Toolkit:

A phased
approach to
improving DEX
Practical steps for improving your IT andsecurity operations while addressing
digital employee experience goals

78% of employees say that they would
be more productive if they had different
technology at their disposal.

Introduction
Although the average knowledge worker might once

IT would like nothing more than to rise to thisPursuing a DEX initiative can seem overwhelming,

have just grumbled about tech issues and managed as

challenge. If anything, today’s IT pros relate to theirespecially given the many priorities your IT team isbest they could, that’s no longer the case. Employees

colleagues’ frustrations. According to the 2023

now juggling, but it doesn’t have to be. You can move

expect a high-quality digital employee experience —Everywhere Work Report, 22% of IT and security

the needle on your digital employee experience byand they're not shy about demanding it. According toprofessionals surveyed say they are consideringtaking an incremental approach that supports yoursurvey results presented in the 2023 Digital Employee

quitting their jobs in part due to the apps and techdaily IT and security operations while also benefiting

Experience report, 78% of employees say that they

tools they're required to use at work. Their jobs

your long-term DEX goals.

would be more productive if they had different

have become harder as the IT estate has rapidly

technology at their disposal. Paying close attention togrown and become more complex, with the volume

these shifting winds, organizations that want to attractof applications, services and user devices continuing

and retain top talent are placing a higher priority on

to increase.

improving the technology experience they provide totheir employees — also known as the digital employee
experience (DEX).

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

2

Inside:01

Step 1: Understand what you have02

Step 2: Connect patching data

03

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

04

Step 4: Track and continuously improve DEXThis toolkit provides you a step-by-step plan forlaunching a DEX initiative. It shows you how to take astaggered approach that instantly helps your IT andsecurity operations, while steadily improving DEX
over the long term.
Along the way, you’ll learn how to create a DEX
score that helps you measure your progress towardachieving your DEX goals. You’ll also discover how toprove return on investment (ROI) at each step for yourdaily IT and security operations, so you can make aneffective case for an investment in a high-quality DEX
that benefits the entire organization.

This document is provided strictly as a guide. No guarantees canbe provided or expected. This document contains the confidential
information and/or proprietary property of Ivanti, Inc. and its
affiliates (referred to collectively as “Ivanti”) and may not be
disclosed or copied without prior written consent of Ivanti.
Ivanti retains the right to make changes to this document or
related product specifications and descriptions, at any time,
without notice. Ivanti makes no warranty for the use of thisdocument and assumes no responsibility for any errors that canappear in the document, nor does it make a commitment to update
the information contained herein. For the most current productinformation, please visit ivanti.com

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

3

01

Step 1:
Understand what you haveTo begin making gradual DEX improvements,

Discover Assets

you must first understand what you have in yourenvironment. This includes discovering assets, as wellas consolidating asset information in one place so it
can be easily maintained. But because your IT estateis so complex, encompassing a huge constellation of
endpoints, users, network infrastructure and edge
devices, it’s harder than ever to get a unified view of

Did you know?
48% of security professionals saythey have low or moderate visibility
into all assets on their network.

what you have.

The only way to actually get the complete and realtime visibility you need is to layer active and passive
discovery together. This lets you see not just network
switches, printers and other devices that are typicallyalways connected, but also user devices that may be
only intermittently connecting to your network.
With both active and passive discovery capabilities,
you can easily see not just network switches, printersand other devices that are typically always connected,
but also user devices that may be only intermittently
connecting to your network. Enhancing your ITSM withinformation about all assets on your network meansthat your service desk teams can easily identify which
device is the actual source of the issue and resolve theproblem quicker.

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

Step 4: Track and improve DEX5

360° Visibility
You can access useful information about the assets

truth for all of your IT assets — for example, in a

The 360-degree view of all your assets enables you

configuration management database (CMDB) or an

to proactively manage them. From this point on, whenasset management database (AMDB).

you discover new devices, you can more easily bringin your environment by enabling integration with

Using connectors to add crucial contextual information

other sources that may already have it, such as yourwill help you understand why those devices

endpoint management, IT asset management solution,

are present on your network and even map outor your purchase records system. At this stage, it’s

relationships and dependencies between them. Then,crucial to normalize and reconcile data between these

you can begin identifying your critical services anddata sets so that you can create a single source of

how they impact the digital employee experience.

them under direct management, too. As we’ll explore
in more depth later in this guide, these process
improvements will allow you to give your users asmoother support experience. You will also havethe visibility needed to properly secure your assets,
reducing the likelihood that threat actors will be able
to compromise them without your knowledge.

