Prioritize Employee Experience To Rise Above Your Competition

While there are still open questions, 2021’s business landscape is coming into sharper focus. As the dust starts to settle, one thing is already clear: the world is more digital than it used to be, and it will continue to be so.

To learn more about how businesses are optimizing their digital operations, Salesforce Research analyzed data from 11 different research studies. While our full findings can be found in the new Trends in Workflow Automation report, this article covers key takeaways for IT teams.

Employee experience benefits customer experience — and revenue

People have long understood the connection between customer experience (CX) and revenue: satisfied customers are more likely to buy. However, according to business executives, optimizing employee experience (EX) may be similarly impactful, raising revenue both indirectly (by improving CX) and directly.

Interestingly, this relationship only goes one way. That is, while most executives agree that investing in EX leads to CX, they are far less likely to believe that enhancing CX leads to improved EX.

Additional research shows executives who prioritize EX report higher revenue growth, suggesting EX may be a key differentiator separating the most successful businesses from the rest of the pack.

In other words, when employees are empowered to do their best work, customers benefit and revenue grows.

Despite business leaders’ enthusiasm, EX can fall by the wayside

Between system integration, security enhancements, software upgrades, and more, IT teams are well-known for having too much to do and too little time. Prior to the pandemic, 58% of line of business employees already felt IT leaders were too preoccupied with keeping the lights on. Since the pandemic, IT’s digital projects have grown worldwide.

With IT drowning in so many competing priorities, employee experience has often come up short. For instance, only 21% of IT leaders say their technology maximizes employee engagement. Given employees’ evolving technology needs as work moves remote, this represents an increasingly pressing issue.

IT leaders are accelerating their automation strategies

The trend of digitalization has been growing for many years, but COVID-19 floored the gas pedal: nearly nine in ten consumers and business buyers say the pandemic elevated their expectations of companies’ digital capabilities.

Meanwhile, employees have contended with a host of new lifestyle changes, stresses, and safety protocols. With high customer demands on one side and overburdened employees on the other, a whopping 95% of IT and engineering leaders say their organizations are prioritizing workflow automation to adapt.

Workflow automation is here to stay

By automating repetitive manual tasks, businesses free up employee time for work that’s interesting and challenging, that requires creative thinking and a human touch. Teams across diverse industries and job functions choose automation to help win back time. From expediting sales packages to digitizing time tracking, workflow automation multiplies performance. And the savings are big.

No one can fully predict what the future holds, but with so many companies moving to a digital-first approach, the importance of streamlining business processes with technology is here to stay.