Emma Mak • Staff Writer

Amidst the turbulence of recent years, patients have observed how healthcare, a former laggard in providing fast, convenient, digitally enabled experiences, was quick to innovate. And now they’re not easing up — holding providers accountable to maintain that innovation momentum. 

Digital transformation used to mainly refer to turning paper processes digital. Now, with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud technologies, it often means thinking outside the box (or outside the hospital walls) to create new and innovative ways of improving processes, reducing costs, and delivering better patient care and outcomes to satisfy healthcare’s “consumers.” Let’s explore what consumer patients now expect and how digital transformation can help healthcare organizations deliver. 

The Intersection of Digital Transformation and High Patient Expectations 

Being a patient is stressful, and it just makes sense that they’ll appreciate healthcare providers’ efforts to make processes more streamlined and convenient. According to the American Hospital Association (AHA), provider organizations must work on “developing and implementing a tightly integrated mobile strategy that ties together all consumer-facing digital elements to create a seamless experience throughout the patient journey.”

Studies also show that most patients want to leverage technology to self-manage their care, have telehealth available, and schedule, change, and cancel appointments online. An effective strategy could include the following components:

1. Fast and Convenient Interactions

• AI Chatbots: These virtual assistants can handle routine queries and appointment scheduling and provide some general health information 24/7. They’re a quick way for patients to get answers, reducing the need for phone calls or in-person visits, which allows healthcare staff to focus on more complex tasks.
• Cloud-Based Appointment Systems: Cloud platforms enable seamless appointment booking, rescheduling, and reminders. Patients can access these services from anywhere, making them super convenient. Providers can analyze appointment data for optimization.

2. Digital Solutions

• Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in the Cloud: Cloud-based EHRs allow seamless data sharing among providers and easy scalability for growing data volumes.
• Telemedicine Platforms: Telehealth solutions enable virtual consultations, improving access for patients and making a great step towards healthcare access equality for rural and elderly patients.
• Mobile Health Apps: Cloud-based apps support health tracking, medication reminders, and personalized recommendations. Using them can keep patients actively participating in their health management and allow for easy data collection of health metrics to inform clinicians’ decisions.

3. Personalized Treatment Options

• AI-Driven Personalization: AI can help clinicians tailor treatment plans based on the analysis of patient data, including medical history, genetics, and lifestyle. Predictions can be made for optimal drug choices, and risk assessment can help avoid potential adverse effects.
• Patient Portals: Portals on the cloud empower patients to have access to test results, treatment plans, and educational materials. Patients are better able to self-manage their personal information and preferences and can securely message with their providers. 

How an MSP Can Help with Healthcare Digital Transformation 

A managed service provider can play a crucial role in supporting healthcare organizations as they navigate the intersection of patient expectations, digital transformation, and cost-effectiveness.  

Infrastructure and Cloud Services

Healthcare cloud usage is gradually replacing on-premises infrastructure. However, many healthcare providers are still early in the process and have yet to adopt mature solutions that maximize the benefits of the cloud and the opportunities it brings for better patient experience and care.

When selecting the right cloud platform to ensure security, scalability, and cost optimization, an experienced MSP can guide you to the right solution and take care of deployment and maintenance. Ensure the MSP you select has experienced resources who can properly integrate AI for IT Operations (AIOps) platform tools to ensure your infrastructure is properly monitored, optimized, and managed.

An MSP can also help with data center management, ensuring high availability, disaster recovery, and compliance with industry standards such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Security and Compliance

While healthcare organizations must look to innovate and provide consumer-like experiences for patients, this must not be at the expense of losing privacy. Healthcare organizations are a favorite target of cybercriminals due to their data’s high monetary and intelligence value, including intellectual property and patients’ health records and financial information. Staying on top of constant threats can be too much for a healthcare provider’s internal team.

An experienced MSP can help make improvements that will enhance your cybersecurity posture. By conducting vulnerability assessments and designing and implementing robust security measures, an MSP with trusted security partners, such as Cisco and Stratejm, can help protect patient data, ensure compliance with regulations, and coordinate solutions that monitor for ongoing threats. 

Compucom: An Ideal Partner for Elevating Patient Digital Experience

Compucom offers a comprehensive portfolio of services, encompassing Technology Sourcing, Managed Services and IT Support, and Projects and Professional services, including IT staffing, to help you reach your digital transformation goals.

