Know everything about the digital workplace – Definition

Temps de lecture: 6 minutes

Do you like to have your own office and documents as it pleases you? You’ll appreciate using a Digital Workplace. 

The digital workplace: a workspace accessible anywhere, at all times…

The Digital Workplace is a true digital office: a digital workspace that you can log onto at any time, on any device (laptop, tablet and mobile phone). Whether you’re at home, on the road, at your client’s office or on holiday: you’ll have access to all your work, your documents and … your colleagues as if you were at the office.

In this digital workplace, you will be able to carry out all your daily tasks and communicate with your colleagues and partners. You’ll also easily find all the information and documents that belong to you or have been shared with you. 

Are you used to juggling from one application to another – from your shared calendar to your messaging tool to your project management software – while communicating on Skype or Slack? The Digital Workplace saves you precious time: all these tools are centralized thanks to integrations (via APIs or webhooks) and interconnected to operate them from a single platform!

…which brings together all the tools you need

The Digital Workplace eliminates the need to constantly juggle between tools, thus unifying your work environment. 

This way, on a single platform, you’ll be able to find:

• your software and business applications: CRM, ERP, user support, invoicing software …;
• all communication features, natively integrated: instant messaging, videoconferencing, document sharing, etc., everything you need to share information easily and work with other team members as if they were next to you;
• shared calendars, documents that can be edited by several people, the creation of groups and communities: everything you need to facilitate team collaboration;
• your project management tool containing all the information, processes, and the status of your tasks in order to move forward efficiently;
• in this open environment, via API, you CAN add other third party applications as you need them. But a Digital Workplace should not become a marketplace for more complex business applications. It is therefore sometimes better to leave very specific business applications outside the Digital Workplace (to be defined with your CIO).

With a Digital Workplace, everyone in your company can follow their current tasks and projects from start to finish. And it makes it easy to access all collaboration and communication tools, which are directly connected to the platform (either natively or through integration).

The objective? Limit distractions instead of creating them, promote knowledge exchange and make collaborative work more fluid, including between departments and between sites of the same company. 

A true collaborative workspace

Collaborative work is very much in vogue. Work habits have evolved. Work on its own, interspersed with systematic weekly meetings to review progress, has lead in the wing. 

Are you looking to encourage the development of collaborative work and agility within your company? The Digital Workplace is your ally! And for good reason: in this all-in-one work environment, communicating with your team, helping each other and moving forward hand in hand has never been easier. 

Partners and customers can also be integrated into the Digital Workplace. Because your company cooperates – literally – with partners / service providers / subcontractors on a daily basis, so you might as well equip this cooperation in the same working environment as your internal collaboration. Most platforms allow this. An important step towards more agility, and better collaboration between all stakeholders, in a corporate ecosystem logic. 

Simplifying workflows, sharing documents quickly and easily, providing easy and secure access to information, and ensuring smooth communication – the Digital Workplace creates a work environment that enables better collaboration. 

A tailor-made work environment for your company

Using a Digital Workplace is not an end in itself. On the contrary, it should be designed from the start as a response to the specific needs of your company. Here at Talkspirit, we work hand in hand with our clients’ CIOs (Chief Information Officers) to provide an optimal user experience and offer relevant solutions to the concrete needs of teams and businesses. 

The Digital Workplace is therefore above all a tailor-made environment, which your CIO adjusts to meet the specific challenges of your company, so that each employee can have access to a working environment adapted to his or her needs and constraints. 

Each employee can set up his digital office as he would do with his physical office. Everyone has access to all useful and relevant applications. Thanks to a unique and perfectly secure identification system, all integrated applications are immediately accessible from the central platform, which acts as an information and interaction “hub”. 

Depending on their business needs, employees have access to a workspace for online work, information, communication and collaboration. They can find their personal notes, as well as all collective work information. An internal search engine allowing any information or document to be found easily. 

The proper integration of the different building blocks and applications is one of the keys to a successful Digital Workplace. This is why Talkspirit has chosen to integrate applications natively into the platform. To the point of integrating, for example, intelligent chatbots. 

Additional functional building blocks can however be added, for a 100% customized Digital Workplace, via APIs and webhooks. 

