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The Employee Experience
Is Broken. Can IT Fix It?
Transcript of a discussion on how a European IT consultancy is looking to the latest digital technologies
from Citrix to transform how its 11,000 employees work.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Citrix Systems.
Dana Gardner: Hi, this is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and you’re
listening to BriefingsDirect. Our next intelligent workspaces discussion explores how businesses
are looking to the latest digital technologies to transform how employees work.
There is a tremendous amount of noise, clutter, and distraction in the scattershot, multi-cloud
workplace of today -- and it’s creating confusion and frustration that often pollute processes and
hinder innovative and impactful work.
We’re here to examine how IT can elevate the game of sorting through apps, services, data,
and delivery of simpler, more intelligent experiences that enable people -- in any context -- to
work on relevancy and consistently operate at their informed best.
To illustrate new paths to the next generation of higher
productivity work, I’m pleased to welcome Marco Stalder, Team
Leader of Citrix Workspace Services at Bechtle AG, one of
Europe's leading IT providers. Welcome, Marco.
Marco Stalder: It’s very nice to be here.
Gardner: We are also here with Tim Minahan, Executive Vice
President of Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer at Citrix.
Welcome back, Tim.
Tim Minahan: Hey, Dana. Thanks for having me.
Gardner: Tim, improving the employee experience has become a hot topic, with billions of
productivity dollars at stake. Why has how workers do or don't do their jobs well become such a
prominent issue?
Who’s got talent?
Minahan: The simple answer is the talent crunch. Just about everywhere you look, workforce,
management, and talent acquisition have become a C-suite level, if not board level, priority.
And this really boils down to three things. Number one, demographically there is not enough
talent. You have heard the numbers from McKinsey that within the next year there will be a
shortage of 95 million medium- to high-skilled workers around the globe. And that’s being
exacerbated by the fact that our traditional work models -- where we build a big office building or
a call center and try to hire people around it -- is fundamentally broken.
Stalder

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The second key reason is a skills gap. Many companies are reengineering their business to
drive digital transformation and new digital business or engagement models with their
customers. But oftentimes their employee base doesn’t have the right skills and they need to
work on developing them.
The third issue exacerbating the talent crunch
is the fact that if you are fortunate enough to
have the talent, it’s highly likely they are
disengaged at work. Gallup just did its global
Future of Work Study and found that 85
percent of employees are either disengaged
or highly disengaged at work. A chief reason
is they don’t feel they have access to the
information and the tools they need to get
their jobs done effectively.
Gardner: We have dissatisfaction, we have a hard time finding people, and we have a hard
time keeping the right people. What can we bring to the table to help solve that? Is there some
combination of what human resources (HR) used to do and IT maybe didn’t think about doing
but has to do?
Enhance the employee experience
Minahan: The concept of employee experience is working its
way into the corporate parlance. The chief reason is that you
want to be able to ensure the employees have the right
combination of physical space and an environment conducive
with interacting and partnering with their project teams -- and for
getting work done.
Digital spaces, right? That is not just access to technology, but a
digital space that is simplified and curated to ensure workers get
the right information and insights to do their jobs. And then,
obviously, cultural considerations, such as, “Who is my
manager, what’s my development career, am I continuing to
move forward?”
Those three things are combining when we talk about employee experience.
Gardner: And you talked about the where, the physical environment. A lot of companies have
experimented with at-home workers, remote workers, and branch offices. But many have not
gotten the formula right. At the same time, we are seeing cities become very congested and
very expensive.
Do we need to give people even more choice? And if we do, how can we securely support that?
Minahan: The traditional work models of old just aren’t working, especially in light of the talent
crunch and skills gap we are seeing. The high-profile example is Amazon, right? So over the
Gallup just found that 85 percent of
employees are either disengaged or
highly disengaged at work … they
don’t feel they have access to the
information and the tools they need
to get their jobs done effectively.
Minahan

