As we dive into the 4 Ps of Workforce Transformation, we begin by examining how modern organizations are realizing greater productivity.

Today, we’ll take a closer look at the second “P” of Workforce Transformation - Platform.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, outdated operating systems, applications, and hardware can have a major impact on an organization’s competitiveness. Before you can benefit from all the bells and whistles of the latest applications and features that enable your workforce to work faster and smarter from anywhere in the world, you must first modernize your infrastructure to support workforce transformation in an increasingly digital marketplace.

Platform: Part of the 4 Ps of Workforce Transformation

When seeking to create the modern platform, we take four key areas into account: Devices, Infrastructure, Applications, and Management.

• Devices – Are you using desktops, laptops, tablets, or mobile phones? Are these devices used for work distributed by the company or are they personal devices your team brought from home? Do you have an official Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy? Do this support all the latest technologies to help keep your environment secure?
• Infrastructure – Is your infrastructure optimized to support a modern platform? Have you formulated your cloud migration strategy? Are there tools in place to enable an increasingly mobile workforce?
• Applications – Can you efficiently and securely develop, deploy, and manage apps? Are the line-of-business applications supporting your organization aligned with your cloud strategy? Do your applications support secure technologies such as multifactor authentication?
• Management – Are management and operations streamlined for simplicity? Is there a single pane of glass for managing and monitoring mobile devices as well as desktops and laptops? Are there tools in place to grant increased visibility into how your devices and applications are being used?

And encompassing your entire platform is the enablement of your people. Technology is the tool, but it can only work if the people are using it. Your team must feel comfortable using new technology and see value in newly evolved processes. Building in a change management plan is essential to any platform modernization plan.

The Path to Modernization

Managing your IT more efficiently begins with a strong platform. Those personal cell phones on which everyone is checking their work email must be safely supported. All the separate toolsets you’ve been working with for each individual application must be consolidated and simplified. Your team should be empowered to easily get what they need without a lot of wasted time and hassle.

Starting with your platform, you can move from your less efficient current state to a more productive desired state, where your IT organization is able to provide a seamless, secure, scalable experience from the desktop to the datacenter of the cloud.

Here are some of the ways in which organizations can begin moving from their current state to the desired state of Modern IT Management.

In our next blog, we’ll look at how the final "P" (People) of the Workforce Transformation framework fits in.