The Digital Workplace: an answer to the challenges of modern companies

We live in an increasingly uncertain world, changing at a rapid pace. Who remembers that twenty-five years ago, very few companies were connected to the Internet? Back then, 56k modems took long seconds (sometimes minutes) to load a web page! What a long way we’ve come since then…

Today’s companies are no longer companies of the past. Their stakes have evolved and their concerns have changed:

• the constant changes in their environment pushes them towards greater agility and more collaborative work;
• there is stiff competition for the best talent in a globalized labor market;
• Employees increasingly want the work they do every day to be meaningful;
• …while global labor cost inequalities have never been greater. 

The Digital Workplace thus offers an answer to each of these points:

• it encourages the development of more transversal, collaborative and agile ways of working;
• it is a real asset to strengthen your employer brand and offer a dynamic / innovative working environment;
• by streamlining internal communication, skills sharing and exchanges between employees, the Digital Workplace also improves your employees’ experience;
• the Digital Workplace offers many tools natively available on the platform, facilitating information exchange, especially with teams located offshore. This is an undeniable asset for your company’s productivity and competitiveness. 

The Digital Workplace finally has a central place in every company’s reflections on governance, risk and security issues.

5 advantages of the Digital Workplace

Are you planning to install a Digital Workplace in your company? It’s definitely a great idea. Why is it a good idea? Here’s a good overview of five major advantages that all Digital Workplaces offer:

1. Transparent communication

Is your inbox overflowing? Has finding a document in it become an ordeal? Are you convinced that some of these email exchanges are avoidable and unproductive? You’re right. 

The Digital Workplace allows you to reduce or even eliminate the use of email internally. Sharing information is just a few clicks away. And thanks to a complete prioritization of information and documents, retrieving them is a breeze. 

2. Promote collaborative work

All communication tools are grouped together in the same place, to simplify exchanges as much as possible. Teamwork, following up on your projects, completed or remaining tasks, mutual aid and sharing of skills are all encouraged. 

The Digital Workplace is thus an ideal tool to increase collaboration within your company. 

3. Say no to hoarding 

A large number of collaborative tools can prove useful on a daily basis. However, training your employees to use 15 different tools is time-consuming, costly and often counter-productive. 

Setting up a Digital Workplace also has a direct impact on work habits. Even in a context that is already familiar with digital technology, it is essential to support this change and train your employees. 

But human beings are by nature resistant to change, so it is better to ask your employees to adapt to a single tool, in which you invest, rather than fifteen. 

4. Say no to dispersion

Do you use fifteen different tools? Even after you’ve been trained on each tool, your staff still have to juggle from one to the other. And they have to separately log in before using these tools. 

The Digital Workplace, on the other hand, allows them to access all the applications they need on a daily basis by only logging in once, and not having to switch back and forth between them all the time. This saves them precious time, allowing them to be more productive and avoid dispersion. 

5. Encouraging mobile working

Last but not least, the Digital Workplace eliminates many of the possible barriers to working remotely. Your employees can access their work environment from wherever they are. The Digital Workplace knows no geographical boundaries!

As remote working becomes more standardized, as more and more people choose to work 100% remotely or freelance, the Digital Workplace adapts perfectly to the new work environment. With the Digital Workplace, the future of work … is already here!

The Digital Workplace in a few words

Thus, the Digital Workplace:

• unifies all of your company’s communication tools (email, instant messaging, corporate social network and videoconferencing) ;
• revolutionizes document management and information sharing;
• simplifies teamwork through dedicated spaces for collaborative work;
• gathers all the tools your employees need in one place;
• offers a new collaborative experience, more focused on collective intelligence. 

The Digital Workplace is therefore a digital working space that goes much further than a simple social or collaborative intranet, and cannot be reduced to the juxtaposition of collaborative tools. On the contrary, it is the most complete solution giving you an all-in-one, complete, coherent and intuitive work environment. For a simpler, more efficient, and more collaborative work. 

Would you like to know more? Wondering how to successfully implement a Digital Workplace in your company? The Talkspirit teams are available to provide you with information and support. 

Find out how to set up your digital workplace with talkspirit.

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Would you like to know more? Wondering how to successfully implement a Digital Workplace in your company? The Talkspirit teams are available to provide you with information and support.

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Authors: Paul Maubaret, Benoît Renoul