By getting multiple services from one provider, you simplify IT and gain a strategic partner who deeply understands your operations and can add value to all aspects of your business. Look to us for all things IT so you can give your patients great digital experiences while you meet their healthcare needs.

The post Digital Transformation and the Rising Expectations of Patients as Consumers appeared first on Compucom.

Emma Mak • Staff Writer

The rise of the “zero consumer” 

Are you a “zero consumer”? A rising global phenomenon, these consumers have zero boundaries (drifting between online and in-store), zero loyalty, zero moderation (either scrimping or splurging), and zero patience (they want it now).  

They also consider net zero as a buying factor. But while sustainability and social responsibility weigh on their minds – these shoppers don’t want to lose out on value. The average consumer is tightening their belt. As we begin 2024, The Conference Board projects real US consumer spending will drop 1.1% in the first quarter and 1% in the second quarter.

With this typical profile of who retailers are selling to, let’s dive into some trends that might help win over the zero consumer in 2024. 

Contactless Checkout  

Who relishes the thought of long line-ups that place you within easy sneezing distance of other mall customers? One good outcome of 2020 is raised awareness of the importance of hygiene, which accelerated contactless checkout trends. Customers like the option of paying for their purchases with phones or credit cards without touching a keypad or interacting with a cashier. This makes the shopping experience safer and speeds up the checkout process — a welcome efficiency improvement, especially with the current shortage of retail workers.

Not all consumers will choose self-service kiosks. Self-checkout may mean shorter lineups, but some don’t wish to contend with the frustration of scanning items and possibly troubleshooting for themselves (unless there’s very attentive customer support).  

A company that has really nailed creating a great checkout experience is Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing manufacturer and retailer. Dispensing with the need to scan items, they have a checkout process for which customers only need toss purchases into a container bin. Radiofrequency identification chips (RFID) embedded in the price tags detect and record the price of all the goods in the bin, making it an effortless experience for consumers. The self-checkout terminals have even become a signature element of the Uniqlo store experience — customers rave about them. 

Sustainability Influence 

As many grapple with climate anxiety these days, consumers want to know that the products they buy are sustainable and ethically produced. Retailers that embrace sustainability and social responsibility will not only be doing the right thing — they’ll elevate their brand in the eyes of consumers. This includes using eco-friendly materials, reducing waste, and supporting ethical labor practices.

A leader in the realm of prioritizing sustainability is Target. They are on their way to achieving key sustainability goals such as circular design principles (thoughtful material choice, durability, reparability, and recyclability) and 100% renewable electricity by 2030. The company claims its efforts have enhanced its brand reputation, customer satisfaction, and loyalty. This is backed by the numbers; their annual revenue for 2023 increased by 2.94% from 2022. 

Leveraging AI for Personalization and Customer Experience 

Zero consumers are authentic and well-meaning — but a little fickle. They’ll let loyalty fly out the window and give another brand a try if it makes their dollars go further. The rapid expansion of online shopping makes this easier as they can quickly bounce to competitors’ sites or find other sources through social media.  

Retailers can combat this by creating a stronger emotional connection via personalization. Using AI-powered recommendations to harness the power of customer data, such as past purchasing behavior and preferences, retailers can help customers find products relevant and interesting to them. Consumers love the value this creates. Tailoring marketing and sales strategies to the right audience increases customer retention which is smart business.

Today and in the coming year retailers are leaning into artificial intelligence (AI). According to Retailboss.co, “the retail landscape is poised for a transformative shift driven by the relentless march of artificial intelligence (AI).” 

Navigate the Trends with a Managed Services Provider (MSP) 

Innovation in retail has skyrocketed. In the last three years, there have been over 133,000 patents granted. Companies placing technology at the forefront of their business models continue to leave their competition in the dust.  

Keeping your business agile and knowing your customer will always make for solid strategy. With all the innovation competing for attention, it’s also crucial to not fall for hype and take a pragmatic approach to evaluating whether emerging technologies will help you reach your goals. Besides infrastructure support and services to keep your sales and back-office working, having an MSP as your strategic partner helps you make the right moves to transform your business and optimize the customer experience for today’s zero consumer. 