“Customer hired eightengineers to build a solution
to reconcile data sources(SCCM, ServiceNow,purchasing records, internal
database). Discovered thatthey had 70K devices thatwere not properly accounted
for across their data sources.”“To be able to pull thisdetail from one systemmoving forward will help our
department be much moretransparent to our customers
AND make it easier for themto request assets. Overall, ourgoal is to minimize both losses
and inefficient processes.”- Fortune 20 Organization

City of Seattle

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

Step 4: Track and improve DEX

6

Measure investments
Understanding what you have unlocks ROI in other ways, as well.
For example, with instant access to information on the warranty
status of your assets, you can avoid spending money on battery
replacements that are already covered by a warranty or optimize
spend for hardware refresh by analyzing device performance. These
insights can help you make smarter decisions on whether to re-image
or replace workstations, while analytics on application use shed lighton what applications employees are actually using, so you can savemoney and devote IT support resources to where they are needed
most. Ultimately, your service desk will be empowered with insightsthat enable quicker and better issue resolution, leaving users with abetter digital employee experience.

“We have seen and will continue to see significant savings inasset and warranty management, by proactively monitoring
device health, such as battery performance, Ivanti gives us
real-time actionable intelligence, so we can automate or makemore informed decisions and keep ourusers productive.”
Kingston University

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

Step 4: Track and improve DEX

7

How to prove ROI for immediate and long-term goals
Getting a complete understanding of your entire IT estate is the first step to improving both your day-to-day IT and security operations, as well as your long-term
digital employee experience. There are a number of benefits from taking this step and a variety of KPIs you could set to prove the ROI. Here are the main ones:

Daily IT & security
operations perspective

Long-term DEX
perspective

Benefits

Potential KPI's

Transparency of complete IT estate and risk
surface in a single place

Asset usage, health and performance

Optimized cost of IT device management andmaintenanceSpend on applications and cloud subscriptions

Improved compliance and asset lifecycle management

Changes in the IT environment

Clear baseline for device performance

Inventory and usage

Defined indicators to track asset health & usage

Device status and performance

Easy monitoring of degradation over time

System failures

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

Step 4: Track and improve DEX

8

02

Step 2:Connect patching dataAs the IT estate has rapidly expanded, IT has found it

When IT pushes out patches, they often become theeven harder to carry out proper change management.

target of blame for the next couple of weeks, as users

This expansion has also created a tempting attack

assume all of their DEX issues were caused by thesurface for malicious actors to target. Meanwhile,latest patch. If the IT team doesn’t have visibility into

cyber threats have become more sophisticated andwhat’s going on in this area, as well, the organization

severe, putting the organization at increased risk.

as a whole — employees and IT alike — will suffer a

Obviously, IT and security teams can’t afford to takeproductivity hit whenever it’s time to issue a patch.

their eye off the ball when it comes to security. But
the age-old trade-off between security and flexibility
persists to this day — while IT seeks enhancing user
productivity and operational efficiency, security teams
put compliance and protection against breaches above
all. Rather than keeping these two organizational
priorities in tension with one another, it’s time tobalance DEX and security. The secret to doing so lies
in getting the necessary visibility and understandingof your environment, so you can improve security and
DEX in tandem with one another.

Did you know?

Every organization needs to continuously identify
risks, prioritize what needs to be updated and thenpush the necessary changes out to the environment.
This is especially true when it comes to keeping

85% of C-level executives agree thatpoor digital experiences lead employees
to use unsafe workarounds.

employee devices up to date with patches. Patch
management isn’t just about security; it has a direct
impact on the digital employee experience, as well.

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

10

Step 4: Track and improve DEX

Link patching data
You can resolve this chronic pain point by incorporating patching data to your DEX view. First, connect
your patch management to your ITSM platform and then augment the relevant asset information so you
have all the insights you need in one place. Now, your team can not only access asset information but also
gain further context as to whether an issue is with the device or caused by the change in the environment
and is likely to affect other users, too.

