Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 19 | Page 29

+ EDITOR’S QUESTION MORTEN ILLUM, ‎EMEA VICE PRESIDENT AT ARUBA /////////////////// R ecent research by Google supports a point I have been discussing with customers for many months now; there is no real difference between the user experience and the employee experience any more. What that means is, if you expect to schedule your Sunday with your mobile phone calendar, upload photos to cloud storage and connect with people using applications, you will expect to do pretty much the same thing on Monday, when you arrive at the office. In 2018, many of us don’t feel efficient unless we’re able to access applications on demand and this applies to our work as much as our personal lives. Given we spend as much time in our offices as we do at home, we have to consider how the workplace can become better equipped to meet our daily expectations. Designing the workplace to better incorporate technology is not about being futuristic. It’s about meeting the minimum requirements that users now have. So how do we go about creating a better workspace? It starts with considering how to make everything more efficient. A win-win solution for the business and employee would be if building designers and technology companies collaborated on the designing of new, or redevelopment of, existing buildings. Working together to create a digital plan of each space, as well as the kind of structural, technical plans traditionally drawn up by those in the industry, could increase the chances of these spaces meeting the needs of its occupants. This could be as simple as re-arranging the furniture to give teams more of a chance to www.intelligentcio.com interact, with screens, docking stations and charge points to keep people productive with whatever device they are carrying. The point is, if these different viewpoints and experiences come together to create ‘smart’ workplaces, the people who work here will also be able to collaborate more – spending less time trying to find cables and connections, and more time getting the job done. Access to a secure, reliable and fast Wi-Fi connection is essential for most job roles and industries now, especially for those who are office-based or working remotely. But if the future workplace is not just connected, but smart, it can become much more pe