In today’s enterprise, Apple hits the DEX

As employee experiences become increasingly digitized, the digital employee experience (DEX) is becoming the primary interaction you and your workers have, whether in person, remote, or hybrid. That’s why the technologies that enable whatever mission you happen to be on have become so important, as the tech is by definition an essential component in any digital employee experience.

We know because they told us

We already know this because big enterprises like SAP, Salesforce, Cisco, IBM, and many others have told us that when given the choice, employees will choose an Apple product as their primary workplace device. We also know that, for example, sales of portable Macs absolutely boomed during the pandemic, when every office-based worker transitioned to become a home-based employee in a matter of weeks. 

Once the pandemic seemingly ended, those home-based workers became mobile employees, and later — sometimes reluctantly — turned into hybrid workers. 

In that sense, the importance of Apple’s products has already been proven. These devices, whether Mac, iPhone, or iPad, have already been used on a global scale to maintain businesses remotely in real time — as will visionOS devices in their time. 

That success continues to translate into increasingly large deployments across industries you might not have considered to be natural Apple users before, from retail to engineering and beyond. 

Empowering good business with DEX

Of course, business leaders recognize the changing workplace, with 24% of leaders already seeking to unlock improved DEX and productivity. The analysts at Gartner say digital workers who are happy with the tools and applications provided for work are 1.6 times more likely to stay.

While not everyone is an Apple user, sundry TCO studies suggest that businesses that do adopt those products realize significant benefits in terms of support costs, device longevity, employee retention, and productivity.

But at its core, Apple’s key offer to business is the same one it offers to consumer users: a user interface that, for the most part, gets out of the way to enable the user to get what they want to get done as effectively as they can.

That’s the whole point of smart DEX strategy — to equip and empower employees so they can stay focused on their task and not get bogged down by tech.

This secret sauce is compelling to any busy person, and the savor gains gusto on strength of Apple’s full platform — by which I mean that on mobile, tablet, or computer you get a similar DEX.

This familiarity is critical, as it makes it easier to complete tasks on whatever device makes the most contextual sense for a person at any point in time. In essence, the provision of consumer-simple technologies capable of delivering enterprise-class results to employees who can work from anywhere empowers immense business flexibility. 

Infrastructural change

The other post-pandemic benefit supporting the trend comes through the rapid evolution of device management of Apple devices since the pandemic first hit.

Sure, there was already a healthy industry of device management vendors (including Apple itself), but the company took note of enterprise pain points and introduced tools to address them. Think zero touch, declarative device management, improvements to activation lock, and even the recent introduction of a dedicated (and provisionable) password app based on the company’s existing iCloud Keychain. 

The result? 

At the front end of business, DEX improves through employee-driven adoption of Apple’s products.

But the company has also been speaking with both Windows- and Apple-familiar IT admins to figure out how to enable good experiences for them. It’s now truly possible to ship hardware to new hires, who can safely and effectively start their managed employee experience with a single login to their new device — and for IT to manage the entire transition through a single pane of glass.

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