As environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives continue to grow, they’re also becoming defining operating model characteristics for organizations striving to follow the Autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE) framework for future success. Once a “nice to have someday” goal, ESG best practices, which include diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, must now be built into every technical architecture and decision to drive efficiency, innovation, and growth and meet accelerating employee, customer, shareholder, and regulator demands for more responsible business practices.

On the environmental front, over 3,500 organizations, including BMC, are putting muscle behind their commitments, joining the Business Ambition for 1.5° C campaign established by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), a partnership between the Climate Disclosure Project (CDP), the UN Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). By registering with the campaign, each company has committed to reduce its emissions by setting science-based targets that are independently assessed and validated by the SBTi.

For the social and governance components of ESG, organizations are reshaping how they operate to comply with current and future regulatory and reporting requirements. For example, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is adding disclosure requirements around climate and ESG initiatives, and the General Data Privacy Regulation in Europe (EU GDPR) rewrote how consumer data is handled across the EU.

While the U.S. still lacks a federal data privacy law similar to the EU GDPR, five states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, and Utah) have passed state-level legislation and another 30 states have bills pending that mandate additional protections for the personally identifiable information (PII) of consumers. The U.S. also has industry-specific regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which led to the digitization of medical records and added protections for—and penalties for the misuse of—patient data, and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which established stringent requirements for the handling of consumer data by the major credit card companies.

ADE Tech-Enabled Tenets Support ESG Initiatives

ESG is an operating model characteristic of the ADE. As shown in the graphic below, an ADE has distinct tech-enabled tenets and operating model characteristics, each supporting transformation through actionable insights, business agility, and customer centricity.

Figure 1. The Autonomous Digital Enterprise

The five tenets represent the areas on which organizations should focus their efforts and investments by developing skills and curating solutions and tools that deliver maximum impact. Each tenet can help organizations achieve business agility by laying the groundwork for ESG impact assessment and regulatory compliance, and become customer-centric by delighting socially conscious stakeholders, decision-makers, employees, and customers.

Data-Driven Business

A Data-Driven Business creates value from and monetizes assets by making data central to the business, prioritizing robust analytics capabilities, and supporting a systematic approach to data strategy, architecture, operations, and execution. As organizations face expanding ESG compliance and disclosure demands, ensuring better data quality, accessibility, timeliness, and relevance can drive better insights and decision-making. And including ESG considerations in the design of products and solutions can not only optimize the value of those programs, but also positively impact the company’s ESG rating.

Transcendent Customer Experience

A Transcendent Customer Experience recognizes the full lifecycle of internal and external customer touchpoints and gives customers—the lifeblood of every business—what they need, where and when they need it, in a highly personalized, frictionless experience. Organizations with a reputation for supporting ESG (and DEI and CSR) initiatives have a powerful competitive differentiator to attract and retain customers. PwC research found that 79 percent of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that stands up for ESG practices, and 84 percent of workers are more likely to work for those companies.

Adaptive Cybersecurity

Adaptive Cyberscurity automatically and programmatically mitigates new and evolving threats across the digital landscape to manage the ever-increasing risk landscape that’s grown beyond manual intervention capabilities. Maintaining a secure posture is a crucial business practice in an increasingly remote workforce, and amid a rise in professional threat actors. Implementing proper data security protects employees, customers, partners, and the business, while also ensuring compliance with corporate policies and government regulations.

Enterprise DevOps

With Enterprise DevOps, organizations can help make better, more environmentally responsible decisions by adopting and developing DevOps processes, tools, skills, teams, and leadership across software initiatives and existing portfolios to create a frictionless environment for success and innovation. According to Deloitte, to achieve the most impactful ESG goals, like a net-zero economy—where the amount of greenhouse gases entering and being removed from the atmosphere even each other out, “organizations should strengthen operations that can lower carbon emissions by adopting new technologies and sustainable practices [and] look for ways to transform business models and innovate market-making solutions.” Almost 1,300 companies have started to make these changes, committing to meet SBTi’s Corporate Net-Zero Standard criteria.

