IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,
INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING

Effective
Solutions for
Digital Experience
Management (DEX)
July 2022 EMA eBook
By Steve Brasen
Prepared forTable ofContents

1

The Rise of Digital Employee Experience Management (DEX)

3

Objective Employee Experience Data Collection

5

Subjective Employee Experience Data Collection

6Intelligent Employee Experience Data Analysis

7

Employee Experience Problem Remediation

9

Enabling Effective Integration

10 Identifying Solutions for SuccessThe Rise of Digital Employee
Experience Management (DEX)
Traditional IT management practices are primarily business-centric. That is,they prioritize meeting business and IT efficiency requirements over that of user
experiences. As such, traditional IT management toolsets natively include few
features specifically targeted at improving employee satisfaction and productivity.
To achieve modern management goals, IT solutions must address both businessand user experience requirements simultaneously.
A new class of management processes and technologies emerged in recent
years specifically to bridge this gap. Initially evolving from products designed
to support application performance management (APM), digital employee
experience management (DEX) was introduced to monitor user experiences,
identify opportunities for experience improvements, and proactively remediate
any experience issues.

Modern DEX solutions incorporate IT
management best practices across avariety of disciplines, including:• Unified endpoint management (UEM)• Application lifecycle management (ALM)• IT service management (ITSM)• Security management• Real user monitoring (RUM)

Effective Solutions for Digital Experience Management (DEX).1

Objective Employee Experience Data Collection
Few DEX platforms on themarket today natively include
management capabilities acrossall IT disciplines, and many do notprovide unified support acrossall endpoint architectures. In
particular, popular DEX solutions
frequently overlook mobile
devices. However, the morecomprehensive platforms include
functionality that can logically beorganized into four key areas.

The collection of configuration, performance, and contextual information on devices,
applications, networks, and service-hosting environments enables administrators to
objectively identify IT service deficiencies and opportunities for performance improvements.

Subjective Employee Experience Data Collection
No two users experience technologies in the same way. What is easy for one user may bedifficult for another. The only effective way to ascertain how an individual user is perceiving
an IT service is to periodically solicit feedback.

Intelligent Employee Experience Data Analysis
Objective and subjective user experience data is too extensive for administrators to manuallyreview it in real time. The employment of intelligence technologies—such as analytics andmachine learning—is essential for the rapid correlation of the complex datasets to quantify
and score user experiences, as well as provide guidance on experience improvements.

Employee Experience Problem Remediation
Once user experience data is collected and analyzed, companies should execute remediation
processes to proactively improve end-user productivity and satisfaction with offered IT services.

Effective Solutions for Digital Experience Management (DEX).2

Objective Employee Experience Data Collection
It should be self-evident that employee
digital experiences are dependent on theperformance of devices and applications
employees use to perform job tasks. Slow
performing and systematically failing
IT systems inhibit the performance ofbusiness activities. When IT services are
not operating as expected, workers become
frustrated and are frequently distracted
from performing job tasks.

The first step to improving IT performance is to establish holistic visibility across allelements in the IT ecosystem. IT teams must collect information on the performance ofdevices, applications, networks, and the environments hosting IT services that are accessed.
They should also collect contextual information to identify the conditions under which
performance degradation events occur. All events and conditions should be centrally recorded
so they can be easily reviewed and to simplify event correlation. Additionally, status data
can then be historically trended to establish a baseline of expected states. IT teams can thenevaluate any variances from that state as a potential impact to employee experiences. This
information is critical for enabling real-time problem detection and remediation.

