Three Trends Driving the Rise of Digital Work Hubs

by Nicole Speciale

The digital work hub is an emerging category of enterprise-grade software that coordinates and manages the curation, creation, and communication of business content from the individual to the ecosystem level. As part of unified communications and collaboration (UCC), these platforms also assist individuals and teams with the management of work-related tasks.

This blog overviews how digital work hubs came about following the rise of the digital and mobile enterprise, and discusses three major trends driving enterprise need for adopting digital work hubs.

Knowledge Workers and Problem Resolution

The term “knowledge worker” refers to a professional that uses specialized knowledge to address issues in the enterprise. Over the past several years, knowledge workers have become increasingly mobile and often work from home, while commuting, or from other offsite locations.

Since these individuals responsible for addressing certain problems in the enterprise have become more mobile, the pathways to resolution have also become mobile. Mobile communication is the new pathway for communication as it connects remote workers with those on-site. Digital work hubs, which have also been called work platforms, go further than in the past by helping team members keep each other updated about work projects.

Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC)

As enterprises have become increasingly mobile (meaning that their workforces have become more distributed), methods of collaboration and communication have had to evolve. Informal sharing is not optimal, or even feasible, when team members are distributed and work asynchronously.

Furthermore, when teams or external stakeholders use different applications to accomplish the same task (chat, file sharing, video, etc.) sharing is not always compatible. Digital work hubs help create and maintain cohesion amongst employees who are remotely trying to collaborate or communicate from various devices.

Artificial Intelligence Is Maturing Rapidly

Technologies that can augment our own human intelligence are maturing at a rapid pace. These technologies complement and enhance many preexisting ones and can help simplify communication methods. Enterprises need to leverage these technologies to optimize corporate knowledge and leverage them for better decisions.

These technologies include advanced analytics, natural language processing (NLP), and others. Voice-enabled applications, for example, are one way in which technology is streamlining and assisting our ability to accomplish tasks via mobile devices. We believe that digital work hubs will add digital assistants that can accomplish even more mundane tasks for knowledge workers. This space is moving quickly and we expect to see significant improvements as we go from basic chatbots to full digital assistants.

Bottom Line

Digital work hubs are the new way forward. These platforms are a must-have for mobile enterprises and one way that enterprises can compete successfully in today’s fast-paced digital world.