Gartner Digital Workplace Summit revisited

This week London was calling – and we happily followed to represent SER at the Gartner Digital Workplace Summit. At what was undoubtedly the biggest Gartner summit to date, 700+ digital enthusiasts congregated to delve deeper into digitalization trends, developments and information, learning how people (employees, customers, partners) can directly benefit from digital workplace strategies and implementations.

Keeping audiences rapt, the two-day agenda offered a stimulating mix of conference sessions held by Gartner and selected guest speakers, a bustling exhibition hall and plenty of networking opportunities. We have now returned to the office exhilarated by our many new insights and impressions from the sessions, from conversations at our booth, from so much networking, and from exchanging ideas with Gartner analysts.

In line with this year’s theme “Transforming Engagement, Inspiring Innovation”, the summit was all about people and how they work and collaborate in today’s digital society. Gartner hit the nail right on the head with its opening key note, which explored connections in the digital society and how people and things interact. The “distributed self” is described as the new digital, connected archetype. But how does privacy fit into this new scenario? In Frank Buytendijk’s mind “Privacy Is a Context, Not a Place” – maybe I am just not there yet. Connections = existence – a bold statement, but possibly not so far away anymore. The new connectiveness will also impact, transform and inspire a vast range of (new) business models, e.g. taking the existing models of connected houses to the next level or the broad rise of robots in society.

So much for the future, here’s a little something that is closer to our business case. Gartner analyst Mike Woodbridge discussed the influence of content services on a flourishing digital workplace. Content is “an asset to utilize” and with this an integral part of the digital transformation. To bring the digital transition to life, a vision, strategy and architecture are key. In an ideal world, the evolution of ECM, EFSS, WCM and portals into content services covers all of the needs of employees, partners and customer. It also covers a range of components such as access, user experience, functionality, data and more. When it comes to the actual implementation, finding a balance between benefits and risks is recommended.

One of my personal highlights was our shared speaker session with Helvetia Versicherungen. In the 30-minute slot Helvetia’s Markus Saladin, Head of ECM, and Michael Schwendimann, Business Engineer, shared in-depth project insights on how they are digitizing the entire company and how Doxis as their ECM platform ties into this encompassing project. Helvetia not only uses the ECM capabilities of Doxis, but also our case management, workflow and BPM engine utilizing the same content and metadata. The audience benefited from the speakers’ extensive knowledge of both strategy and technology. What’s more, they explained the use case in a pragmatic and engaging way. For those audience members who are in the midst of their own digitization process, the use case certainly struck a chord. They walked away with a lot of valuable advice and food for thought from Helvetia.

Evening came, and even us digital enthusiasts need to have a proper sit-down meal sometime. So, on Monday night, we gathered our team, some customers and prospects and headed out into the London culinary scene. Choosing a restaurant ended up being one of the harder decisions of the day, but we made the right one and went to the fabulous Ham Yard in Soho. In this bohemian atmosphere with international fare, our daytime talks deepened into more elaborate discussions. The restaurant charmed us with its vibrant and lively atmosphere. This was no ordinary Monday night.

We look forward to upcoming events and to meeting new and familiar faces to talk about the digital workspace, ECM and other trends.