Effective Solutions for Digital Experience Management (DEX).3

System Monitoring

Application Monitoring

The most effective DEX solutions collect a rich set of device configuration and status
information from endpoint hardware and operating systems, including:

The collection of configuration andperformance information on software
components can also proactively
prevent employee-impacting issues with
device-installed apps, business-hosted
applications, web apps, and SaaS apps.
Related information to collect includes:

Performancestatistics
on CPU andmemory utilization,
running processes,
storage disk
states, uptime,and network
performance

Configuration
details
on registry or
kernel setting,
OS versions, andOS patch levels

Asset informationon ownershipof the devices,
geolocation of
the device, anddetermination ofdevice importanceto the business

Key eventsfrom logs andcrash reports

Status details
on cloud andenterprisehosted desktop
virtualization
instances, suchas the number ofconcurrent virtualinstances and amap of the virtualinfrastructure• Application performance information,such as response times, hangers, errors,
crash events, memory consumption,
exception stack traces, and processingtime• License information to ensure software
components are legitimately supported• Network and browser performancedetails to ensure the reliable use of web
and SaaS apps
Additionally, IT teams may employ real user
monitoring (RUM) to support the detailed
analysis of user interactions with online
services and detect anomalous activities.

Effective Solutions for Digital Experience Management (DEX).4

Subjective Employee Experience Data Collection
While endpoint and application monitoringare essential for objectively determining IT
environment states, they do little on theirown to determine how users are reacting
to those states. Different workers utilize
digital technologies in different ways,
and some are more technically capablethan others. They also have different
preferences for IT services, and some may
tolerate certain types of disruptions better
than others. In order to accurately assess
employee experiences, organizations
must independently query users on theirsatisfaction and productivity when using
offered IT services.

To consistently gauge worker’s subjective
experiences, companies should regularly
conduct user sentiment surveys. According
to research conducted by Ivanti,1 mostbusinesses either have no process in place
to gauge user sentiment or rely on basic HR
engagement questionnaires. More effective
and targeted user sentiment survey
campaigns will be conducted periodically(e.g., weekly or monthly), automatically
executed after the discovery of aperformance issue, distributed following
an environment change (such as a newsoftware installation), or initiated by end
users at their discretion. Companies should

store all survey results in a central locationand historically trend them to determine if
DEX processes are achieving performance
improvement goals.
Optimal DEX platforms natively include theability to create and execute user sentiment
surveys. Ideally, surveys will be easy to buildand customize. Individual surveys may bedesigned to ask general questions about thequality of offered IT services or may target
sentiments about specific applications ordevices. DEX platforms that include prebuilt
and editable survey templates make it very
easy for administrators to rapidly prepare
new survey campaigns.

There are many methods with which companies may deploy employee sentiment
surveys. The most common include:
Endpoint Popups – a window with survey questions appears on supported endpoint devices
Email Campaigns – companies distribute surveys or web links to surveys
via email and they are tracked to ensure participation
Chat Integrations – companies initiate survey polls as part of live or automatedchat session to gauge employee satisfaction with remediation services
User Portal – employees voluntarily initiate a survey to provide feedback on offered IT services

DEX platforms that include survey orchestration capabilities will allow administrators
to schedule surveys to distribute at a particular time, either as a single event or arecurring, periodic campaign. Orchestration also allows survey execution to beincorporated into larger automation workflows.
1“The need for improved digital employee experience,” 2022

Effective Solutions for Digital Experience Management (DEX).5

Intelligent Employee Experience Data Analysis
Collectively, objective and subjective employee experience data sets are far too extensive for administrators to evaluate rapidly enough toeffectively improve user experiences. In order to proactively enhance IT service performance, conditions and trends indicating disruptive states
must be detected in real time so IT teams can take remediation steps before they impact workforce productivity.
Businesses can only achieve real-time assessment of large, complex data sets with the assistance of intelligence technologies. Collectively
referenced by popular media as “artificial intelligence,” related technologies include analytics, machine learning, cognitive computing, andnatural language processing. The use of intelligence technologies is essential for enabling a variety of DEX functionality. However, listed below
are some of the most important applications.

