Dive Brief:

• Employers and tech vendors are moving away from telephone-based help desks, instead adopting artificial intelligence solutions like cognitive voice assistants, apps and chatbots, according to a report by Information Services Group (ISG).
• The trend is part of a broader effort by both parties to use analytics and automation to raise productivity and improve the user experience, ISG said. The company also projects organizations will move from traditional user profiles to "personas," which "give employees access rights based on context and measurable behavior patterns." Digital providers are also looking to extend support tools available on all devices, according to the report.
• "The digital workplace is the defining model for how end users access and collaborate on their work-related data and applications," Esteban Herrera, partner and global leader of ISG Research, said in a statement. "Providers can help enterprises create a connected, always on, collaborative and secured workplace."

Dive Insight:

Help desks and other support functions are perhaps overlooked in the discussion of digital transformation, but are nonetheless vital to ensuring new tech isn't lost in translation. One survey of federal workers found the more than half were receptive to AI-driven technology in the workplace, but they also asked for their respective agencies to offer more guidance on the tools.

As technology evolves and helps the workplace operate more efficiently and effectively, employers may note the advantages of investing in and making the digital transformation.  Those with outmoded technologies could struggle to compete for talent in coming years, according to Harvard Business Review research. It doesn't help that many HR teams feel they lack the resources needed to carry out digital transformation successfully, but HR can work to demonstrate to executives that such investments can result in long-term gains for the workplace.

To that end, the industry has its work cut out for it: only 29% of U.S. firms in a recent Telstra study had started a digital transformation, and less than a quarter think their transformation is "highly mature."