In this series:

• Retail Trends 2024: Let’s Get Phygital

The post Retail Trends 2024: Delivering for The Zero Consumer appeared first on Compucom.

Emma Mak • Staff Writer

Surprisingly, Olivia Newton-John’s lyric, “Let’s get physical,” was not actually about working out, but her aerobics-themed video helped make the catchy but cheeky song a runaway hit in the exercise-crazed 80s.

Just as the video transformed “Physical” into an aerobics anthem, phygital experiences enable retailers to dramatically broaden and enhance the experience of their brand and products. By integrating the in-person experience of physical stores with interactive and easy-to-use digital experiences, merchants can explore innovative methods to better engage their customers.

Showrooming and Webrooming 

Today’s consumers shop online a lot, but more than 85% of US retail sales still occur in physical stores. Savvy consumers want the best of both worlds. Showrooming — visiting physical stores but buying online — gives them the tactile experience of the products with the convenience and savings of online shopping. It’s especially useful for trying out higher-priced items before buying.

The opposite side of the coin, webrooming, is popular among Gen Z customers, who prefer to research products online before buying them in a physical store. Its perks include getting items immediately, more straightforward returns, no shipping costs, and supporting local businesses.  

Having both options available to consumers can work in a retailer’s favor: online shopping has lower overhead, but online advertising is expensive; in-person shopping provides a chance to increase brand loyalty through personal interaction and the creation of a real “brand experience” that is harder for retailers with only an online presence.

Great Customer Experience (CX) For the Win 

Retailers are increasingly turning to phygital experiences to enhance customer engagement and satisfaction. CX matters; it’s so important that 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for great CX.  

Examples of raising the bar on CX include:

• In-store retail media using interactive displays and kiosks that can help capture attention and drive sales. For example, Walmart’s kiosks help customers locate specific products in the store and provide wayfinding.
• Incorporation of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Many examples of the use of these technologies can be found in the beauty industry, including Estée Lauder.
• Expanded digital content coming directly from store shelves or in the fitting room. For example, digital signage or QR codes with recipes, coupons, or product information or H&M’s smart mirrors.

Instant, useful content accessible right where a potential customer stands, product in hand, deciding whether to place it in their cart or back on the shelf, can dramatically increase value for the customer and influence their decision to buy.  

How a Managed Services Provider (MSP) Can Help 

Unlike fads that have come and gone, like legwarmers and outside-of-the-gym headbands, phygital experiences are an ongoing trend in retail. Creating successful ones requires that  retailers get omnichannel right. As a bonus, omnichannel gives them access to valuable data that can help increase sales opportunities and customer loyalty. 

MSPs can help retailers stay on the cutting edge in CX Besides infrastructure support and services to keep your sales and back-office working, having an MSP as your strategic partner helps transform your business to make innovative phygital experiences possible.

In this series:

• Retail Trends 2024: Delivering for The Zero Consumer

The post Retail Trends 2024: Let’s Get Phygital appeared first on Compucom.

Troy Baldwin • Director, Offering Management

Remember the last time you called your electric company, filed an insurance claim, or bought something online? Maybe you took a trip with a new airline or went to a different restaurant.

Looking back, did you like the experience? Did you hate it? What did you think of the company that provided it? 

CX Matters 

In today’s economy, companies, especially retailers, are focusing on customer experience (CX) in an effort to understand customer needs.

But what does it mean to put the customers’ needs at the center of your company’s business strategy? More than just meeting their immediate needs to get the sale, it means ensuring they have a flawless customer experience throughout their entire journey with you – technology plays a critical role in this. 

CX and Technology: The Foundation

At Compucom, we believe that Customer Experience (CX) and technology should be the foundation of any business. When a customer is satisfied with their service, there is a higher potential of creating brand loyalty and even promoting your company to others.

Partnering with a Managed Services Provider (MSP) that designs its solutions around the end-user and customer experience ensures your infrastructure, systems, and applications set you up to deliver the customer experience that is expected of your brand.

CX and IT Managed Services: The Benefits 

According to a Salesforce customer engagement report, 88% of respondents say that “the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services.” We make it a point to understand your goals and vision for the customer experience as part of your overall business needs – acting as a true partner in driving your success.