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past year in the US there was a big deal over Amazon selecting their second and third
headquarters. Years ago Amazon realized they couldn’t hire all the talent they needed in Seattle
or Silicon Valley or Austin. Now they have 17-odd tech centers around the US, with anywhere
from 400 to several thousand people at each one. So you need to go where the talent is.
When we think about traditional work models -- where we would build a call center and hire a lot
of people around that call center – it’s fundamentally broken. As evidence of this, we did a study
recently where we surveyed 5,000 professional knowledge workers in the US. These were folks
who moved to cities because they had opportunities and they got paid more. Yet 70 percent of
them said that they would move out of the city if they could have more flexible work schedules
and reliable connectivity.
Gardner: It’s pretty attractive when you can get twice the house for half the money, still make
city wages, and have higher productivity. It’s a tough equation to beat.
Minahan: Yes, there is that higher productivity thing, this whole concept of mindfulness that’s
working its way into the lingo. People should be hired to do a core job, not spending their days
doing things like expense report approvals, performance reviews, or purchase requisitions. Yet
those are a big part of everyone's job, when they are in an office.
You compound that with two-hour commutes, and
that there are a lot of distractions in the office. We
often need to navigate multiple different
applications just to get a bit of the information that
we need. We often need to navigate multiple
different applications to get a single business
process done and that’s just not dealing with all
the different interfaces, it’s dealing with all the
different authentications, and so on. All of that
noise in your day really frustrates workers. They feel they were hired to do a job based on core
skills they are really passionate about – but they spend all their time doing task work.
Gardner: I feel like I spend way too much time in email. I think everybody knows and feels that
problem. Now, how do we start to solve this? What can the technology side bring to the table
and how can that start to move into the culture, the methods, and the rethinking of how work
gets done?
De-clutter intelligently
Minahan: The simple answer is you need to clear way the clutter. And you need to bring
intelligence to bear. We believe that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) play a
key role. And so Citrix has delivered a digital workspace that has three primary attributes.
First, it’s unified. Users and employees gain everything they need to be productive in one unified
experience. Via single sign-on they gain access to all of their Software as a service (SaaS)
apps, web apps, mobile apps, virtualized apps, and all of their content in one place. That all
travels consistently with them wherever they are -- across their laptop, to a tablet, to a
smartphone, or even if they need to log on from a distinct terminal.
Workers feel that they were hired
to do a job based on core skills
that they are really passionate
about -- but they spend all their
time doing task work.

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The second component, in addition to being unified, is being secure. When things are within the
workspace, we can apply contextual security policies based on who you are. We know, for
example, that Dana logs in every day from a specific network, using his device. If you were to
act abnormally or outside of that pattern, we could apply an additional level of authentication, or
some other rules like shutting off certain functionalities such as downloading. So your
applications and content are far more secure inside of the workspace than outside.
The third component, intelligence, gets to
the frustration part for the employees.
Infusing ML and simplified workflows --
what we call micro apps -- within the
workspace brings in a lot of those
consumer-like experiences, such as
curating your information and news
streams, like Facebook. Or, like Netflix, it
provides recommendations on the content
you would like to see.
We can bring that into the workspace so that when you show up you get presented in a very
personalized way the insights and tasks that you need, when you need them, and remove that
noise from your day so you can focus on your core job.
Gardner: Getting that triage based on context and that has a relevancy to other team processes
sounds super important.
When it comes to IT, they may have been part of the problem. They have just layered on more
apps. But IT is clearly going to be part of the solution, too. Who else needs to play a role here?
How else can we re-architect work other than just using more technology?
To get the job done, ask employees how
Minahan: If you are going to deliver improved employee experiences, one of the big mistakes
a lot of companies make is they leave out the employee. They go off and craft the great
employee experience and then present it to them. So definitely bring employees in.
When we do research and engage with customers who prioritize on the employee experience,
it’s usually a union between IT and human resources to best understand what the work is that
an employee needs to get done. What’s the preferred environment? How do they want to work?
With that understanding, you can ensure you are adapting the digital workspaces -- and the
physical workplaces -- to support that.
Gardner: It certainly makes sense in theory. Let’s learn how this works in practice.
Marco, tell us about Bechtle, what you have been doing, and why you made solving employee
productivity issues a priority.
Stalder: Bechtle AG is one of Europe’s leading IT providers. We currently have about 70
systems integrators (SIs) across Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, as well as e-commerce
businesses in 14 different European countries.
Infusing ML and simplified workflows –
what we call micro apps – within the
workspace brings in a lot of those
consumer-like experiences, such as
curating your information and news
streams, like Facebook.