Calculating an
Employee Experience
Score
To consistently gauge employee
experiences, contextual information onuser and device states must be rapidly
analyzed and distilled down to a single
numerical score. Ideally, these scores will
also incorporate subjective informationfrom user sentiment surveys. When scores
drop below a predetermined threshold,an investigation or other response may
be triggered. Users may also incorporatescores into SLAs or XLAs to acceptablelevels of employee experiences or to track
performance improvements.

Synthetic Transactions

Root Cause Analysis

Organizations may also use intelligence
technologies to simulate user activities onapplication or IT environments. Synthetictransactions emulate user responses basedon collected and trended information. By
modeling the environment and replicating
common user actions, administrators canproactively identify performance issues
before they occur, without impacting
production environments or endpoint
devices. Additionally, this approach allows
administrators to gauge any workforceimpacting issues prior to implementing
new services or environment changes, suchas the deployment of system updates andpatches.

Systemic IT failures occur whenadministrators address the symptom ofan employee experience problem but failto address the root cause. Intelligence
technologies may identify the actual event,setting, or configuration that resulted in
the issue. By resolving the root cause of theissue, administrators ensure the problem
will not recur. This ends the break/fix
cycle of reactive firefighting, reducing thefrequency of employee experience issues.
Further, the identification of a problem’sroot cause that affects one worker can beused to proactively prevent the issue from
affecting other employees.

Effective Solutions for Digital Experience Management (DEX).6

Employee Experience Problem
Remediation
Once employee experience problems and their root causes are identified, a proactive
approach to DEX will ensure remediation steps are rapidly implemented. The goal is toaddress issues and conditions before they negatively affect employee experiences. Whilesome responses will require administrator interactions, others can be automated toprovide immediate resolutions.

Administrator Remediation Responses
Upon detection of user-impacting conditions, alerts should immediately be reported
to administrators either directly from the DEX platform or through integration with aservice desk. Administrators can then assess the issue by examining collected digital
experience data and recommendations from intelligence technologies to determine
the most effect response. DEX solutions that incorporate remote access and control
capabilities will allow administrators to diagnose and resolve issues on employee devices
more rapidly. While some issues may require the performance of manual remediation
tasks, many can be resolved using administrator-executed automation bots and scripts,
such as those natively included with unified endpoint management (UEM), service
management, and security platforms.

Effective Solutions for Digital Experience Management (DEX).7

Automated Remediation Responses
Any repeatable process can be automated, which is especially useful for enabling immediate
remediations to known employee experience issues. Boolean if/then policies can beestablished to execute automated responses upon detection of a performance-impacting
state. For instance, updates may be installed, configuration settings may be changed, or
instructions may be sent to users. Remediation action triggers enable real-time responses tocommon issues and can be based on the detection of deficient states, responses to employee
sentiment surveys, the crossing of predetermined KPI thresholds, and contextual changes,
such as when endpoints are disconnected from the business network or DEX platform server.
While a majority of actions can be simply automated with individual scripts, more complex
tasks may require multiple scripts orchestrated into a logical workflow. This allows
administrators to define and sequentially order a series of responses, such as shutting down
applications prior to a configuration change and restarting them upon completion. DEX
workflows can also define when automated responses will occur, such as during maintenancewindows or other times when they will not impact workforce productivity.

Ideally, a DEX platform will natively
include a comprehensive library of prebuilt
automation scripts and workflows,
minimizing the number of new scriptsthat an administrator will need todevelop. A script library will also provide
templates that users can edit to create
new automations. Additionally, it isadvantageous if the DEX platform natively
includes resources for creating and editing
custom scripts and workflows, allowing
the business to address any uniquerequirements.