Here’s a look at the benefits and efficiencies that well-thought-out managed IT services and solutions can bring to your customer and employee experience (which are tightly linked) while at the same time freeing up valuable in-house technical resources:

• Scalability and Flexibility – As your organization changes, your IT needs change – quickly pivot your services as required with flexibility that allows you to meet customer demands more effectively. 
• 24/7 Support – You can have reliable support anytime, anywhere.
• Access to the latest technology –  Don’t worry about slipping behind industry trends and latest technological advancements; we’ve got you covered.
• Reliable Infrastructure – Our expertise ensures your organization’s IT infrastructure is reliable and supports optimal CX while scaling easily. 
• Proactive Monitoring – Deploy advanced monitoring tools that proactively detect and address IT problems before they impact your employees and customers.
• Enhanced Security Measures – Implement and manage robust security measures that protect both your customers’ information and the organization’s reputation.  
• Data Management and Backup – Implement data management and backup solutions – ensuring your customer data is recoverable and safe.  
• Compliance and Regulatory Support – Maintaining compliance with industry regulations and data protection laws prevents the risks of fines, penalties, and damage to your company’s reputation.
• Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery – To ensure that your organization can quickly recover from disruptions, partner with an MSP that can provide disaster recovery planning that ensures business continuity.  

When you partner with Compucom, you can free up your internal resources and improve IT efficiency, ultimately allowing you to focus on your business objectives. By maintaining open communication, offering tailored solutions, delivering high-quality services, and prioritizing your needs, we can help you establish and maintain long, strong customer relationships. 

The Compucom Advantage

Compucom is a leading IT MSP specializing in delivering end-to-end lifecycle services, technology, and consulting to enable the digital workplace. We understand the value of the customer experience and the importance of getting it right. With over 35 years of experience under our belt, we can provide end-to-end services no matter the scale. 

Creating and supporting a successful digital workplace requires an emphasis on easy-to-use and reliable solutions for the end user. Our solutions facilitate the flexibility, speed, and nimbleness people need to connect with the right technology anywhere, anytime, effortlessly, and from any device.  

The post Sale or No Sale: 9 Benefits MSPs Bring to Retail CX appeared first on Compucom.

Compucom Editorial Team

With hybrid work becoming the norm and workplaces more complex, good technology plays an even more significant role in employee productivity. At Compucom, we would add that so does accurately measuring, analyzing, and managing the impact of technology on employee effectiveness and satisfaction.

DEX and XM

Compucom’s Digital Experience Management (XM) uses endpoint analytics to discover insights into Digital Employee Experience (DEX) that may not be directly evident, allowing you to make the changes necessary to increase efficiencies and overall end-user satisfaction while keeping costs under control – critical aspects of modern-day business operations. This helps enhance and improve the end-user experience by providing:

• Real-time monitoring of employee devices: Helping IT teams identify and resolve issues proactively allows them to deliver the resources the employees need to work efficiently and effectively.
  
• Improved endpoint performance: Identifying and acting on employee device issues helps improve performance, reduce frustration, and enhance productivity; data analysis also allows you to identify trends and act on them as required.
  
• Personalized support and training: Analyzing employee device usage and identifying patterns may help indicate areas where additional support or training is required, allowing IT teams to assist individual employees and improve their experience and productivity.
  
• Enhanced security: Given the diversity of work styles and the persistence of talent shortages in IT, maintaining a positive technology experience for a hybrid workforce while ensuring strong security is critical; effective device monitoring helps IT teams to take corrective action, mitigate risk, protect sensitive data, and improve employee confidence in device security.
  
• Better decision-making: Leveraging the power of data and the insights it provides helps inform device provisioning, software deployment, and other IT-related decisions designed to optimize the digital employee experience and improve productivity and business performance.

Visibility into end-user experience and analysis of key indicators are significant advantages for enterprise organizations looking to drive transformation initiatives that not only attract and retain top talent but also deliver much-needed customer experience (CX) improvements.

The Crossroads of Employee and Customer Experience

Workers’ day-to-day interactions with technology sit at the crossroads of employee and customer experience and can dramatically influence how a company is perceived in the marketplace. Just consider the many employee warnings about operations that preceded the Southwest Airlines technology meltdown and the effect it had on their business and customers.

