Enterprise Store: driving corporate self-care

Prompted by the large e-commerce sites and driven by IT consumerization trends, as well as the advent of the Y and Z generations, the Enterprise Store is beginning to occupy a major place in the corporate world: offering a wide range of user services such as application download, computer purchase and even password reset.

At present, 25% of companies [i] have set up an Enterprise Store for their employees.

Enterprise Store: major requirement or mere gadget?

In a world where the App Store, Google Play or even Amazon are the benchmarks for applications and technological services, it has become essential to rethink the delivery channels of IT solutions within companies.

User expectations in terms of user-friendliness, comfort and access to technologies have considerably evolved.  Employees are becoming increasingly demanding and expect the same degree of efficiency and simplicity interacting with technology in the workplace as they have in their personal lives.

The Enterprise Store meets these expectations and, as such, limits the proliferation of Shadow IT practices using materials and software in the workplace that are not managed by the central IT service.

In concrete terms, the Enterprise Store is a specific web boutique where all employees can order corporate-approved IT products (applications, tools, material, etc.).

What are the advantages for the company?

Setting up an Enterprise Store ensures user satisfaction and generates productivity gains for IT Departments.

For users, this solution not only meets their expectations but also boosts productivity: employees can order the products they want, whenever they want, via the channel of their choice and in record time. As such, they are no longer obliged to go through the company’s IT service to access IT resources or follow-up the progress of their orders.

For IT Departments, the benefits are two-fold. Firstly, cost optimization: centralizing IT resources management, automating applications availability and exporting low value-added tasks to users, generate significant savings in terms of installation and IT Department support costs. In addition, setting up an Enterprise Store leverages security: making managed and secured applications available in the workplace enables companies to control, and ensure usage compliance of published software, thus avoiding external application download (Shadow IT).

Veering towards “self-care” in the workplace

The Enterprise Store concept is based on the principles of user discretion and autonomy. Employees are free to purchase a product specific to their business needs by following the order-process and validation rules set down by the company.

Developing an Enterprise Store does not only consist in setting up a web portal. It represents a veritable U-turn for companies looking to digitalize their employees’ working environment. This means adapting the entire service responsible for IT-product provision in terms of processes, technological solutions and user experience.

Processes:

The correct deployment of ordering, acquisition and distribution processes is key to ensuring the successful implementation of an Enterprise Store.

Ideally, these processes must be simplified, industrialized and combined upstream with remote distribution solutions, application license management and Mobile device management. This not only ensures seamless integration but also enhances the value of the store in terms of security and compliance, while reducing delivery costs of ordered products.

Technological solutions:

To set up an Enterprise Store, companies can choose between a SaaS solution available on the market or develop a personalized implementation approach designed to meet their specific needs. This choice depends on several parameters such as the level of adherence with the company’s existing tools, the degree of personalization required and the resulting cost.

Today, the Enterprise[i] Store market is characterized by a varied offering and includes an array of solutions:

• Specific remote distribution tools: These tools serve as the basis upon which most Enterprise Stores are developed in-house. Some of these use portals (SSCM, LanDesk, IBM Tivoli).
• Mobile Application Management (MAM) solutions: Cloud or on-site solutions designed for license management, securitization and life-cycle management of applications for users’ mobile terminals and work stations (such as Appaloosa, Apperian, and Airwatch).
• Oracle Cloud Market place and Appexchange)
• Business-app stores: Stores that provide similar services as the business-app marketplace as well as a catalogue of applications developed in-house. The bulk of services are in SaaS mode and designed for terminals that use the same technologies (such as Microsoft Windows Store for Business)

 

User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UE)

Whatever solution a company chooses to set up its Enterprise Store, ensuring users receive the most intuitive and qualitative experience possible is a prerequisite for success. Emphasis on a simple design that integrates the key functions found in consumer sites (such as product descriptions, shopping basket and product search), ensures optimal use of the store and enhances productivity. Some companies go even further by adding a Corporate Social Network dimension to the store (where users can make comments and application recommendations, etc.) to boost the rate of adoption and make the store a key self-service IT tool.

Along the same lines, Responsive Web Design (RWD) solutions are also recommended for adapting store layout and contents to the size of user terminals (computer, tablet smart-phone).
In addition, content which is adapted to user profiles and updated on a regular basis is necessary to ensure a good adoption rate among users.

Although adoption rates are still limited, the notion of self-care IT, introduced by the Enterprise Store, is progressively gaining ground in the corporate world.  Other corporate departments can also reap the benefits of this concept, such as Human Resources for processing employees’ recurring daily demands.

Nevertheless, although technological innovation has prompted the emergence and adoption of self-care solutions, organizational and operational transformations together with the subsequent change management involved, are still major challenges.