Evaluate patch cycles“The visibility and automation
provided by Ivanti Neurons for PatchIntelligence saved SouthStar Bank
several days a month researching
and resolving vulnerabilities.”
SouthStar Bank

Once that is done, you can actually evaluate how well patch cycles are going within your organization,
beginning with a small pilot group. When your DEX information is readily available to your service desk,
you can actually see whether users in that pilot group are opening tickets and, if so, whether those tickets
are related to any of the updates that just took place.
With stability and performance data that you have already collected, your IT and security teams caneasily and proactively determine whether your users are encountering crashes or other performanceissues — all without having to manually gather this information. Given that 29% of IT professionals cite
collaboration as a priority, it’s worth noting that this step can help bring your IT and security teams’ goals
closer together.

Did you know?
A proactive risk-based vulnerability program
can reduce an organization’s data breach
incidents by 80%.

Integrate DEX with GRC
Now that you have visibility into how your patches are affecting your users, you can handle the change
management aspect of the patching process much more efficiently. You can even leverage DEX toadvance your strategic security initiatives. For example, you can integrate your DEX data with yourGartner“Implement a Risk-Based Approach to
Vulnerability Management”

governance, risk and compliance (GRC) within the IT service management (ITSM) system. These
integrations make it much easier to implement best practices like a change advisory board (CAB), whichapproves patches before they are rolled out organization-wide.

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

Step 4: Track and improve DEX

11

How to prove ROI for immediate and long-term goals
Having your patch data connected to your service management processes and tools is hugely supportive of improving your daily IT and security operations,
all while helping you enhance the long-term digital employee experience. Here are the main benefits and potential KPIs to prove the ROI to your organization:

Daily IT & security
operations perspective

Long-term DEX
perspective

Benefits

Potential KPI's

Reduced productivity loss from security vulnerabilities

Cost of lost productivity per out of date device
impacted by security risk/malware

Reduced risk of shadow IT

Number of out of date devices potentially impacted
by security risk/malware

Improved risk compliance and change management

Volume of approved patch cycles

Users don’t have to think about security in the EW
because everything is underpinned by sec.

Number of devices out of compliance

Reduced interruptions caused by security incidents

Business user productivity opportunity cost per
security incident

Reduced change impact onusers and IT employees

Number of IT support calls related to security

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

12

Step 4: Track and improve DEX

03

Step 3:
Automate IT workflows

When your employees have trouble using the technology they rely on
to get their work done, organizational productivity takes a hit. Each
user runs into 3.67 digital experience issues per day on average. Eachtime they do, it takes them up to 20 minutes to regain their focus. Ifthey submit a ticket, then your limited IT resources must be mobilized
to help them get back on track as soon as possible. By automating IT
workflows that touch on the digital employee experience, you can getout in front of this recurring problem and save everyone time.

Did you know?
48% of office workers prefer to fix theirown tech problems when possible.

3.67
Average numberof daily digital
experience issues
per userToolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

14

Step 4: Track and improve DEXStreamline service desk processes

Shift Left

IT service desk automation delivers especially high business value when

Automation gives your team great opportunities to not only keep up withit comes to the digital employee experience, helping your IT support

increasing ticket volume but also to shift left, reducing costs and risks. With

organization shift left and begin leveraging self-healing capabilities to solve

the combined capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML),problems before users even notice them.

sensors and automation, you can consolidate all of the tools and processes

Meanwhile, convenient self-service tools allow users to address

your IT team uses for remediation on a daily basis.

straightforward problems on their own, lowering ticket volume evenThis allows first-line analysts to resolve issues that would otherwise have beenfurther while improving their DEX. For tickets that require expert attention,

escalated to specialists. As a result, your employees will get their problems

automatic ticket classification will make sure that it is assigned to the rightsolved more quickly and your organization will enjoy increased productivity.

member of the IT team, removing yet another task from the IT “to-do” list.

And to help evaluate the actual impact on DEX, AI-driven automation bots can
automatically survey your employees, so you’ll never be in the dark when there
are lingering areas that still need improvement.

$716.6K Savings
from self-service onboarding/automated provisioning.

“Ivanti Neurons enables what I call ‘contactlessintervention’ and you can create ‘custom actions.’
As part of this, we needed to determine if wewanted to solve small problems continuously or
let small problems solve themselves, which would
let us get to the big stuff.”
SouthStar Bank

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

15

Step 4: Track and improve DEX

Prevent issues

Enhance the employee DEX

You can use automation to perform preventative maintenance and

By automating these IT workflows, you can embrace a shift-left approach to IT

proactive monitoring. Look out for issues that could affect the user if

service delivery that reduces the degree of IT intervention required on a regularthey were allowed to get worse, such as hard disks that are running out

basis and gives your users a better digital employee experience. Not only willof space or CPUs that are overheating because their fans are blocked. If

employees encounter fewer issues to begin with, but the problems they do

the problem has already begun to affect the user, your IT staff can still

run into will be fixed much faster. When their workplace technology is runninguse self-healing bots to automatically collect as many insights as possible

smoothly and they’re able to focus on the task at hand, they’ll be more satisfied

about the issue, run the appropriate tests, and give the analyst a head startwith the technology at their jobs and more likely to stay at the organization.

on remediating the glitch as soon as they pick up the ticket.