Automation Everywhere

This tenet is all about reducing toil and mundane tasks through automation. Automation Everywhere can help organizations identify efficiencies, boost innovation, and speed the measurement and reporting of ESG initiatives to gauge progress. While automation is invaluable to help quantify those efforts, it should also be monitored to ensure that the technology itself doesn’t create ethics and sustainability issues. For example, automating employment pre-screening processes can introduce bias that eliminates candidates, and automated modeling can generate more CO₂ than traditional business processes.

There are many complex considerations as organizations evolve their business practices to be more aware, responsible, and ethical. Following the ADE framework and putting its tenets into practice is a great first step. To learn more about becoming an Autonomous Digital Enterprise, visit bmc.com/ade.

We’re all pretty clear on what a customer is, but sometimes it helps to clarify the overarching definition, especially as thinking evolves around providing a great customer experience to external and internal customers who might define experience in completely different terms. So, let’s explore the differences between external and internal customers.

• From an IT perspective, it’s often helpful to separate the types of customers you serve: you may have a help desk and a service desk, or maybe a service desk that serves both internal employees and public customers.
• From a customer service perspective, understanding the needs of your customers can help you clarify workflows and decide whether your company should distinguish between internal and external customers.

What is an external customer?

External customers are the people that pay for and use the products or services your company offers. When brainstorming problems and designing solutions, these customers are who you’re designing for.

To be clear, an external customer is a person who is not directly connected to your organization other than by purchasing your product or service. This customer could be a one-time purchaser or a person who’ve you worked with long-term and to whom you’ve provided add-ons or customization options. External customers are also known as “clients” or “accounts.”

The goals for your external customer can depend on your product or service, i.e., repeat purchasing, referrals, positive reviews, and otherwise supporting your company. You might follow up after-purchase—or during—to conduct formal or quick-pulse surveys. “The customer is always right” is generally the guiding principle when serving this group, and the revenue they generate is the lifeblood of your company. Without them, your company fails.

Empower your IT service team with BMC Helix ITSM. ›

What is an internal customer?

Internal customers have a relationship with, and within, your company, either through employment or as partners who deliver your product or service to the end user, the external customer. Less obvious but certainly still significant, stakeholders and shareholders are also internal customers. All of these may or may not purchase your product or service.

Comparing internal and external customers

External customers have been inherent in business since people started making and selling products—a long time! The idea of an internal customer, however, is a more modern one. For instance, Six Sigma encourages identifying internal customers as a way of creating a more positive work environment.

That positive work environment includes things like kind and empathetic leadership, fair and equitable pay, comfortable working conditions, the latest technology, and so on. The thinking goes: the higher employee morale, the more those employees work with integrity and productivity. That morale can also come from the idea that they are contributing to something larger, which ripples out positively to improve how they work. One school of thought connects satisfied internal customers with happy external customers.

Beyond the feel-good psychology, though, using the term “internal customers” may have some tangible benefits. For teams who work with both internal and external customers, it can help them prioritize problems and timelines to improve inter-department communication. Treating everyone as a customer may also encourage employees to take each other just as seriously as they would take a referral or complaint from an external customer.

Do negative internal customer experiences affect external customers?

Once you determine that you’re going to address customers as internal and external, it’s easier to recognize how the former’s experience can affect the latter’s.

Case in point, if your internal customers have a role that faces external customers, such as in a call center, then it’s imperative that the systems those employees rely on for their jobs are resilient and function easily and effectively.

If outdated processes and antiquated tech frustrate your staff, that experience is likely replicated when your external customers seek assistance, so you get dual frustrations—not a great recipe for success. Delivering smooth, intuitive experiences for internal customers frees them to provide the same to your external customers.

Drawbacks of making each person a customer

Business experts and sociologists are aware of the inherent confusion in delineating internal and external customers. How do you apply “the customer is always right” to a coworker or colleague who isn’t on board with the new company philosophy or method?

The truth is you may not be able to, which is why some believe the term “internal customers” can dilute the urgency around external customers. This paradigm shift may actually promote more mediocre performance. If everyone is a customer, who is the most important? The answer should be the external customer.