Each digital employee experience story is not linear; it’s complex, like a “choose your own adventure” book. The suitability of each employee’s work technology, along with their decisions and actions, turn the pages leading to success, failure, or the status quo.

Endpoint analytics helps us read between the lines of your employees’ interactions with technology across your workforce, providing the information to help you see the full story and make the right decisions to move your company forward.

It’s in the Details

At Compucom, we believe the accurate management and measurement of technology’s impact on your employee’s experience and improving their productivity is critical in helping your team meet and exceed their goals.

It’s been said that the devil’s in the details. According to dictionary.com, this means that “even the grandest project depends on the success of the smallest components.” Endpoint analytics allows us insight into some of the key, often overlooked details that, if not paid attention to, could possibly ruin your CX and DEX efforts.

We get it – we’re all about the details that help deliver results for our customers. Our focus on the employee experience, and Digital Experience Management, along with the associated endpoint analytics, is foundational to all we do.

The post 5 Ways Endpoint Analytics Enhance Employee Experience appeared first on Compucom.

Compucom Editorial Team

Happy Employees Equal Happy Customers: Taking Care of Your First Customers First

Customer Experience (CX) is a hot topic issue, and rightly so. But are you taking care of your “first customers,” your employees, with the same care, commitment, and focus you give to your customers?

Your employees are directly or indirectly responsible for your customer’s experience and overall satisfaction. They need to be properly equipped to do their jobs so that every touchpoint a customer has with your company, from the first time they see an ad to their first customer service interaction, is optimal. It’s as simple as this; happy, productive employees equal happy customers.

But how can you do that when tightening budgets mean employees must do more with less, or you don’t have enough qualified workers to drive the customer experience you want to provide? These are major issues affecting companies worldwide.

With global talent shortages across most industries projected to continue well into 2023 and most likely beyond, attracting and retaining top talent has become a major focus of business leaders everywhere. The importance of focusing strategy and investment on creating and leveraging a first-rate Employee Experience (EX) cannot be overstated.

Employee Experience (EX), Technology, and the Watermelon Effect

Forbes defines the employee experience as the overall feeling that employees have regarding their work environment and their interaction with their organization. Employee experience comes from positive company culture, leadership, job satisfaction, and opportunities for growth and development. Providing a welcoming, inclusive environment, promoting a work-life balance, and offering opportunities for team building, socialization, and community service also contribute. But what is often overlooked is a major part of the everyday work experience: technology and IT services.

Technology and IT services are central to your employees’ productivity and engagement every day. When your employees think, “Is this company serious about helping me succeed in this job?” they’ll look to their onboarding experience, the value of provided computers and devices, how the infrastructure and services perform, and the quality and availability of tech support.

Unfortunately, employees’ bad technology experiences may be flying under the radar. When employees consistently have bad IT interactions and aren’t provided adequate support to fix issues, they give up and learn to live with the status quo, resulting in the “watermelon effect.”

This happens when employees don’t tell management how they feel and what the real issues are. Employees give the impression that everything is OK (green on the outside), while they grow more frustrated and unhappy (red on the inside).

Poor technology and IT services, and the watermelon effect it creates, can have serious consequences:

• Lack of productivity – time and money wasted: For a company with 1000 employees, minor disruptions occur four times a day for a total of 21 minutes (10.5 workdays a year), equating to $4 million annually, on average
• Security risk: When using a company device that doesn’t work right, employees often switch to personal devices; often unsecured, these endpoints can expose and compromise corporate data
• High Attrition Rates: Day-to-day frustrations can cause employees to start looking elsewhere for work, leading to the loss of valuable employees and unplanned spending to recruit and train new ones

Avoiding the Watermelon

The bottom line is that, while your company culture may be ideal, if your employees don’t have a good experience, your customers won’t either. Delivering a good customer experience means focusing on your first customers first: your employees. Putting your employees first requires asking yourself some serious questions, like:

• Do our employees have the right devices to be efficient and productive?
• Do they get support in the way that works best for them?
• Does their technology perform well wherever they work — remote, in-office, or both?