$560.5K end user
productivity savings
from self-healing environments.

78%

78% of knowledge
workers say they could
be more productive withdifferent tools.

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

16

Step 4: Track and improve DEXEnhance DEX for IT
IT also benefits from these automations in the form of reduced
ticket volume, an accelerated mean time to resolution, increased
first call resolution and a better ROI on the staff time that is devoted
to resolving the tickets that do come in. As these key performanceindicators (KPIs) steadily improve, your senior analysts and IT
administrators can dedicate their expertise toward strategic IT
advancements, ultimately transitioning your IT organization from areactive posture to a proactive one — all while enhancing the digital
experience for your IT team.

“Ivanti Neurons is a game changer for us. We will
have the ability to proactively create an incident thenauto-remediate the issue before our employees evenknow there is a problem. This is how IT earns respectand how we become a proactive IT organization!”
Technical Services Team Lead
Global Manufacturing & Distribution Facility

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

17

Step 4: Track and improve DEXHow to prove ROI for immediate and long-term goals
Automating your workflows brings great efficiencies to your daily IT and security operations and helps improve digital employee experiencefor both your users and IT teams. Here are the main benefits and KPIs that can help you prove the ROI for your organization:

Daily IT & security
operations perspective

Long-term DEX
perspective

Benefits

Potential KPI's

Accelerated issue resolution

First-call resolution & Mean-Time to Repair

Reduced cost service desk

Ticket & escalations volume

Reduced resources spent on routine
incidents resolution

Ticket avoidance / deflection & volume ofself-healed incidents

Improved productivity

Time saved on issue resolution

Improved service desk experience

Urgency and priority of issue

Reduced digital friction

User sentiment & satisfaction (NPS)

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

18

Step 4: Track and improve DEX

04

Step 4:
Track and continuously improve DEX

In addition to making incremental improvements

Our research shows that 17% of knowledge workers

to your DEX that improve daily and IT security

either have quit or would consider quitting due tooperations, it’s also important to set your organization

poor tech — and the figure is nearly 2x as high for

up for long-term success. Accordingly, consider

Gen Z. When technology becomes vital in retaining

leveraging DEX-specific solutions that can help

and attracting talent, continuous improvement of DEX

you advance DEX in the long-term and inform yourneeds to get on the priority list of not only IT but thebroader, strategic decisions.

organization overall.

What's an XLA (experience-level agreement)?
XLAs set the standards for DEX and help organizations better measure satisfaction.
They evaluate how technology improves (or hinders) employee experiences.

What is a digital employee experience (DEX) score?
A DEX score is a quantification of the overall level of satisfaction that employees have when engaging
with each application, system, service or device.

Did you know?
56% of IT professionals say they don’t
have a high level of buy-in from theC-suite for DEX initiatives.

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

20

Step 4: Track and improve DEXIntroduce XLAs

Create a baseline

Start understanding the success of your DEX program by implementing an

Keep adding to your DEX score over time. That will give you a baseline

experience-level agreement (XLA) within your IT team. An XLA will help you

understanding of where you’re at, so you can keep track of how you’re doingmeasure user satisfaction on a continuous basis, not just a transactionaland make timely course corrections if needed. This approach provides you aone. Although your team may already be working with SLAs, XLAs willmore comprehensive view of your organization’s DEX, including device health,enable you to focus on employee happiness and productivity, rather thanapplication health network performance, and security health. It also monitors

only availability and responsiveness. Plus, you will be able to benchmark

key aspects of the service experience that affect your DEX, such as the number

the real-world experience of actual end users instead of just tracking theof open tickets, their severity levels, their age, and even the user sentiment

performance and availability of assets.

(i.e., the language used and frustration level it expresses) associated with them.

