What challenges does human-centric IT solve?
Bad reputation of IT? No common focus for IT?
How can Human-centric IT solve these and more challenges? Read on to find out.
When we founded HappySignals six years ago, we had spoken to service desk service providers and CIOs, and identified some challenges faced by Enterprise IT which we believe can be solved by moving towards a more human-centric approach in IT.
Traditional IT measurements do not capture the real value IT is providing to end-users and businesses
Traditionally, IT has focused on measuring outputs. In Service Management, that means measuring customer satisfaction (CSAT) and maintaining Service Level Agreement (SLA) targets. In Project Delivery, that means focusing on the budget and schedule, such as in digital transformation projects.
But by measuring IT in this way, we cannot truly understand how enterprise end-users are experiencing IT services, and what value IT is creating for the business. These traditional metrics do not measure, for example, whether Enterprise IT applications are making employees more efficient.
Focusing on output leads to the “Watermelon Effect”
Relying on traditional IT metrics creates a mismatch between what Enterprise IT teams think and what their end-users are actually experiencing and feeling about IT. We call this the “Watermelon Effect”, where SLAs look green on the outside but end-user experience is in fact red on the inside.
It is easy to spot the challenges that the Watermelon Effect creates in your IT organization. Most prominently, IT gains a bad reputation among end-users. Go grab a beer with an employee and start talking about IT, you will probably hear about negative and frustrating experiences. Without a clear understanding of end-user experience, it is also difficult to establish a common focus for IT across internal IT and external IT vendors in different global locations.
IT starts to make decisions based on gut feelings, rather than real end-user data. It should come as no surprise that these decisions are unlikely to support employees in the ways that they need and want to be supported.
We believe great employee experience should be the outcome of IT
This is why HappySignals exists. We want to enable IT to better understand how its various services and projects are helping end-users (or not). Enterprise IT end-users experience many different IT touchpoints, from support services to enterprise applications, computer and mobile devices, remote work, and collaboration with IT. IT needs to be able to holistically understand and quantify end-user happiness and productivity in all these different areas.
End-user experience data enables IT to achieve outcomes that matter
When end-user experience data from all touchpoints is accessible to internal IT teams, partners, and business stakeholders alike, they can form a common opinion about what areas of IT need to be improved, and how. IT then has the knowledge and justification it needs to make human-centric improvements and achieve outcomes that matter for both end-users and the business.
Is your IT organisation also facing some of the challenges I mentioned? In the first-ever episode of 'Happy in 15', my Co-founder Pasi Nikkanen and I chat about how creating a Human-centric IT can help solve these challenges. Watch it here.
If you enjoyed this content, be sure to subscribe to Happy in 15 and never miss an episode. If you prefer to read than watch, stay tuned for more blog posts like this one!
Looking for something even more bite-sized? Check out our recently released Learning Center, where we cover everything from XLAs to optimizing your ServiceNow.
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