
THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW
Highlighting best practice
42 | INTERACT
The changing face of the
digital workplace
Consumerisation has grown in the
workplace: our employees are the new
customers. They are now our greatest
brand advocates and our biggest
reputational liability. They can review
us, promote us or indeed expose us.
Investing in the employee experience
has a positive impact on engagement,
productivity and the success of an
organisation – and the intranet is a key
piece of that puzzle.
Social networking and consumer
technology have also filtered into the
workplace. Employees are not only
familiar and confident with adopting
new technology; they expect it.
Substandard internal systems and
processes not only cause frustration; they
can cost us our employees. By evolving
the Interact platform to incorporate
familiar and practical social and
collaboration features, we’ve been able
to help our customers tap into – and
cater for – the needs of an increasingly
digitally demanding workforce.
Finally, we’ve seen work-life balance
and flexible working rising on the
business agenda. Thanks to technology,
employees can now work from
anywhere, at any time; but to get the job
done, they need access to the right tools
and information. By connecting remote
employees to knowledge, colleagues
and business applications, Interact offers
what many organisations are desperately
seeking: a virtual workplace and culture,
beyond the physical walls ofthe office.
External enablers
In 2015, the cloud computing market
was already worth $67billion, and
is projected to grow to $162billion
by 2020. We saw this as a huge
opportunity for us and in 2015 we
began to shift our offering from on-
premises to a cloud-based SaaS model.
This has seen Interact not only grow its
top-line revenue, but has also overseen
our provision of a more efficient and
effective service to our customers.
As a cloud provider, we can satisfy the
increasing need and expectation for
continual updates to software features
and functions. This ability to provide
and support our software remotely
has enabled us to expand rapidly into
international markets, particularly the
US, where we have seen 60 per cent
growth year on year.
Alongside this has been the shift
towards opening up of application
programming interfaces (APIs), giving
solutions the ability to integrate with
each other. The industry is seeing the
value of working together to improve
the experience for the consumer, both
inside and outside of the workplace.
Now, employees no longer expect to
jump from one application to another
to find what they need. With a user-first
mindset, we’ve been able to position
Analytics provide
valuable insights into
the performance of
customers’ intranets and
where improvements
can be made
Consumerisation
has grown in
the workplace:
our employees
are the new
customers
“
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