The answers to these questions, and the solutions they drive, will determine your employee experience, regardless of where and how they work. And if there is one thing the pandemic has taught us, remote work is here to stay in one form or another. Whether fully remote, hybrid, or completely in-office, managing workplace technology has become more challenging:

• Cloud-connected apps and services must work seamlessly across all locations to support efficiency and collaboration
• IT teams must manage diverse equipment and support requests for devices that travel between the office, home, coffee shops, and hotels

And while some businesses (retail, hospitality, and healthcare) have always relied on in-person work, more companies are returning to the office, with twice as many Fortune 100 companies (34%) returning in 2022 as in 2021. In 2023 these numbers are forecasted to increase even further. Solutions, like aggregating tech support into a single workflow, must be readily available and provide a consumer-like experience regardless of an employee’s location.

Managing the Experience

Employee experience encompasses a lot; it’s everything the employee goes through, from onboarding to offboarding. For the technology component, let your employees know you’re serious about their productivity and minimizing their technology frustrations.

No matter where your employees work – remote, hybrid, and in-office – you can look to, rely upon, and trust the experience of a managed services provider (MSP) like Compucom, who designs all their solutions and services around employee experience and experience management to help you create the great workplace experiences employees deserve, so they’ll never want to leave.

The post EX, Technology, and the Watermelon Effect appeared first on Compucom.

Understanding and Optimizing the Remote Work Experience for Your Employees

How Did We Get Here?

A few years ago, having a job that allowed work from anywhere and the chance of a healthy work-life balance did not seem realistic.

Long-term remote work wasn’t even a possibility, as we lacked the right technology to enable an effective distributed workplace; not to mention, most company leaders would have laughed at the idea of allowing a sizable percentage of their employees to work from home, mostly in fear of drastic drops in productivity.

Then, almost overnight, the pandemic required companies to adopt remote work models to maintain business continuity. This sudden change forced them to experiment with new technology and tools, ultimately proving the viability of remote work and that it, in fact, positively affected productivity.

There are several reasons why remote work has become so popular:

• It allows a better work-life balance
• It increases productivity, as employees with autonomy over how and where they work tend to work more efficiently
• It saves employees commuting and other traditional office expenses but also cuts company spending through reduced need for office space

The Challenges

Statistics show many workers prefer remote jobs. A recent Forbes article stated that 87% of respondents thought remote work options improve their work-life balance. And an AT&T study found that the hybrid work model is expected to grow from 42% in 2021 to 81% in 2024.

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Of those not working in the office or at least in a hybrid environment – 30% report they are somewhat disengaged. The reasons behind this include feelings of isolation. Here are just some challenges workers face:

• Effectively communicating and collaborating
• Feeling disconnected from office culture
• Trouble separating work and home life

When asked about distributed work and its challenges, Compucom’s Senior Human Resources Director Krystal Barnes said:

Your company’s IT services are essential to providing an excellent employee and customer experience. An experienced Managed Services Provider (MSP) can not only support your needs but will work with you to understand your environment and tailor their services for you and your employees no matter where they work.

The post The 4 Keys to Remote Worker Productivity appeared first on Compucom.

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With tough times in healthcare expected to continue, a Managed Service Provider (MSP), can be your greatest ally for improving employee and patient experience and reaching new levels of IT efficiency.

These Are Challenging Times

It’s tough to hear forecasts for the healthcare industry and not picture dark storm clouds gathering. Filled with threats to access and quality of patient care, predictions say healthcare systems face billions in losses.

This dire outlook for healthcare stems from a set of intimidating issues:

• Staff shortages and rising labor costs
• Ongoing supply chain disruption and sourcing shortages
• New retail competition in healthcare (Amazon, Walmart, Walgreens)
• Chronic disease burden
• The end of some pandemic government funding
• Global inflation and looming recession

Higher Patient Expectations

To top these off, providers also must take into consideration a shift in patient expectations. By sheer necessity, healthcare digital transformation moved ahead by a decade in just a few months during the pandemic.

Healthcare consumers noticed the resulting personalized and convenient patient experiences while scheduling an appointment, processing insurance, and paying bills and one can hardly blame them for wanting that trend to continue.

The Remedy

With 58% to 68% of U.S. hospitals ending 2022 in the red, and up to 30% of rural hospitals at immediate risk of closing because of low financial reserves, how can healthcare providers hope to ride out the storm and even thrive?