Effective Solutions for Digital Experience Management (DEX).8

Enabling Effective Integration
No single DEX platform—or, indeed, any IT management suite—canpossibly collect all of the information necessary to assess employee
experiences or enable automated responses without at least some
integration with third-party tools. Points of integration across IT
services, security, and operations management ecosystems are
essential for achieving all four core DEX functionality requirements.
Indeed, prior to introducing DEX solutions, most businesses havealready invested significantly in systems, services, and security
management technologies that duplicate several of the processes
required for DEX. It only makes sense to leverage the collected
information, automation, and intelligence technologies to enhance
DEX performance.
Optimally, points of integration are federated, allowing bidirectional
information sharing and task executions between the DEX platform
and third-party management resources. The most basic integration
points involve the sharing of collected data. However, it is also
possible for solutions to utilize a common data collection process tominimize the number of agents required to operate on endpoints.
The unification of data across IT management disciplines helps
establish holistic visibility and a common frame of reference
for disparate IT teams. The ability of a DEX solution to executeautomated tasks on third-party platforms (or vice versa) can also be
advantageous for creating unified workflows.

IT management resources that most frequently enhance DEX
functionality through integration include:• Directory Services – such as Active Directory or LDAP
• Systems Management Platforms – endpoint management, mobile
management, and configuration management solutions sets
• Service Management Platforms – help desk/ticketing systems
and change management solutions• Security Management Platforms – security information event
management (SIEM), malware protection, and threat detection
solutions• Log and Data Analysis Solutions – intelligence technologies thatingest and analyze complex datasets• Business Productivity Toolsets – workforce desktop application
sets (e.g., Office 365, Google Workspace, etc.) and communication
platforms (e.g., Zoom, Teams, etc.)
Preferred points of integration are those that are prebuilt andincluded with the DEX platform. These direct integrations require
little, if any, development effort to implement, are easy to maintain,
and are fully supported by the vendor or service provider. The greater
the number of integration connectors a DEX platform offers, theeasier it will be to implement across an existing environment.
Of course, it is impossible for any single DEX solution to include
connectors for all possible management software components—
particularly for those developed in house. To enable the creation ofcustom integrations, DEX platforms should include a robust set ofAPIs. Software development kits (SDKs) may also be used to develop
custom connectors and integrated components.

Effective Solutions for Digital Experience Management (DEX).9

Identifying Solutions for Success
The greatest challenge with introducing
an optimal DEX solution is addressing thebreadth of requirements across the four key
areas of support. Most DEX platforms on
the market today focus their management
strengths on just one or a few areas of
key functionality, such as monitoring,
analysis, or automation. Gaps in offered
DEX solutions are typically addressed byrelying on points of integration with thirdparty products or the development ofcustom automation scripts. However, theDEX platforms that will most effectively
meet a business’s unique requirements arethose that will equally and natively support
key functionality across all four pillars of
support. A unified approach to DEX is easier
to deploy and maintain, while also more
rapidly achieving returns on investment.

coupled with flexible employee sentiment surveys, means Ivanti Neurons provides unified
visibility of both objective and subjective employee experience states. Collected information
is analyzed and calculated into a standardized user experience score, and the included“Smart Advisors” provide prebuilt charts on device and environment conditions while
offering actionable guidance on improvements and remediation actions.
Ivanti Neurons provides fully automated remediation functionality. Self-healing scripts,
called “bots,” run on demand or continuously in the background to perform tasks forcorrecting performance issues, making configuration changes, and implementing
environment improvements. While the platform includes an extensive library of prebuilt bots,it also provides an easy-to-use, low code/no code tool for creating custom bot workflows.
Ivanti’s DEX functionality is also fully extensible, enabling integrated support with other
Ivanti management technologies supporting unified endpoint management (UEM), patch
management, service management, and spend intelligence. A library of connectors is also
provided for integrating directly with third-party management solutions, such as ServiceNow,
and custom integrations may be created with the use of the provided REST API.

The evolving business requirements for
managing employee digital experiences
can only be achieved with a unified DEX
platform that provides core functionality
for monitoring devices, determining
employee sentiment, analyzing conditions,and automating effective responses.
As an example, the Ivanti Neurons
suite of management solutions offers acomprehensive and unified portfolio of
DEX functionality. Real-time visibility into
devices, users, applications, and IT services,
Effective Solutions for Digital Experience Management (DEX). 10

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