CEOs find more success when they connect employees to external customers. It is more impactful to talk about how their product (medical devices, time management software, bicycle helmets, etc.) is valuable to the customers by saving their lives or improving their work than it is to compare how much money shareholders will get as a result.

Many employees in IT, customer service, and other customer-facing roles also support the “external customers only” mindset because it leads to better alignment across the organization. You’re all trying to serve the singular group of external customers, instead of the various internal clients that are spread across your company’s departments and related partners.

The Transcendent Customer Experience

One of the tenets of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise, the Transcendent Customer Experience (TCE), weighs external and internal customers as equally important. And it sees the external customer experience (CX) and internal, or employee, experience (EX) evolving to a future-state that gives customers what they want, when and where they want it, quickly and seamlessly. In many ways, that future state has been significantly fast-tracked, and CX and EX have almost blurred into one.

With the 2020 global pandemic putting so many brick and mortar businesses and on-site work arrangements on pause, CX and EX are increasingly being done online from cell phones, tablets, laptops, and an array of devices. To address this, many retailers, businesses, and employers have had to nimbly pivot their thinking, and their systems, to catch up—whether that means supporting online ordering and contactless delivery or telemedicine, or helping staff set up high-speed internet, VPN, and conferencing tools to do their jobs at home.

Businesses that immediately shifted gears to adapt to these new processes have been able to keep their internal and external customers happy.

Driven by a marriage of data and journey analytics that anticipate and deliver proactive instead of reactive experiences, TCE ascribes to the idea of taking the experience to the customers—wherever they happen to be. Merging human elements with technology—specifically artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)—has enabled a new era of mobile-first and do-it-yourself solutions that empower external and internal customers to architect the services and solutions they need with a simple swipe or tap.

That newfound speed and convenience will no doubt have far-reaching implications for both internal and external customers as they chart a course toward the future.

Related reading

• BMC Business of IT Blog
• BMC Service Management Blog
• How To Create Transcendent Customer Experiences Driven By Data
• What is Employee Experience Management?
• What Is EXTech? The Newest Way to Improve the Employee Experience
• Using Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) as a Service Desk Metric

If the current environment has taught us anything, it’s that the digital transformation that’s been looming for the enterprise is now most definitely here. Companies of every shape and size have had to move their business—and employees—online, whether they were ready or not.

Some that might have been hesitant to embrace an online-only footprint have since discovered it’s the only way to stay in business. One of the five enablers of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise is a Transcendent Customer Experience, and the good news for companies that were already prepared for the current climate—or were able to course-correct quickly—is that they are well on their way to thriving in the new normal.

Accessing the world from the palm of your hand

A Transcendent Customer Experience recognizes the power of the mobile-first mindset, driven by enhanced, automated features that allow customers to get what they want, when and where they want it, all from their cell phones, tablets, laptops, or other device of their choosing. Right now, that means anything from ordering groceries, paying bills, and donating to local charity organizations to a virtual doctor’s visit or arranging classwork and video-enabled classes for kids at home. And a new and still-rising wave of interactive apps have made it all possible. According to a recent poll by Lightico, telemedicine is coming out ahead of other real-time remote providers in delivering a good or excellent customer experience.

Proactive customer experiences

In the current environment, as stay-at-home orders have extended from days to weeks and months, customers’ daily wants have turned into daily needs. Anyone using a browser to search for everything from recipes to face masks has no doubt noticed that the embedded ad links are keeping up—weaving banners for hand sanitizers, face masks, and other items into your online activity. The reactive customer experience has become a proactive customer experience through machine learning (ML) and other artificial intelligence (AI) techniques that actively anticipate customer needs.

The blend of technology engagement and a human touch has also happened in real-time, with automated functions stepping in for many historically in-person customer activities. That’s been incredibly efficient, but also makes getting a person on the phone if you need one a legitimately special occurrence. We’re all familiar with the, “We are experiencing higher-than-normal call volumes. Your call is very important to us…,” refrain when we’ve dialed a call center, especially of late. So, you’re not alone in trying to reach a human being.

