Priority topics as voted by 110 organizations worldwide in the July 2013 Quick Poll for the 2014 Digital Workplace Survey. Lots of food for thought for digital practitioners and their eco-system of partners, consultants, agencies and vendors.

1. What do you want to see in
“Digital Workplace Trends 2014”?
Results of pre-survey Quick Poll conducted in July-
August 2013 with responses from 110 people.

2. Voices from the trenches: 77% of poll participants are practitioners
The Quick Poll was anonymous and invited practitioners, agencies, consultants and
vendors to participate. The responses were predominantly from practitioners, which is
normal since they are and have been the actual survey participants over the last 7
years.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Agency
Technology/solution provider
Other
Consultancy or solo consultant
Digital practitioner (salaried, inside an organization)
%N = 110 participants

3. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Involving workforces in emerging economies ( e.g.BRIC)
Investment priorities
Communities of practice: impact on adoption, on business
Multi-lingual issues and solutions
Enabling the customer-facing workforce
Enabling the floor-field workforce
Video for sharing knowledge/ information
Cloud: how and what
Security: issues, solutions
E-learning, new approaches to training and talent development
Impact & relations between physical workplace & digital workplace
Community management
Definition of the digital workplace: components, "pieces"
Senior management: buy-in, role, involvement
Measurement and ROI: quantitative, qualitative
Governance: policies, roles, digital board
Social collaboration capabilities: deployment and adoption
Change facilitation, overcoming obstacles, encourage new ways of
Mobile, services, BYOD
Integration of social colla. capabilities into enterprise processes
Social, mobile and change, top priority topics
Priority for over 50% of
Quick Poll participants
Priority for over 30% of
Quick Poll participants
%N = 110 participants

4. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Using the DW to better serve external customers
Getting senior management buy-in and support
Involving middle management
New ways of working, new roles from HR perspective
Empowering people to take initiatives and responsibility
Increasing adoption of social collaborative ways of working
New ways of working, new roles from Communication
ROI from internal social networking: quantitative, qualitative
%N = 110 participants
“ROI from social networking” tops the list of “in practice” cases.
Priority for over 50% of
Quick Poll participants
Priority for over 30% of
Quick Poll participants

5. Trends in the form of
data displayed in charts
and diagrams, with
analysis and comments
Stories and "in practice"
case studies from real
organizations with
observations about good
practices
What balance is the most useful for you between “data and analysis”
and “in practice” case studies?
The short answer: “We want both!

6. Appendices
Verbatim from quick poll participants:
• Additional suggestions for “Priority topics for DW Trends 2014
survey”
• Additional suggestions for “Preferred topics for mini cases and
success stories”
• Free text on “Balance between data and cases”
• Comments in general
Priority topics segmented by “practitioner” and “agency,
consultant, vendor”