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We were founded in 1983 and our company headquarters is in Neckarsulm, a small town in the
southern part of Germany. We currently have 10,300 employees spread across all of Europe.
As an IT company, one of our key priorities is to make IT as easy as possible for the end users.
In the past, that wasn't always the case because the priorities had been set in the wrong place.
Gardner: And when you say the priorities were set in the wrong place, when you tried to create
the right requirements and the right priorities, how did you go about that, what were the top
issues you wanted to solve?
Stalder: The hard part is gaining the balance between security
and user experience. In the past, priorities were more focused on
the security part. We have tried to shift this through our Corporate
Workspace Project to give the user the right kind of experience
back again, and letting it show in the work and focus on what the
user has to do.
Gardner: And just to be clear, are we talking about the users that are just within your
corporation or did this extend also to some of your clients and how you interact with them?
Stalder: The primary focus was our internal user base, but of course we also have contractors
that externally have to access our data and our applications.
Gardner: Tim, this is yet another issue companies are dealing with: contingent workforces,
contractors that come and go, and creative people that are often on another continent. We have
to think about supporting that mix of workers, too.
Synchronizing the talent pool
Minahan: Absolutely. We are seeing a major shift in how companies think of the workforce,
between full-time and part-time contractors, and the like. Leading companies are looking around
for pools of talent. They are asking, “How do I organize the right skills and resources I need?
How do I bring them together in an environment, whether it’s physical or digital, to collaborate
around a project and then dissolve them when that project is complete?”
And these new work models excite me when we talk about the workspace opportunity that
technology can enable. A great example is a customer of ours, eBay, which people are familiar
with. A long time ago, eBay recognized that they could not get ahead of the older call center
model. They kept training people, but the turnover was too fast. So they began using the Citrix
Workspace together with some of our networking technologies to go to where the employees
are.
Now they can go to the stay-at-home parent in Montana, the retiree in Florida, or the gig worker
in New York. In this way, they can Uberfy the call center model by giving them, regardless of
location, the applications, knowledge base, and reliable connectivity they need. So when you or
I call in, it sounds like we are calling into a call center, and we get the answers we need to solve
our problems.
The hard part is
gaining the balance
between security and
user experience.

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Gardner: Marco, your largely distributed IT organization has permeable boundaries. There isn’t
a hard wall between you and where your customers start and end. The Citrix Workspace helped
you solve that. What were some of the other problems, and what was the outcome?
Stalder: One of the main criteria for Bechtle is agility. We have been growing constantly for the
last 36 years. Bechtle started as a small company with only 100 employees, but organic and
inorganic growth continues, and we are still growing quite rapidly. We just acquired another four
companies at the end of last year, for example, with 400 to 500 employees. We need to on-
board them quickly.
And our teams are spread around different office locations; even my team, for example. I am
based in Switzerland with four people. Another part of our group is in Germany, and I have one
colleague in Budapest. Giving all of these people the correct and secure access to all of their
applications and data is definitely key.
As an IT company, we also have to adapt to new technologies rapidly and quickly, probably
faster than other companies because we want to be ahead of the technology for our employees.
We are selling these same solutions to our customers, along with the same experience -- and a
good experience.
Gardner: We often call that drinking your own champagne. Tell us about the process through
which you evaluated the Citrix Workspace solution and why that’s proven so powerful.
One platform to rule them all
Stalder: In early 2016, we began with a high-level design for a basic corporate workspace. We
began with an on-premises design, like a lot of companies. Then we were introduced to
something called Citrix Cloud services by our partner manager in Germany.
In January 2017, we started to think about the Citrix Cloud solution as an interesting addition to
what we were already planning. And we quickly realized that the team I am leading -- we are six
to eight people with limited resources – could only deliver all those services out to our end users
with help. The Citrix Cloud services were a perfect fit for the project we wanted to do.
There are different reasons. One is
standardization, to build and use one platform
to access all of our applications, data, and
services. Another is flexibility. While most of
our workloads are currently in our own data
centers in Germany, we are also thinking
about bringing workloads and data out to the
cloud. It doesn’t matter if it’s Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), or you name it.
Another benefit, of course, is scalability. As I said, we have been growing a lot and we are going
to grow a lot more in the future. We really need to be able to scale out, and it doesn’t matter
where the workload is going to be or where the data is going to be at the end.
One reason [we chose Citrix Cloud
services] is standardization, to build
and use one platform to access all of
our applications, data, and services.

