If cars were built like IT enterprises, you would, at this moment, probably be starting your exhaust system. Or you might be searching for the access point to your electrical system, logging into your cooling system or putting a request in to start the drive train. Perhaps you’d be on hold with customer support as you forgot your password to unlock your tires.

More than likely, despite having the most advanced automotive technology in the world ready to go, you wouldn’t be going anywhere, at least not quickly.

Enterprises have a lot to learn from our four-wheeled friends. The simple lesson is that enterprises, like cars, need a user experience platform (UXP).

A car turns complex technology into high performance for every driver because its disparate technologies work from a common interface and because it’s built explicitly for the end user. All the controls a driver needs are within the reach of an arm, a leg, and in the case of driving while snacking, a knee. A car is built as an integrated tool for the end user’s needs, not a sprawling system of technologies that forces the driver to individually operate many tools with many different requirements. A drivers decides a car should turn left and the car turns with it. 

Simple, right? So why doesn't your enterprise do the same?

For a driver, cars are great technology with slick UXPs, with the added feature of fuzzy dice compatibility.

UXPs like Servicefront™ generate the same user focus for your IT enterprise as the car does, allowing the user to harness all available technology to fit his needs without knowing anything more than how to press a pedal, shift a gear, turn a wheel and pretend he's not listening to the Carpenters.

How?

1. Servicefront is user-scaled. No matter how complex or sprawling your IT enterprise is, the tools and resources your team needs to do its job are all within easy reach of your end users, presented in an intuitive interface, just as the mechanics of operating a car are intuitive to any driver. Finding the resources you need to do your job should never be a job in itself.
2. Servicefront displays the information most needed by the user up front. Cars process tremendous amounts of information. Most drivers, however, get only the relevant information to their current activity like speed, gas supply, or engine temperature. Additional information, like the amount of oxygen mixed with gasoline to support combustion is tracked, but doesn’t clutter the primary display. With Servicefront, the most relevant information for the specific end user is displayed most prominently. End-user customization allows your team to create its own list of most valuable tools without filling the display with unnecessary information.

3. Servicefront turns the enterprise into a single tool, not segmented into separate activities. Servicefront supports single sign-on across your enterprise, so as your security policies dictate, a single login gives you access to your human resources, your knowledge databases, or your mission specific tools. Like cars, it’s one key for your job, not a pile of technology that must be located, started and operated simultaneously.

4. Servicefront unifies technology so your job doesn’t change just because your IT does. Servicefront supports enterprise-defined IT, built not around standards of technology, but around the needs of your agency or business. So as IT infrastructure changes from on-premises to in-cloud, from provider to provider, and tools update and are replaced, Servicefront ensures the presentation layer your teams works with is familiar, no matter how much you tinker under the hood. Your users will still know how to do their jobs, just as a driver doesn't get confused when a mechanic replaces a muffler, or when he changes car models. Servicefront maintains the intuitive way in which you get from point A to point B for your job.

The early days of IT have passed, where IT was built and used only by the technical staff among your team. Now every job function touches multiple departments and multiple tools. The increase in tools and digital business is only going to speed up. Yet many enterprises have evolved into what it essentially islands of technology, disconnected without a common user experience.

So, as your team spends time roaming your enterprise for tools and resources instead of simply doing its job, ask yourself: Is it time to test drive a UXP, or should you just keep buying bigger key rings?