Director of Product Management for Citrix Workspace app (mobile and client-side cloud services). Our goal within my product management team is to optimize the digital workspace user experience on mobile devices to deliver secure mobility that accelerates productivity for employees, regardless of where they’re working.

One of the best parts of my role is all the customer conversations. It has been insightful learning how organizations of all sizes are focused on accelerating their workforce mobility plans to help employees work securely from anywhere. And it’s a privilege to share with these same customers how Citrix is focused on enhancing and expanding our mobility-related experience in conjunction with our digital workspace strategy. That’s why I’m in this role.

This brings me to why I wrote this blog post.

I wanted to share some thoughts around the existing use cases Citrix focuses on today and share some prospective use cases from organizations across industry segments. Like most companies today, Citrix recognizes the benefits of enabling employees to work from anywhere. However, I’ve noticed something a little different at Citrix. After working for several multinational companies, I was drawn to Citrix for several reasons. One of the most important was its approach to releasing solutions to market. We are our first (and biggest) critic of the solutions we release. How does that work? Let me explain!

Citrix employees — engineers, product managers, sales and services reps, and others — are the first users to test a new beta environment and/or enhancements. These Citrix employees test and use these initial releases in their daily work. They get the product or service environment and features they need to stay productive and secure. This also ensures we — all Citrix employees — can provide the best possible advice and solutions to our valued customers.

Now that you know a little about how we test our products and services, let’s look at key mobile experience initiatives we are focused on that are either in the process of being adopted or have already started to transform organizations. Let’s look at the two key use cases where mobile device and/or tablet adoption is increasing:

Mobile-First Strategy

What does a mobile-first strategy mean? Every employee doesn’t need a work laptop anymore. We are seeing organizations assessing employees based on their role, and organizations are designating a tablet as an employee’s primary device for select roles. For example, a financial consultant accessing and demonstrating different portfolio investments suitable for their customers can perform all these activities from a tablet. An insurance sales executive on the move can execute end-to-end transactions to close a deal, managing everything from sales to documentation to compliance to payment all from a mobile device with Citrix. The consultant or sales executive has secure, mobile access to all the information, applications, and activities they need.

For more interactive or complex tasks, the employee can expand their workspace in office or at home by docking their device and connecting to a larger monitor. This option typically ends up being more cost-effective for employees who are on the move. We see this use case often in law enforcement, telemedicine, car rental organizations, and other industries.

A Companion for Productivity

Whether you’re an individual contributor or a manager, you have simple but critical tasks that keep the business moving. Every employee can benefit from the convenience of quickly completing tasks like leave requests, checking the holiday calendar, approving expenses, notifying employees of the latest company news from the CEO or HR, or simply notifying sales of a hot new lead assigned to them.

I frequently get asked why the user can’t just install the associated native mobile apps to perform these tasks. Most companies have hundreds of apps running. That would mean the user would need to install each and every app — HR apps for HR related tasks, CRM apps for sales related tasks, separate expense apps. You get the picture. IT would also have to protect and secure all the information in those apps on the mobile devices.

While this is feasible with endpoint management, it hampers productivity and is cumbersome for users and admins who need to keep assets secure. Citrix Workspace app makes this all so much easier for the user and for IT. It is the single user interface for securely performing the tasks without having to open individual apps.,

Track, Perform Tasks Without Opening Separate Apps

Organizations can enable employees to securely complete these critical tasks wherever they are on their personal or corporate mobile devices, leveraging Citrix’s low-code microapp builder in Citrix Workspace. With the Citrix Workspace mobile user experience, users can leverage these notifications to perform quick tasks on the move. And, yes, these users can get a fast and productive user experience without having needing to access a VDI or virtualized desktop instance.

Hybrid work is here to stay, and Citrix will continue to focus on making it easy (and secure) to work from anywhere, on any device. Check out my colleague Chetan Thakker’s post on the Citrix Mobile Workspace Experience, and stay tuned for more around our digital workspace mobile experience.