Employee experience will drive talent acquisition: Bronwyn Hastings

2021 has emerged with a painted face of help, hope and health. With organisations rushing out to stand ahead in the race, channel pundit Bronwyn Hastings-SVP- Worldwide Channel Sales and Ecosystem, Citrix shares her piece on Channel trends 2021.

The cloud and digital workspaces are no longer nice to haves

The uncertainty of 2020 tested every organization's agility as they quickly transitioned to the cloud and digital workspaces to maintain business continuity. This pivot permanently changed the way people think about work, demonstrating that work is not a place, but rather an activity that requires a flexible infrastructure to support, secure and empower teams. In 2021 and beyond, as customers strategize on their long-term business continuity plans, flexibility and scalability will remain critical. They will increasingly look to the cloud, digital workspaces and collaboration tools to keep employees engaged and productive. Customers will rely on a diverse partner ecosystem for guidance and support to shift to a solutions-focused approach that maximizes the value in a world where digital transformation that typically took place in years now must be completed in months. The channel will need to be competent in scaling these digital workspace solutions that solve the changing needs of customer requirements in a hybrid, multi-cloud model.

Employee experience will drive talent acquisition

As large-scale vaccination programs are underway worldwide, many employees will continue working remotely with periodic in-office schedules in a hybrid work model. In this “new normal,” organizations will focus on hiring and retaining top talent with a strong cultural fit, regardless of location. With these changing market dynamics and a distributed workforce, it will be critical to focus on employee experience. Customers will look for end-to-end solutions to simplify the hiring, onboarding and retention process for both employers and employees. Organizations will require fast and seamless access to needed skills and talent from anywhere, and employees will require immediate access to work securely, productively and conveniently from anywhere on their preferred devices.

As a result, partners should expect an increase in customer demand for agile, secure technologies that solve these employee experience challenges. Partners can position themselves to add value in 2021 sales and marketing conversations by addressing communications, productivity, BYOD and collaboration strategies while providing secure and reliable access to all the resources workers need to do their best work, including apps, content, workflow automation, analytics and key business services. They will need to go beyond networking and IT, into all aspects of the business including HR, marketing, finance, professional services and more.

Targeted growth with line of business (LOB) buyers

Today, over half of technology purchases are made by non-IT, line of business (LOB) buyers who lead marketing, human resources, sales, accounting and other departments. This shift represents a sizable opportunity for 2021 as we continue to move away from selling strictly to and through IT leaders. It gives our partners a chance to cross-sell, reaching new users and penetrating deeper into their install base.

Additionally, as lines between key decision makers blur, it has never been more critical to ensure cross-functional collaboration when evaluating employee experience technology. For partners, emphasis on personalization is key in winning mindshare with non-IT buyers. It may take a little more effort but identifying prospects by job title, reporting structure, interests and other public-facing information such as their leadership style, experiences, needs of their position and how social they are will assist in developing authentic, targeted strategies.