7. Additional suggestions for “Priority topics for DW Trends 2014 survey” (1/2)
Quotes are verbatim and have only been corrected for spelling errors.
To me, the term "digital workplace" still seems fuzzy and contrived. It requires a clear definition and a realization that, still, not
all work is digital, and not all workers will wedge digital solutions into their day-to-day habits. (That's why I believe the floor/
field workforce topic is relevant.)
Structure/roles and responsibilities of the team.
Private networks, crowd sourcing and orchestrating vendor ideas with unmet market needs.
Multi-browser compatibility (MAC, Firefox, IE, Chrome). Mobility compliance (working well on iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, etc.).
Meeting accessibility compliance for users with visual + physical disabilities (industry guidelines from W3C).
I'm particularly interested in people moving from on-premise SharePoint to Office 365. How they are doing it, and why.
Search engine federation, seamless experience between different search engines, search engine "apps", information apps :
information on demand through widgets/dashboards, integration of transactional info into collaborative portals (reverse of
integration of social collaboration into business solutions).
My responses are skewed by the needs of my own company, so I will be keen to find out if mobile, e-learning, community
management, governance and measurement are widely seen as hot topics.
Integration of internal and external facing tools and content.
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8. Additional suggestions for “Priority topics for DW Trends 2014 survey” (2/2)
Quotes are verbatim and have only been corrected for spelling errors.
Connecting the dots for "basic" employees. (Effectively and quickly demonstrating that content is simply the inevitable
byproduct of all work). We work, therefore we produce and consume content (no matter how trivial that sounds, it has great
importance). Connecting the dots for managers and executives - managing all of that work byproduct is a strategic imperative.
Demonstrate not only the basic value and benefits, but the necessity.
Content marketing impact.
Mobile access to all data and information is key. Building the digital workplace means understanding what fits in there,
enabling collaboration with externals, and ensuring ROI and security. For me, the digital workplace is the enabler of work-life
management...
Key themes for us are really about managing expectations and risks with senior management (changing risk profile, IP
leakage, cost versus tangible benefit etc.) and how we then implement across a global business to give local flexibility while
maintaining central oversight.
Search.
Application integration - how seamless does it need to be, which applications make sense (I do not mean Outlook or Office
but process related applications such as reserve a meeting room)?
I understand the value of openness and transparency supported by social, but I can't get buy-in from management or
workers. What can be done to bring about some emotion to want to change? To even just look at possibilities? We estimate
that our small "unit" at a large university reads 8,000 emails a day. I'm trying to collect 8,000 envelopes to give people a
visual. Now add to that, one idea, worth a lot, silo'ed in one of those emails. It will never surface. I have some time yet, I only
have 2,000 envelopes.
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9. Other suggestions for “Preferred topics for mini cases and success stories”
Might we also acknowledge that the digital workplace threatens conventional leaders, who see it (naively) as weakening
command and control? Are our workplaces so dysfunctional, so filled with distrust, so inhumane, that only a total
transformation -- of which the digital workplace is only a piece -- will suffice?
Moving DW to cloud improves speed/performance/agility from sales person perspective out in the field.
Drawing on some of the work from Jeremiah Owyang on the collaborative economy, turn that focus inward for internal
operations. Show how the work and content of one department or division gains traction and adds value when another
internal group runs with it.
Hard to chose! Everything is interesting.
Empowering people to take initiatives and responsibility won't do it alone. People need to let go of the fear associated with
presenting ideas, asking questions, talking about what they are doing. How do we get the new behaviors approved and also
get people comfortable with using these behaviors, in relatively the same time span, so that the ROI and benefits are
apparent quickly.
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10. Free text comments on “Balance”
Quotes are verbatim and have only been corrected for spelling errors.
The other 25% should be devoted to broader issues of senior leadership acceptance, culture change, and change
management.
There's always a human interest angle, if you can find the right way to project how the digital workplace will evolve into the
future,
Actually, I don't think the balance matters much, as long as we do have some stories. You always present data in clear and
vivid form, so it's almost like a story.
Case studies of fail strategy.
Understanding the 'people' aspects of DW, in particular the career development issues not just the skills issues.
Predictive content from other sources on the advancement of Technology and evolution of business processes. Perhaps data
on mobile adoption.
Issue a challenge (or request) to the readers of the report to get more involved with the promulgation of the ideas and
concepts. I know many may face internal company or industry specific concerns over sharing too much, but if there were
forums available to keep exchanging ideas and information (or more promotion and encouragement of existing forums like the