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And, as an IT company, we are facing another issue. We are selling different kinds of IT
products to our customers, and people tend to like to use the product they are selling to their
customers. So we have to explore and use different kinds of applications for different tasks.
For example, we use Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx Teams, as well as Skype for Business.
We are using many other kinds of applications, too. That perfectly fits into what we have seen
[from Citrix at their recent Synergy conference keynote]. It brings it all together in the Citrix
Workspace using micro apps and micro services.
Another important attribute is efficiency. As I said before, with seven or eight IT support people,
we cannot build very complex and large things. You have to focus on doing things very
efficiently.
Another really important thing for us as
we set up the workspaces project is
engaging with the executive board of
Bechtle. If we find that those people are
not standing behind the idea and
understanding what we are trying to do,
then the project is definitely going to fail.
It was not that easy, just telling those board people what we would like to do. We had to build a
proof of concept system to let them see, touch, and feel it themselves. Only in this way can one
really understand it.
Gardner: Of course, such solutions are a team sport. You don’t just buy this out of the box.
Digital transformation doesn’t come with a pretty ribbon on it. How did you go about creating this
workspace?
There is IT in team
Stalder: It was via teamwork spread between different kinds of groups. We have been working
very closely with Citrix Consulting Services in Germany, for example. We have been working
together with the engineers within our business units who are selling and implementing those
solutions within our customers.
And another very important part, in my opinion, was not just engaging the Citrix people, but also
engaging with the application owners. It doesn’t really help if I give them a very nice virtual
desktop and they are able to log-on fast but they don’t have any applications on it. Or the
application doesn’t work very well. Or if they have to log-on again, for example, or configure it
before using it. We tried to provide an end-to-end solution by engaging with all of the different
people -- from the front-end client, to the networking, and through to the applications’ back end.
And we have been quite successful. For example, for our main business applications, SAP or
Microsoft, we have been telling the people what we want to do to get those application guys on
board. They understand what it means for them. In the past we had been rolling out version
updates for 70 different locations.
It’s really important to engage the executive
board, [because] if we find that those
people are not standing behind the idea and
understanding what we are trying to do,
then the project is definitely going to fail.

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They were sending out emails saying, “Can you please go to the next version? Can you please
update to this or that?” That, of course, requires a lot of time and is very hard to troubleshoot
and configure.
But now, by standardizing those things together [as a
workspace], we can deploy it once, configure it once,
and it doesn’t matter who is going to use it. It has made
those rollouts much easier. For example, for our virtual
apps and desktops, we just reached about 30 percent
of our employees. It's being done in a highly
standardized project basis across every business unit.
We also realized the importance of informing and guiding the people as to how they have to use
the new solutions, because it’s changing and some people, they react a bit slow to change. At
first they say, “I don’t want to try it. I don’t need it.” It was a learning process to see what kind of
documentation and guidance the people needed.
The changes are simple things [that deliver big paybacks]. Because if the people can take a PC
back home and use a VPN to connect to their company resources, they may no longer need
that PC. They can simply use any device to access their work from home or from on the road.
Those are very simple things, but people have to understand that they can do that now.
Gardner: As I like to say, we used to force people to conform to the apps and now we can get
the apps and services to conform to what the people want and need.
But we have talked about this in terms of the productivity of the employee. How about your IT
department? How have your IT people reacted to this?
Stalder: I also needed a lot of time to convince the IT people, especially some security guys.
They said, “You are going to go to Citrix Cloud? What does it mean for security?”
We have been working very closely with Citrix to explain to the security officer what kind of data
goes to the cloud, how it’s stored, and how it’s processed. And that took quite a while to get
approval, but at the end it went through, definitely.
The IT guys have to understand and use the solution.
They sometimes think that it’s just for the end users. But
IT is also an end user. They have to get on board and use
the solutions. Only in this way everyone knows what the
other one is talking about.
Gardner: Now that you have been through this process and the workspace is in place, what
have you found? What are the metrics of success? When you do it well, what do you get back?
Positive feedback
Stalder: Unfortunately, measuring productivity is very hard to do. I don’t have any numbers on
that yet. I just get feedback from employees who are talking about different things as they try the
system.
By standardizing those things
[as a workspace], we can
deploy it once, configure it
once, and it doesn’t matter
who is going to use it.
IT is also an end user.
They have to get on board
and use the solutions.

