We (still) have an incomplete view of DEX.
For years, enterprises have approached digital employee experience (DEX) initiatives in silos — IT is doing one thing, HR another, and the business something totally different — all of which has made it difficult for organizations to successfully drive DEX outcomes for employees. At Forrester, we hear the symptoms of a fractured approach to DEX all the time from clients.
“If only HR knew how we could help improve DEX,” remarked one IT leader, while an HR leader said, “IT thinks they own DEX, but they aren’t responsible for any employee outcomes like talent attraction and retention.”
At Forrester, we’re seeing signs that this may be changing. Organizations are starting to bring various stakeholders to the table to tackle DEX at the executive level, focusing on improving the daily work of employees. There’s an additional problem, though: Not only are enterprise teams siloed when it comes to DEX, so are their tools — one tool for monitoring end user computing and the service desk, another for corporate communications, and yet another for digital adoption … and that’s just the start.
So many tools, so little visibility.
As we move into the end of 2024, clients are consistently asking for their DEX tools to do more in order to help them:
Illuminate blind spots in tech experience.
Understand and drive adoption of new technologies.
Diagnose the user experience of key business applications.
Measure employee outcomes using experience-level agreements.
Improve search and application access.
That need for a consistent experience is hard to do when your organization has so many tools in its arsenal, none of which are integrated.
The good news? Vendors understand the problem.
Vendors in the end-user experience management space have responded with a slew of innovations in the past year, driving the beginning of a “DEX-pansion” in which vendors strive to obtain a more holistic and accurate view of DEX. For example:
1E acquired Exoprise in October 2024, significantly bolstering 1E’s application monitoring capabilities with in-depth real user monitoring, comprehensive synthetic testing, and improved support for unified-communications-as-a-service monitoring. The company also announced a new partnership with Goliath, a virtual desktop monitoring tool focused on electronic health record systems such as Epic and Cerner. 1E also announced a partnership with B2M Solutions to create a mobile endpoint experience product, further demonstrating 1E’s commitment to expanding its DEX visibility.
Riverbed released Aternity Mobile earlier this year, expanding its vision to better serve an often forgotten segment of the workforce: frontline employees. Aternity Mobile features multivendor mobile device, application, networking, and sentiment monitoring capabilities, one of the only dedicated mobile DEX solutions in the market today and more evidence of DEX-pansion.
Nexthink acquired AppLearn, a digital adoption platform vendor, in January 2024, expanding the company’s visibility into employee application usage with built-in guidance and learning. A top priority among digital workplace leaders, driving digital adoption helps bring Nexthink even closer to understanding DEX holistically.
While expansions like these pose tremendous opportunities for both vendors and customers, they’re also risky.
Customers should ensure that they:
Review the quality of integration between converging product sets.
Ask questions about changing pricing and packaging models.
Prepare for any gaps in support as vendors seek to up-level their expertise in unfamiliar DEX territory.
My prediction? The DEX-pansion will begin at full force in 2025.
As the need for holistic DEX grows, organizational silos break down, and interest rates fall, consolidation will increasingly characterize the DEX market. Mergers, acquisitions, full-scale product releases, and net-new partnerships will dominate the 2025 DEX market, resulting in the most exciting year for DEX since 2020.
If you’re interested in learning more about my thoughts on the future of this market, reach out to me on LinkedIn. Forrester clients can also submit an inquiry request at [email protected]. If you’re a vendor that’s doing cool things in this space, submit a briefing request.