LinkedIn page, etc.), then this awesome report could be more of a year long focus, rather than an annual event. It would also
give everyone a chance to "practice what they preach" in terms of social communication and knowledge sharing. Other ways
to keep people engaged may be through some sort of gamification for the readers. It could start with simple contests (create/
share a best practice checklist on Topic ABC, then have the community vote and rate it. Best ideas get recognition (or some
small prize of some sort). Keep these simple initial contests going and they could evolve into a more elaborate system with
gaming aspects...?
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11. Free text comments on “Balance”
Quotes are verbatim and have only been corrected for spelling errors.
What to do practically to improve.
Self assessment - how much is the reader (or his-her organization) ready to adopt the new mindsets that Digital Workplace
requires? Where are they positioned on a classical journey towards a Digital Workplace?
One of the most difficult things to understand about the DW is the level of integration versus adoption success. Plugging in
lots of tools into the business that have limited integration / standalone versus central hub (and everything in between). It
would be good to put some time to understanding this as it can have a significant influence over success.
OSS Toolbox in the Enterprise, in other words in which areas OSS software is mature and ready for enterprise deployment.
Examples: Moodle, Big Blue Button, Resource space, Owncloud, etc.
I’d like to read the data quickly. (Charts) Changes in the way we work are so important, but I can't seem to lead change in this
environment. Workers see the need for change and benefits, but projects are run the same old way without listening to
experts. Workers don't understand what is driving project decisions. Project managers and middle management doesn't
understand the consequences of their decisions. Little shared visions. Will stories make the difference? I hope so.
Data can be useful when building your case and the evidence to support developments and investment
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12. Free text comments on “Any other suggestions or comments?”
Quotes are verbatim and have only been corrected for spelling errors.
Keep up the great work! Great piece of research - please keep up the good work.
I appreciate the work that you do. Great report
Looking forward to seeing it published. I love the stories, but I numbers sell better for my management team
Since I'm in a small organization (<300 employees), I really like to compare myself to other small organizations. It's hard to do
this with these reports. I know the overall number of comparably sized companies (16% in 2013 report), but with each bit of
data, I don't know how I stack up. It would be nice to see the demographics in each section of the report. Not sure if that's
possible to do, but that's what is of most interest to me- trends among similar organizations (base that on size or organization
type, etc.)
People who buy the report do so for a range of different reasons. It might be useful to develop 'pathways' through the report
for senior management, business managers, IT managers etc. (not too many of them!) with a brief annotation of why these
issues are especially important to them.
This is an excellent report and i look forward to it every year. If there were more ways to slice and dice the data for specific
industries, that would be helpful. I know there is some of this now, but for those in some of the more challenged industries
(where sometimes the data is too scarce to provide trends), any correlation to others in the field is valuable. Please include
me in next year's survey!
Thank you for proposing more 'stories' and excellent focus in your theme. I think that use cases provide much more insight
than data today. This is the kind of information I'm looking for for specific uses, specific issues or questions I may have.
I liked the data for your top digital workplaces compared to all the others. Nice to know where my organization is compared to
the really leaders, to the companies using new ways of working. What is the list of new work behaviors? What technology or
human behavior supports the new work behaviors? I'm not sure this makes sense, but I think we have ample technology, but
how do we get people to change or understand. And this needs to be done in an environment where people are horribly busy!
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13. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Investment priorities
Involving workforces in emerging economies
Enabling the floor-field workforce
Communities of practice: impact on adoption, on
Multi-lingual issues and solutions
Enabling the customer-facing workforce
Cloud: how and what
E-learning, new approaches to training and talent
Security: issues, solutions
Video for sharing knowledge/ information
Impact & relations between physical workplace &
Definition of the digital workplace: components,
Senior management: buy-in, role, involvement
Community management
Measurement and ROI: quantitative, qualitative
Governance: policies, roles, digital board
Change facilitation, overcoming obstacles,
Social collaboration capabilities: deployment and
Mobile, services, BYOD
Integration of social colla. capabilities into
Ag Co Te
Practitioner
Priority topics segmented by “practitioner” and “agency, consultant, vendor”
Ranked in order of priority for practitioners
%
N = 110 participants
77% practitioners
19% Agency, consultant,
technology vendor
6% Other (not included
in chart)
(Percentages are
rounded.)
Much higher interest
for agencies,
consultants, vendors
Much higher interest
for practitioners
A
A
A
A
P
P
P
P
P