Digital Workplaces: Transforming the Way Teams Work

We’ve already seen the seemingly endless transformation that the business world has been going through in the last years. The digital transformation has exceeded all expectations in its acceleration, bringing forth the force of remote teams, distributed teams and never-before-seen flexibility in the way organizations operate.

Such a model is what brings challenges that were previously unknown to teams – like overloading or double working on tasks, inability to quickly follow up with a teammate, lack of visibility and avoidable delays.

In this article we talk about what the best digital workplace strategy is and how can you build it in a way that allows for maximum productivity.

What Is a Digital Workplace

А digital workplace is a digitized version of the traditional office environment – bringing everything and everyone you work with within a single app. That’s where you can find collaboration, data insights, team chat and discussions, project management, and all the key documents and files you need. A digital workplace brings teams everywhere the ability to align faster, work more productively and hit goals faster, thanks to the many options provided by such a tool.

Digital workplaces are a preferred method of teamwork today because:

• They save time and effort
• They help companies align goals faster with their teams
• They provide transparency in all operations
• They create easier cross-department collaboration

А digital workplace can actually be an upgrade for your team in terms of productivity and collaboration.

According to a survey by D21 Digital Index, 74% of those in employment are interested in a digital workplace and 70% of companies have improved their efficiency because of digital transformation. It combines an employee-centric approach with a drive for more productivity and improvement in process and content management.

Digital Workplace Benefits

Since the digital workplace trend is so strong, many organizations turn to it to improve the collaboration of their team. So, let’s take a look at the main benefits a digital workplace provides a business when integrated into its strategy efficiently.

Transparency & Trust

With the right digital workplace strategy, both the leaders and the team have clarity and focus in what they do. The leader sees the right things being done and has peace of mind for ownership, task tracking, and accountability. And the team, on the other hand, have clarity of what they are expected to do and communicate in ways that eliminate misunderstandings

Confident Problem-Solving & Decision-Making

Teams are empowered to move forward much more confidently with the precision provided by transparency and clear goal-setting, as well as a data-driven approach.

Increased Business Agility

A digital workplace provides the necessary adaptivity and responsiveness for all members of the team, no matter their level. It increases fluidity and speed and aligns the team to perform at the highest possible level.

Bigger Revenue

Choosing an all-in-one digital workplace can mean choosing revenue growth and a positive impact on the company’s overall positions. A digital workplace saves time by any means, makes accessing information safer and easier, and provides efficiency in collaboration with no disruptions and good visibility. An example of this is Experian, a company that has embraced digital transformation and announced a 6% revenue growth and 5% organic growth as a result of it.

Enhanced Employee Experience

By using a digital workplace, employees are rarely disconnected from each other and always stay in collaboration. Having a single space to interact, work and upload their work can increase their ability to connect, cooperate and perform to the best of their ability.

Team Flexibility

Digital workplaces provide the benefit of having your team collaborate from everywhere. That means that by using it, companies can literally hire new members of their team from anywhere in the world and use different work models – hybrid, remote, distributed, you name it. At the same time, everyone in the organization has full visibility of the progress of different projects and tasks and can see dependencies and blockers in time, so issues are resolved in time.

Digital Workplace Components

To choose the right digital workplace app your company and team need, you need to be very precise about what components it should include. Here are the components you really need, when it comes to adopting a new digital workplace.

Fast and Easy Chat Function

Teams communicate constantly in chat. Work conversations happen daily and are often the source of problem-solving brainstorms, new ideas, and project progress. So your digital workplace must have chat and discussion options built-in the digital workplace. That way, everyone can discuss tasks in context, share their input and not lose time in sifting through emails for the latest update on something.

Project and Task Management

Digital workplaces should let you track your and everyone else’s tasks, so this is definitely a component you want. Tasks show progress, dependencies, and blockers, and they also have due dates and clear ownership, so project information is open, accessible, and clear to everyone involved.

Cloud Integration

Teams use files, data insights, and documents every day and they share them with each other to drive progress faster. So it’s best to bet on a digital workplace that has good and useful integrations, for example with your favorite cloud providers, so you can pin all files you need in the same place collaboration happens. That way everyone always has the most updated file at hand and in the context of a specific project, organized.

Data Analytics

When looking for a digital workplace app, choosing one with strong analytics features is the best thing you can do. Data is a global weapon that businesses today take full advantage of when it comes to making decisions, planning ahead, analyzing current efforts, you name it. Data is best interpreted and understood in dashboards, so if the digital workplace can create them, this will be a game-changer for your team.

Uniting Everything (All-in-one)

Look for a digital workplace that has it all. App-switching is something that today makes workers lose 5 hours a week, according to a study by Qatalog. If your digital workplace combines chat, data analytics, projects, tasks and file management, this will allow your team to relax in their workflow and hit deadlines faster.

How a Digital Workplace Transforms the Way an Organization Works

According to Gartner, 74% of CFOs intend to shift some employees to remote work permanently. That in itself supports the trend of digital workplaces becoming the norm worldwide in the years to come and bringing even more transformation forward. A digital environment where teams stay connected and comfortably productive can truly shape the way an organization works and transform it for the better. But how exactly does it do that? There are three main pillars we can mention in this transformation.

Pillar 1: Uniting the Team in a Unique Way

Using a scalable digital workplace can close any gaps that may exist between your team as far as collaboration and visibility go. Bringing them in a united single space that provides good collaboration tools and integrated solutions for trackability and data, as well as having discussions in context, creates a unique unity between teammates.