Companies that do customer service right offer the balance of an intelligent do-it-yourself experience for those who want it, backed up by humans for those who prefer a personal touch instead. LivePerson is one company working hard to meld AI and humanity for the ultimate call center experience, and it’s even creating new jobs like “bot manager” and “conversation designer.” As they told Venture Beat, “We’ve found that contact center agents are the best people to take on these roles, as they’re on the frontlines taking care of customers every day, and with our tools, they don’t need to know how to code to build and optimize bots.”

Redefining customer loyalty

Customer loyalty has also been transformed by needs instead of wants. Where it once was important for companies, products, brands, and devices to consistently provide exceptional value with minimum friction or stress, that’s now compounded by the ability to deliver immediately. Case in point, customers may have to expand beyond their comfort zone of usual providers to get what they need as soon as possible.

As an example, many major grocers have been in the online ordering and delivery space for a while, but now those services come with widely variable turnarounds—from within a day to up to a week or more away. In that scenario, loyalty is going to shift to the provider who doesn’t just check the boxes of value and ease-of-use—speed becomes more important. While some retailers can’t yet improve the speed factor, they can deliver flexibility, which is also a win when you’re shopping ahead for multiple days or weeks at a time and are likely to forget something between order and delivery.

Kroger is a leader in this space, creating a value-added customer experience by letting you start your list and book a time several days out and then allowing you to add to your shopping list until the night before delivery. Other retailers only offer the flexibility of minimal changes, or none at all. That said, the “human touch” aspect is currently an unseen outlier—a shopper hand-picks your groceries behind-the-scenes and no-contact delivery means you might never see the delivery person.

The human/AI hybrid of customer service is also moving into the unlikely area of car buying. An often-arduous process has been significantly streamlined by going digital with virtual vehicle tours, electronic financing, and in some cases, contactless delivery. Auto dealers have adapted their processes to keep cars moving off the showroom floor, and it’s empowered customers to purchase a vehicle quickly and efficiently with minimum physical interaction.

Businesses can learn from the lessons of the current climate and integrate them into their processes going forward. The inciting events were unforeseen, but their benefits will be long-range and shape the future of the enterprise.

The global coronavirus pandemic has triggered immediate and sweeping changes to the way we live and work, and if you’re among the extremely fortunate who aren’t on the medical front lines or part of the service industry, you’ve perhaps transitioned to working from home. I’m among those extremely fortunate—I’ve worked from home since 1997 thanks to employers, including BMC Software, who’ve recognized and supported that not all jobs are geared toward bullpens, shrinking office space or shared workspaces.

I consider myself very lucky, and a pioneer, if you will, of this way of working, so it’s not been a massive work/life balance shift for me. I recognize, though, that for some out there, it is, and alongside all the other changes in people’s lives, this one may be an added stressor instead of a blessing in disguise.

It’s definitely an acquired skillset that requires not only the right technology, but also the self-discipline to stay focused amid the lure of family (two- and four-legged), the fridge, and entertainment at the ready. I’ve compiled some helpful, unique, and funny pointers that have worked for our BMC team and me. Whether you’re having trouble adjusting to the new work-from-home normal or are a remote work veteran who’s just had their “home alone” situation blow up into a workspace filled with partners, parents, and children, these tips and tricks may help you adapt.

Listening to a bit of @SchepsOlga whilst #workingfromhome for @BMCSoftware. #WFH #BMCLife #StayHome pic.twitter.com/qQoJiYGf1H

— Marcus Davage 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@spufidoo) March 25, 2020

Communication is key

A lot of the world has ground to a halt, but a lot hasn’t. You may still need to get out for groceries and medical appointments and the like, which means disappearing from your communication/collaboration systems like Skype for a few hours. Put those banks of time on your calendar so you’re transparent about your availability. If being at home with family is causing you to shift your schedule, say so. Some of my colleagues are split-shifting with a spouse and rotating childcare schedules—switching up to working during evening hours and early mornings when the kids are down for naps.

