Application packaging and testing is a resource-intensive headache, especially if you are a large organisation with thousands of applications across your IT estate. Therefore, when looking at automation solutions like Access Capture, the focus is largely on the massive resource savings that can be made. And rightly so, as individual tasks that take several hours to complete manually can be done in a few minutes with a solution like Access Capture. Multiply that over thousands of applications, and your application management headaches will become a thing of the past.
Are we missing a trick, though? Does plugging a technical solution into a traditional process deliver the full range of potential benefits? Is there more that can be achieved?
When it comes to DEX (digital employee experience), we believe there is more that can be achieved in many organisations by changing processes to take full advantage of the capabilities of the technology.
Automation and Self Service
There are lots of elements that contribute to and influence DEX. In this blog, we are zeroing in on two – automation and self-service. Both are crucial elements to improving DEX, and both have relevance to application management processes.
Automation is a straightforward concept in DEX as it enables employees to complete time-consuming and often technical tasks quickly and without expert help.
Self-service solutions have similar characteristics, but the big benefit is that employees can do what they need to do immediately without the laborious process of raising a ticket or submitting a request and then waiting for someone else to do it for them.
Traditional Approaches to Application Management
Traditional approaches place ownership for application management either with engineering or operations teams. Agile practices that have developed over recent years have resulted in application management being the responsibility of both functions, but that doesn’t change the main issue we are addressing in this blog: a level of detachment between traditional application management processes and the end user.
With an automation tool like Access Capture, the engineering or operations team are the main beneficiaries. The end user, on the other hand, might not see much difference. The end user, whether that is an app owner, product owner, or developer, must go through the same process as before to get the applications they need.
And here’s the thing: the technical resources responding to requests for applications from end users don’t need to use their technical expertise. Application packaging and testing with a tool like Access Capture is a largely automated and non-technical process, i.e., it is a process that anyone can do.
So, why not let them with a self-service application package and testing process that gives control to users and, at the same time, enhances the user experience? There is also a supplementary benefit of further lessening the burden on technical resources responsible for application management.
A Converged Future – Putting End Users in Control
As with most technology solutions, it is not possible to flick a switch and move to self-service application packaging and testing tomorrow. It takes planning and detailed strategy development, where you make decisions on the type of automation you want to use and the package and deployment types you make available to end users. Testing is completed on virtual machines, so the required build types would also need to be made available for employees to use.
It is also necessary to use Access Capture’s APIs to integrate the solution into your processes, workflows, and DEX products in a way that works for end users.
This is frontloaded work, however, so once it is done, end users can start enjoying self-service application package creation, conversion, and testing. Technical resources, meanwhile, can focus on the small number of applications that require manual packaging expertise as well as other value-adding tasks.
This approach to application packaging and testing improves DEX and accelerates the overall process while remaining within your organisation’s standards and technical requirements.
Should You Merge Application Management and DEX?
For most organisations, application management influences DEX but it is largely detached from it. Bringing application management within the DEX fold through self-service application packaging and testing breaks that disconnect, gives users ownership over the process, delivers technical resource efficiency savings, and, ultimately, enhances DEX.
For us at Access IT Automation, merging application management with DEX makes sense. Get in touch today to find out more!