Pillar 2: Built-in Technology Solutions

Having a unified digital workplace with built-in tech solutions that provide analytics, automation, and an effective system of tracking, cloud integration, and chat support can help your digital strategy thrive.

Pillar 3: Alignment of Company’s Culture

In a digital workplace, you can easily create, communicate and stick to company culture and mission that is aligned with everyone within the organization (no matter their physical location). Access to information, tools, and keeping all processes regulated can helo the team to feel included, supported, and enabled to follow the style and principles of your business on macro and micro levels.

The digital workplace strategy should go beyond just the digital and combine both the technology and the people as elements in a harmony of success and collaboration. In its essence, that’s what a transformation through a digital workplace means.

Digital Workplace Technology Examples

In the era of technology, a digital workplace doesn’t sound like something out of the ordinary. But with all available technologies, it’s not easy to cover all cross-functional needs that your team and business have. So, let’s take a look at the essentials and see some digital workplace technology examples.

Digital Marketing Campaigns

You need to be able to track data, collaborate, store ad copy and creative assets, and take action quickly and based on precise analysis. To be more agile and more productive at the same time, especially in a digital environment, online digital campaign management is a simple necessity. Having a constant overview of the workflow and progress, with status and ownership, can produce fast results and accomplished goals. This is especially valid with cross-departmental collaboration like for example in the case of the so popular ABM marketing.

Content Management

Every team knows the time loss of sifting through multiple channels to get the most current content documents they need. That might include any assets your departments might need in their everyday work. In a digital workplace, all documents can be united in a single environment and managed in a platform across the organization.

Project Launch Collaboration

Being apart physically, teams need to stay connected and communicate without a hitch. In a digital workplace, all relevant discussions on a project can stay on point and carry the necessary weight when it comes to making decisions, brainstorming, and going forward creatively and strategically. All steps, tasks, and progress need to be outlined from beginning to end, along with expected outcomes and ownership.

Data Analytics

Тhe power of data analytics cannot be underestimated when it comes to a digital workplace. Providing information and insights without requiring the need for deeper understanding or expertise by the users is powerful since data generates valuable knowledge of what has been, what comes next, and what strategy to take. Embedded analytics in digital workplaces brings more efficiency and clarity to any type of process – as well as create a data-driven culture among the organization.

How to Create a Digital Workplace Strategy

So after learning the benefits of a digital workplace for your team and business, one question remains: how to create a working digital workplace strategy, build it in a way it sticks and turn it into your team’s backbone?

We can outline three main steps in creating a working and successful digital workplace strategy for your team and business.

Step 1: Empower Your Team

This may sound simple, but it takes а lot of dedication to create a company culture that empowers its teams to be proactive, independent, data-driven, and collaborative. Empowered teams that think socially and are ready to be flexible in facilitating and creating a next-level unity and balance in a digital environment. Boosting the motivation and sense of achievement is key to transforming the way your staff thinks when it comes to being more empowered even remotely.

Step 2: Focus on Planning and Tracking

There cannot be a successful digital workplace strategy without putting the focus on task planning, following up on progress, and tracking through data insights and visibility. Organizing your team’s work around these things is a primary setup for a great digital workplace strategy that will serve its purpose to bring more productivity and success.

Step 3: Use the Right Digital Workplace Platform

With so many tools out there, it’s essential to not get lost in using many tools at once, forcing your team to app-switch in collaboration. To keep it seamless, you need to choose a platform combining the features that bring efficiency to the highest level and ensure productivity flow in your team’s daily work.

Digital Workspace Tools: Why Choose Slingshot

Аs today’s most complete digital workplace, Slingshot comes ready to become your team’s only digital workplace. The all-in-one app is built on the premise of connecting teams even when they can’t be physically present with each other and incorporates strong data-driven features, file management, and chat. Here are a few of Slingshot’s traits that can bring a team to full speed ahead.

Data at the Core

Slingshot is a business intelligence tool that provides dashboards and analytics and helps teams connect to the data in a meaningful way With data-driven characteristics it helps teams stay on top of current data for campaigns, KPI tracking, and gives them the ability to go from insight to action in seconds

Task Tracking

As a project management and collaboration software, Slingshot serves as a planning tool for the team, helping with ownership, and division of tasks and allowing for tracking the progress of everything day by day

Discussions in Context

Slingshot has chats at the task, project, and dashboard level, keeping all activity of your team united and without a need to app-switch

Clear Ownership

With its project management features, Slingshot assists with ownership, division of tasks, and keeping tabs on any issues or blocks throughout campaigns.

All Digital Assets in One Place

Slingshot unites every digital asset, including data analytics, project, task and content management, and chat, in one place, so your team can collaborate efficiently across all time zones and always have access to the most updated files. Your cloud providers are integrated into the app, allowing for the upload and/or linking to any file – so each team member has access to the most recently updated files on a task level.

Data Catalog

Slingshot has the ultimate data feature for teams that execute multiple projects: a data catalog. It serves your company cross-departmentally, bringing true knowledge and access to data dashboards from all your campaigns. It also provides the ability to assign responsibilities to make sure assets are maintained by the right users, lets you certify datasets, metrics/KPIs, and reports to promote the highest quality of data, and offers collaboration features like chat/discussions in the right context of a campaign, workspace, etc.

Are you ready to take your team to a digital workplace and bring their product to greatness? Try Slingshot today.