Smart, strategic use of technology is a great place to start. A winning approach focuses on developing digital capabilities that boost patient engagement and enable strategic cost savings and back-office efficiency.

A Managed Service Provider for Better Patient and Employee Experience

When devices, applications, and networks function well, enabling a seamless workflow, there is less delay in appointments, treatments, procedures, and tests. This directly translates to a better patient experience and less frustration for your staff.

A managed IT services provider (MSP) can help with several aspects of your infrastructure and business — and ensure great technology experiences by offering:

• More Robust Security

  Data breaches in healthcare are increasingly common and can endanger patients and financially devastate an organization. An MSP can work with your IT team to evaluate and improve your cybersecurity posture, ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and availability of patient information.

• Improved Operational Efficiency

  Managed IT services can streamline healthcare operations by providing reliable and efficient technology solutions and monitoring your IT systems to identify and resolve potential issues before they cause problems. This proactive approach to IT maintenance can help avoid costly downtime and ensure that systems are running at peak performance.

• Better Employee Experiences

  Providing the best technology for the job and minimizing technical hassles can help with the rampant burnout in healthcare today. By continuously measuring the quality of technology experiences for your medical and administrative staff across all their services, a managed service provider can use data (for example, from endpoint telemetry and targeted feedback) to determine the best enhancements for optimal employee experience.

• 365/24/7 support to free up your IT staff

  Healthcare providers always need access to excellent technical support, not just 9 to 5 on weekdays. Outsourcing support to an MSP gives your employees around-the-clock access to experienced, knowledgeable technicians. The right mix of self-help and remote or in-person support is cost-effective and ensures quick resolutions, reducing downtime and improving patient care.

• Tangible cost savings

  In these challenging times, it’s crucial to cut costs without sacrificing the quality of patient care. A managed service provider can help with this in many ways, including reducing the need for in-house IT staff, minimizing costly downtime, and optimizing technology usage to improve productivity. An MSP’s close relationships with OEMs can also provide cost benefits.

• Increased compliance with regulations such as HIPAA

  Adhering to strict regulations and safeguarding patient data is essential in the industry. By providing cradle-to-grave accountability, service, and disposal of devices in-house, the right MSP provides a single chain of custody for devices, helping you ensure compliance with regulations to avoid costly fines and lawsuits.

Compucom: A One-Stop Shop for all Your IT Needs and a Trusted Partner

A recognized MSP such as Compucom, with strong OEM relationships and a broad range of services, including professional services and IT staffing, streamlines and reduces costs for your organization.

By getting multiple services from one provider, you simplify IT and gain a strategic partner who has a deep understanding of your operations and can add value to all aspects of your business. Lean on us for all things IT and free your organization to focus on what’s most important — saving and improving patient lives.

The post A Reliable MSP: The Remedy Healthcare Providers Need appeared first on Compucom.

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Bad tech is just bad business. Like a slow drip that erodes a mountain, frequent but annoying tech snags eventually add up while wearing down your employee experience (EX). Our survey of remote and hybrid workers highlights this correlation: poor workplace tech experiences have costly consequences, like wasted company time, increased risk, and loss of talent or customers.

Wasted Time

Our research, outlined in our own industry report Connecting the Dots: Experience, Technology, and the Hybrid Work Environment, showed relatively minor tech disruptions occur an average of four times a day, lasting roughly 21 minutes for enterprise workers.

While that may seem trivial, it totals a wasted 10.5 workdays a year per employee.

More Work for IT

Older, outdated, and obsolete devices are harder to use, manage and support. IT departments – already stretched thin – will feel the strain as they juggle complex user support and security needs.

Increased Risk

Employees will find workarounds to bad tech. Cybersecurity risk increases when employees use personal devices for work, something two-thirds of our survey respondents admitted to doing to compensate for not having the workplace tech they desire. 

Loss of Talent

The buildup of daily technology frustrations eventually kickstarts job searching; in our survey, 41% of employees said they would switch jobs if offered a position with better tech. If ignored, that could lead to losing valuable employees and a tremendous cost to replace them.

Impact on Customers

Most importantly, employee experience and customer experience go hand in hand. Being a dependable partner to customers means having dependable tech. If employees feel disengaged or don’t have the tools to do their jobs effectively, that can lead to negative interactions with customers and potential loss of revenue.