"Upon implementing an ITSM that enabled
a better DEX, the IT department at Victoria
University saw their NPS jump from around
54% to 60% to 90%."
Victoria University

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

21

Step 4: Track and improve DEXMonitor DEX
over time

Leverage real-time
operational intelligenceContinuous
improvements

Once your baseline DEX score is in place, you’ll

From there, you can take a further step toward

Now you are on the path of continuous

have a much better understanding of what’s

becoming even more proactive by leveraging theimprovements. Define, commit to, continuously

normal and what’s anomalous. With that insight,

real-time operational intelligence that's reflected inmeasure and improve both quantitative metrics

you will be able to monitor employee sentiment‌

your DEX score‌. This way, you can surface insights

associated with the performance of digital— ‌and you’ll be able to take action when it

from the platform that will enable you to adopt atechnology and qualitative measures thatbegins to dip. You’ll also have better visibility

more sophisticated approach to DEX management.

capture overall employee satisfaction, digital

into your overall tech stack performance andWith all of these improvements in place, your IT

adoption, and help desk experience to measure

typical usage of your assets (for example,

team will eventually be able to spend the balancesatisfaction on a continuous basis.

normal CPU usage and disk consumption).

of its time focusing on strategic IT andThis way, you can more readily spot something

security priorities.

Start using DEX data to support broader
organizational strategic decision-making.

irregular that warrants further investigation.

Partner with procurement to help inform

Ultimately, with the awareness gained fromtechnology investments across the businessmonitoring your DEX, you’ll also have theor with HR to support their employee retention

understanding needed to make smarter

initiatives. Leverage DEX to elevate IT’s role

investment decisions. For example, if the same

to a strategic business partner level in yourdisk consumption problem starts appearingorganization.

among all laptops from the same vendor, you
may decide to re-evaluate your contract orconsider other providers.

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

22

Step 4: Track and improve DEXHow to prove ROI for immediate and long-term goals
The final step in optimizing your digital employee experience allows you to continuously improve by using the vital DEX insights for evaluating and making strategic
decisions about both your daily IT and security operations and DEX program. Proving ROI to the organization is critical at this stage, so here are the main benefits and
KPIs to help you with this:Daily IT & security
operations perspective

Long-term DEX
perspective

Benefits

Potential KPI's

Proactive IT

DEX score

Improved IT & security maturity

Optimized technology spend & Improved security
postureSustainability / Green IT

IT carbon footprint & energy consumption

Transparency of DEX program adoption

XLAs

Employee engagement

CSAT scores

Talent retention

Attrition rate

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

Step 1: Understand what you have

Step 2: Connect patching data

Step 3: Automate IT workflows

23

Step 4: Track and improve DEXConclusion
If you find the prospect of a DEX initiativeand security management, then automating your IT

overwhelming, that’s understandable. DEX can seem

As you gradually continue implementing your DEX

workflows so you can embrace a shift-left perspective

daunting at first, especially when you’re already

improvements, the benefits will begin to compound,and finally continuous improvement that allows you tobalancing the security and operational requirements

giving you substantial forward momentum. Automating

steadily inform strategic decision-making across theof a rapidly growing IT estate with the mandate to

IT workflows will allow you to resolve issues before

organization.

users even notice them, all while giving your first-levelprovide a digital employee experience that drives

analysts the context they need to quickly address

productivity and job satisfaction.

The journey will take time and careful planning, but

However, rather than handling DEX like a massive,

into the digital employee experience, you won’t haveall-encompassing undertaking, think about what

to guess at the root causes of issues impacting your

you’re already doing now, where you could be doing

At this stage, your KPIs will improve, IT will earn moreusers anymore. Efficient patch management will

better and how you can apply a staggered approach

trust from its colleagues throughout the organization

alleviate a major recurring pain point for users and IT

to your DEX improvements. This process begins withand your IT leadership will have increased flexibility

alike, strengthening security in the process.

to pursue higher level strategic priorities. Finally, byunderstanding what you have in your IT environment,
then connecting patch data to enable better change

the effort will be well worth it. With proper visibility

the tickets that do come in without having toescalate them.

establishing a comprehensive baseline for where
you’re at and where you want to go, you will have afull set of powerful tools and continuous improvement
processes in place for proactively managing the digital
employee experience, no matter what technologicaltransformations and evolving trends await yourorganization in the future.

Toolkit: A phased approach to improving DEX

24

Toolkit:

A phased approachto improving DEX

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Practical steps for improving your IT & security operations
while addressing digital employee experience goals

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