Office chatter isn’t typically a thing if you’ve worked remote for a while, but it might be something you’re missing if you’re a new adopter. It’s easy to stay connected in real-time with tools like Skype and Zoom, so use that opportunity to schedule a quick-connect coffee break with the colleague—or colleagues—you’re missing from across the aisle. When you do jump on a meeting, take time to ask how everyone is. Keep the personal engagement going. If your company has an internal community, use it to stay in touch.

Keep moving

Gyms were one of the first things to go with social distancing, but several businesses have compensated by putting their classes online for free. Les Mills Bodyflow is my jam—it’s been a weekly staple for seven years and they’ve released one of their best offerings online for everyone. If a yoga mashup isn’t your thing, a simple scan of social media and Google turns up online classes for whatever gets your heart rate up—there are even some IG live options!

If you picked up a Peloton bike last Christmas, you can do their workouts and create a small workout group and ride live with friends. The CDC says it’s perfectly fine to get out and go for a walk. Just keep that six-foot distance in mind—walk in the neighborhood instead of the park. And there are quick workouts you can do at your desk between calls. Or, you can be an overachiever and “have laptop, will travel around the house” like our friend here:

Use the right gear

All remote work hinges on your Internet connection, and several of our folks highly recommend staying connected through an Ethernet cable whenever possible to head off dropped Wi-Fi signals or dead zones in the house. With so many of your family members online for work or streaming their shows or games, a wired connection helps ensure you have the best, fastest connectivity available. One colleague recommends bookmarking Down Detector to see how your Internet Service Provider is faring.

Web conferencing is the only way we’re meeting these days, which means you’re likely on a headset for hours on end. One BMCer recommends adding a hands-free speaker to your setup—bearing in mind that may not work for you if your home office is now shared with a WFH partner or kids doing virtual classwork. Or, switch to wireless devices so you and your new co-workers don’t get distracted by the cables.

#WFH #BMCLife My funny co-worker at home – Choco – curious about all that I do on my laptop.
During my tea break, Choco playing the cat n mouse game 😃 pic.twitter.com/ryqulB5bZM

— Ashwini Mathad (@ashwinivm) March 23, 2020

One employee also reminds us that Skype for Business lets you transfer audio for a meeting to your cell phone so your laptop and Internet connection are only buffering the video. And about that—if your company prefers you to be on camera, do a test capture so you see what they’re seeing, and remind the folks sharing your space that you will be on camera so you don’t, ahem, “share,” more than you meant to.

Most remote workers rely on a laptop, but now that you’re home for the foreseeable, invest In a monitor and external keyboard and mouse if you need a little more room to navigate your work onscreen, and a little more flexibility for your wrists and hands. Check out LinkedIn, too, for 13 hours’ worth of resource guides and tips for working from home.

Set a schedule

While it might be tempting to surf your social feeds to see how everyone else out there is coping, don’t do it when you’re working if you know you’re prone to rabbit holing and losing chunks of your day. Save it as a treat for the end of the day. To that end, if WFH is new for you, and setting goals is typically how you navigate your day in the office, maintain that discipline at home. Start the day with a checklist of what you absolutely must get to by EOB. And then honor the EOB. Keep those clear differentiators between home life and work life.

I’m as guilty as anybody of working vampire hours, but I balance it out. If I had to tap out earlier in the day and come back online in the evening to finish, I still worked a full day—just not a 15-hour day if I can help it. If you were already working 15-hour days, hopefully working from home will help you trim that down because you don’t have the commute to, from, and within the office for multiple meetings and can just lock in and get your work done.

If you’re typically in an office and your team is used to popping by with questions, one of our employees recommends putting quick virtual 1:1s on the calendar so staff know they’ll get a guaranteed window with you and are less likely to ping you throughout the day or chase an answer on IMs.

Take time out for self-care

The term’s a little buzzy these days, but it’s important to remember our humanity in all of this. The threat of a viral infection bearing down on you or your family members isn’t easily buried or pushed away, and for some, it can be crippling, reigniting dormant anxieties or amplifying other concerns. If you need help—ask for it. I’m super grateful that our management has put people first during all of this. If you’re in management, reiterate that with your people, particularly if remote is a new situation and everyone is on the same learning curve.

