Work Smarter - Part 1, The Issues

Six major issues affecting End User Computing (EUC) and user productivity today - and what to do about them.

In our Work Smarter sessions with clients we examine the common problems that they face when trying to deliver an effective service to their users. Based on 20 years’ experience in the market (and another 5 years delivering an internal enterprise service) and feedback from some of the UK’s leading organisations, Centralis is uniquely placed to offer a view of what’s “tricky” in EUC. 

In part 1 of this article, we’ve looked at the top 6 issues facing our clients today.

User Experience - Slow, complicated, and worst of all inconsistent, the way you present applications and data to your users goes a long way to determining how productive they are.  After the first couple of issues they stop calling the help desk and just start working round the problem, a spiral on un-productive behaviour that can take a lot of effort to discover and resolve.

Visibility - Can you see past the first line of issues?  How do you know when (and where) user experience is poor?  Do you even know who your users are, what they do and what devices they use?  Poor visibility is one of the biggest issues faced by organisations seeking to understand, improve and upgrade EUC services.

Metrics - Being able to see what’s out there is good, but being able to measure it is better.  Very few organisations have benchmarks relating to performance, and most service providers limit their commitments to uptime and response time.  But if particular roles, departments or groups of users contribute (or impact) dis-proportionately, shouldn’t they receive a better service, and shouldn’t you know if they are not receiving it?

Complexity - Even if we get visibility and measurement of EUC, determining the cause of any performance issues can be challenging.  The service is built of multiple, inter-connected components, often managed and supported by different teams or even suppliers.  Determining how all of the components of the service will scale, without encountering bottlenecks and “cliffs” is also a real challenge.

Criticality – Given the challenges of who is using what, how often and where, EUC is often treated as a tactical, rather than a strategic service.  This results in short-term decisions and delays in investment that further impact the service.  True disaster recovery and business continuity provisions are also often not applied due to the costs.

Commercial Model – For many organisations the existing commercial model itself is also a barrier.  Buying perpetual licenses with annual maintenance is rarely popular, and purchasing in advance for full-capacity prior to scaling up is less attractive still.  And if you do go for proper business continuity provision, the commercial case gets even worse.

In Part 2 we’ll focus on the user impacts, before moving on to look at how to address these challenges and deliver a more effective EUC service.

 
About the Author: Ewen Anderson BSc, MMS (Dip)

With a background in psychology, management services, consultancy and enterprise-scale managed services Ewen is a passionate believer that things can, and should, be changed for the better. On a self-assigned mission to help UK businesses “Work Smarter” he believes that that when end user computing is properly designed and managed it can directly improve both productivity and work life balance.

“To Work Smarter an organisation needs to have clear goals, to engage with its users, to have well-developed processes both for change and business as usual, and to invest in the most appropriate and cost-effective solution. If you align these factors (Strategy, People, Process and Technology) you have the levers that can lift the EUC service from adequate towards great.”

Ewen founded leading independent EUC consultancy Centralis, which has a 20-year history of trusted advisor status, providing independent advice to some of the UK’s leading brands, public sector and not for profit organisations. Its reputation is built on proven success and on caring as much about outcomes for its clients as it does about the technology that underpins its solutions and services.  More about Work Smarter is available on the Centralis website (www.centralis.co.uk) or at our regular workshop events.