Are you a Mac or a PC?
Is there an Android phone or an iPhone in your pocket?
Are you reading this article in Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer?
When it comes to technology we all pick favorites.
In recent years, this technology fandom has jumped from personal tools into the business world.
The average employee usesat least 10 different software tools.
It was inevitable that people would start to get attached.
Workers wear branded t-shirts and plaster their laptops with branded stickers.
They recommend their favorite apps to coworkers and friends.
And they might even leave a job that doesnt allow them to use their preferred brands.
And that is at the root of a growing problem for business leaders.
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The intention behind this adoption is to empower teams to self-organize and accelerate decision-making across the enterprise.
But few leaders anticipated the new challenges these tools would create.
As employees break off into tools catered to their role, new software silos are being formed.
Their work becomes invisible and key information might be stored entirely out of reach to colleagues and managers.
While that might centralize information, it can have significant, usually counterproductive consequences.
This isnt an overstatement.
People take these things seriously.
You risk lowering employee engagement and happiness, both of which canwreak havoc on their productivity.
And there isnt any guarantee that your restrictions will work.
Approximately48 % of employees use apps that werent distributed by their IT department.
Try taking that away from them on your return to the office.
Therein lies the software identity crisis.
The rapid adoption of SaaS tools has created new silos and new challenges for business leaders and employees alike.
It begins with tool integration.
When you hire a new employee, they need to be integrated into the company.
Tool integration is much the same.
By connecting your work tools, you expand the functionality and accessibility of each.
As with employees, these tools need to work together to succeed.
But integration is only a start.
Look at where they jump across tools and teams and where they tend to run off the rails.
This is your workflow map.
Mapping your workflow also allows you to surface invaluable insights and analytics on how your team works.
To make this a breeze, theres an emerging category of tool offering end-to-end coverage.
We call this workflow management.
When leaders have visibility and employees are using their preferred tools, productivity and engagement follow naturally.
This is a potential boon for your business highly engaged employees increase company profitability by 21%.
Seamless interoperation between previously disparate technologies is the way of the future.
While you might balk at this idea, the potential benefits are enormous.
No more internal tooling debates.
No lengthy tool training or onboarding.
No need to go through complex IT purchasing processes.
Youre left with happy employees doing their best work in their preferred tools.