If you’ve had a home office for years that’s been a corner of a room and you kept meaning to make it a proper work-friendly space, do it now. Take advantage of being home with your family and your pets. Pair up two perks and get your exercise by taking your dog out for a walk—and leave the phone on your desk so you can genuinely enjoy the break.

Remote working – don’t sit too long in your chair. Take frequent breaks. Here’s one way to do that. His name is Murphy, and he’s 11 weeks old. He survived parvo virus 3 weeks ago. #WFH #BMCLife pic.twitter.com/jwtXHJ6gXC

— Dave Hobbs (@hobsterD) March 23, 2020

Have coffee at your kitchen table with your partner. Eat lunch with your kids. Finally enjoy your kitchen and practice your cooking or baking skills. That said, also be mindful not to graze all day; or just make healthy choices if you do.

Should the silence of working from home alone be deafening when you prefer the bustle of public spaces, there’s an app for that! You can stream ambient noise for everything from busy airports to coffee shops to the train on Soundrown, Coffitivity, and YouTube.

Keep the kids busy

Some school districts weren’t set up ahead of time for virtual learning, so you may have kids at home who aren’t in classes, and boredom is quickly setting in, along with the potential for work disruption. Luckily, there are several free online classes to keep them occupied. Exploratorium even has a selection of lessons on COVID-19 that might be more helpful at laying out the basics than anything you’ve seen on the news. Live Science compiled several options, including virtual classes, museum trips, science experiments, and arts and crafts.

And finally, remember that we’re all in this together. There are things we can control—staying home to protect ourselves and our loved ones, continuing to do our work—and things we can’t, like how long the social distancing will last. This infographic from TheCounselingTeacher.com puts a very good perspective on things.

The agility and speed required by today’s digital businesses can seem impossible to manage. If you’re running your infrastructure and operations (I&O) in a hybrid environment, you’re likely scrambling to support business operations and keep applications performing at their best amid ever-expanding data streams. How are digital leaders tackling this? One word: integration. By converging IT operations management (ITOM) and IT service management (ITSM) into a single artificial intelligence (AI)- and machine learning (ML)-enriched platform, businesses are quickly achieving competitive advantages that include actionable data insights, event noise reduction, and quicker problem resolution.

A new white paper, Maximizing the Value of Hybrid IT with Converged Operations and Service Management Processes, examines the results of a worldwide survey by BMC Software and Hanover Research of 340 I&O leaders at companies of all sizes, industries, and regions. The survey and the paper sought to understand the trends, benefits, and challenges of moving toward a comprehensive platform that integrates ITOM and ITSM into a single, converged view. While few companies have fully merged both teams, 73 percent of respondents have a strategy in place and 19 percent have proceeded to integration.

Survey respondents cited service quality and speed as the expected benefits of implementing a unified solution.

• 57 percent expect to leverage big data and AI/ML to understand user behavior and manage huge volumes of data and complexity.
• 42 percent hope to accelerate time-to-market by removing roadblocks and delivering quality services faster.
• 42 percent want to leverage cross-discipline expertise to increase productivity and cut costs.

Instead of adopting disjointed toolsets and lightly integrated platforms that are inherently more prone to errors, it makes the most sense to turn to a single platform that can address all of your requirements. In this age of multi-cloud complexity, DevOps initiatives, huge volumes of data, and new cloud-native apps, the importance of monitoring and event management is increasing.

To ensure better performance in the digital economy, companies are aware of the need for a holistic monitoring and intelligent event management strategy that’s centralized into a single pane of glass across hybrid environments. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions have emerged as the model of choice for the new breed of converged platforms, with ease of deployment and upgrade, elastic scalability, and enterprise-grade performance as the major benefits. It’s no wonder, then, that 71 percent of respondents are already using SaaS.

Even with such significant benefits awaiting and a widespread awareness of SaaS, companies still face internal hurdles before converged ITOM-ITSM is the new normal. The biggest obstacles for survey respondents include outdated IT systems (70 percent), the costs of the overhaul (68 percent), and obtaining executive buy-in, which ranged from 54 to 77 percent, variable by region.