Consequences Meet Action — With Actionable EX Insights

Managed workplace service providers have started focusing on “enabling, enhancing and, most importantly, measuring EX to provide actionable insights,” explains ISG Principal Analyst Mrinal Rai in a whitepaper about Compucom’s approach to experience management.

This helps enterprise IT teams predict and prevent issues before they can become more significant issues that bother employees, says Rai, adding that Compucom is “well-suited to addressing these client requirements by providing EX insights across key dimensions that ensure employee productivity, support, self-sufficiency, and flexibility.”

It’s true: at Compucom, we design all our offerings to measure, manage, and continuously improve technology experiences.

Our end-to-end managed IT solutions support hybrid employees with uninterrupted productivity, self-service support, on-site field support, and full-lifecycle device management.

Our whole focus is optimizing the hybrid employee experience through:

• Technology choice — giving employees the right tools to be effective
• Workplace flexibility — providing a seamless experience no matter where they work
• Data security — keeping business-critical data secure
• User-defined support — ensuring effective support is always available

Download our report, Connecting the Dots: Experience, Technology, and the Hybrid Work Environment, for an EX deep dive – including a look at how Experience Management provides employers with previously unattainable insights into employees’ technology experiences.

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The National Retail Federation’s annual convention drew its largest crowd in recent years, with thousands of retail executives flocking to New York in search of the tech investments needed to drive sustainable growth in this precarious economic time.

The Compucom events team was able to meet with our customers, partners, and other retailers, finding inspiration at Big Ideas sessions, and getting up close with stunning tech innovations from our OEM partners. With so much to experience and learn during the event, we share our four biggest takeaways for 2023.

Retailers’ Top Need: Help Supporting Technology

What’s the biggest challenge ahead? Our on-site pulse survey asked nearly 400 attendees about their top concerns for the year, and the results were clear – most retailers need help designing and managing IT to support multiple locations and end-user needs.

• 30% said their biggest challenge is supporting on-site and employee technology
• 29% said they’re concerned with planning for current and future technology needs
• 16% said their top priority is driving store traffic and enabling purchase decisions

“Most of the retailers I spoke with indicated that they will continue to focus on customer experience and loyalty, and employee retention and satisfaction.“

Tina Pickeral, Compucom VP of Sales

Improved Customer Experience by Focusing on Employees

Several sessions highlighted ways employers can benefit from modernizing the retail space with technology that creates great employee and customer experiences.

These proved to solidify what Compucom has known and focused on for years. The technology experience (whether good or bad) has a direct and causal effect on both employee and customer experience; they go hand in hand.

In a panel discussion, Pilot Company CEO Shameek Konar, reiterated this correlation when he said, “The more we can use tech to free up store associate time, the better the experience for the customer.”

Experience Matters Across Every Channel

Retailers will continue to direct their energy on perfecting the omnichannel customer experience this year, aiming to connect with customers in every way possible. Our booth survey proved this, with a quarter of respondents (25%) naming this their top challenge for 2023.

Steve Pike, a Compucom Solution Director, has witnessed this firsthand in retail. When asked about the power of the omnichannel experience in retail, he said, “The winners in this space will be the ones to deliver a consistent and positive digital experience, connecting technology, support, process, and individual experiences across in-store, online, and mobile shopping,”

Retail Technology Just Keeps Getting Better

Innovation is alive and thriving in the retail space. In fact, our “post-pandemic” world and economy have driven some of the most amazing technological advances we have ever seen. It’s like the “store of the future” that people only dreamed of in the second half of the last century has finally come to fruition. It truly is an amazing time to be in retail.

Some updates from a few of our own longstanding OEM partners included:

• Lenovo exhibited a store of the future, showcasing contactless “Scan-n-Go” self-service kiosks, as well as new AI, infrastructure, and digital storefront solutions.
• Intel and Dell discussed how they are enabling autonomous stores, smart shelves, and AI-powered customer interactions. Watch the panel replay.
• Microsoft touted improvements to Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365 designed to help frontline retail workers work smarter, delivering more real-time visibility into what’s happening in-store.

Additionally, many are looking forward to more automated retail spaces and AI solutions that reduce manual work and improve upon pandemic-driven retail innovations like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) solutions.

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