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And I have quite an interesting story. For example, one guy in our application consulting group
was a bit skeptical. One day his notebook PC was broken so he had to use the new Citrix
Workspace. He had no choice but to try it.
He wrote back some very interesting facts and figures, saying it was faster. It was faster to log
on and the applications started faster. And it was easy to use. Because he does a lot of
presentations and training, he realized he could start the work on one device and then switch
back to another device, maybe in the meeting room or go to the training room, and just continue
the work.
We also get feedback saying they can work from everywhere, can access everything they need,
especially if they go out to the customer, and that they only have to remember one place to log
on to. They just log-on once and they have all the data and all the applications they are going to
need.
Gardner: Tim, when you hear about such feedback from Marco, what jumps out at you?
Minahan: What stands out is the universal challenge we are all experiencing now. The
employee experience is less than adequate in most organizations. It is impacting not only the
ability to develop and retain great talent, but it’s also impacting your overall business.
What also stands out is that when technology is harnessed in a way that puts the employee first
-- and drives superior experience to allow them to have access to the information and the tools
they need to get their jobs done -- not only does employee retention go up, but you also drive
better customer experiences, and better business end results.
The third thing that stands out is the recognition that
traditionally we in the IT sector focused on putting security
in the way of the experience. Now, if you put the employee
at the center, we are beginning to attain a better balance
between experience and security. It’s not an either-or
equation anymore. This story at Bechtle is a great example
of that in reality.
Gardner: What was interesting for me, too, was that employees get used to the way things are.
You hit inertia. But when a necessity crops up, and somebody was forced to try something new,
they found that there are better ways to do things.
Minahan: Right, it’s the old saw … If you only asked folks what they wanted, they would want a
faster horse -- and we never would have had the car.
Gardner: I’m afraid we will have to leave it there. You have been listening to a sponsored
BriefingsDirect discussion on how businesses look to the latest digital technologies to renew
their work methods to transform the employee experience. And we have learned how IT can
elevate the game by sorting through apps, services, and data to deliver a simpler, more
intelligent experience that enables people in context to focus on their relevant work.
A big thank you to our guests, Marco Stalder, Team Leader of Citrix Workspace Services at
Bechtle, one of Europe’s leading IT providers. Thank you.
If you put the employee at
the center, we are
beginning to attain a better
balance between
experience and security.

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Stalder: My pleasure, Dana.
Gardner: We have also been here with Tim Minahan, Executive Vice President of Strategy and
Chief Marketing Officer at Citrix. Thank you, sir.
Minahan: Thank you, Dana. Always a pleasure.
Gardner: And a big thank you as well to our audience for joining this BriefingsDirect intelligent
workspaces interview. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host
throughout this series of Citrix-sponsored BriefingsDirect discussions. Thanks again for
listening, and do come back next time.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Citrix Systems.
Transcript of a discussion on how Citrix is charting a new future of work that abstracts productivity above
apps, platforms, data, and clouds to empower, energize, and enlighten workers while simplifying and
securing anywhere work across any deployment model. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2019.
All rights reserved.
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