A Plug & Play IT Department Solution

The Landscape

Enterprise business apps have been on the rise for years. Unique and niche offerings continue to infiltrate an already cluttered market and every time you ask an employee to download a new app to ‘help them get more work done’ or ‘be more efficient’, you’re met with resistance.

Productivity and efficiency are certainly goldmine keywords for employees. However, if you’re offering a unique app for every business service you offer or asking your employees to use an app for one service while directing them to an online portal or intranet for other workplace needs, then you’re missing the point. Productivity and efficiency only come when things are streamlined.

Now, more than ever, employees need easy access to workplace tools. With employees bouncing between headquarters, home, and other types of remote office settings, the reliance on mobile-first experiences becomes exacerbated. The concept of an enterprise app is perfect for our new hybrid work models, just as long as it’s the right fit and can fulfill both common denominator and niche use cases.

The IT team at Palo Alto Networks, well ahead of the pivot to hybrid work, saw the need to streamline their technology stack and simplify how many apps and tools they were requesting the workforce to access. Moreover, Palo Alto Networks wanted to use an IoT device to create more interactive on-site experiences for employees leveraging indoor data.

When things in the workplace became smarter and better connected, Palo Alto Networks was able to deliver a unique experience to employees at their Santa Clara headquarters that was the beginning of a more immersive journey for the workplace.

The Challenge

Palo Alto Networks had too many tools to maintain. IT departments and service desks are often overwhelmed by new workplace apps from vendors and service providers they are responsible for maintaining and supporting. Palo Alto Network’s primary goal was to find ways to make it easier for employees to engage with existing and new software while lessening the maintenance load across the organization.

Palo Alto Networks had a capable beacon networking system, Aruba Meridian, already in place to create smart, contextual use cases across their campus, but did not have a successful deployment method in place to harness the power of indoor navigation and proximity awareness for their employees.

The company’s growth and employee onboarding became unmanageable. Often hiring new employees every other week required time and resources to introduce team members to workplace tools and created an organizational backlog.

The IT department role in incorporating and adopting innovative technologies across the workplace stack while supporting and maintaining existing applications mitigated innovation and posed a bottleneck for future advancement.

Palo Alto Networks took an integrated approach at adopting a workplace platform by streamlining their most used workplace tools into one control center: Palo Alto Networks Connected.

Using the app, they were able to optimize their IT workflows and deploy a cohesive technology stack for employees across their Santa Clara, CA company headquarters.

One Hub

The CXApp (now an Inpixon company) had showcased proven success with the Palo Alto Networks Executive Briefing Program combining the power of mobile with Aruba Meridian technologies for smart, in-person experience for strategic customer meetings. This proved the perfect foundation incorporating the methodologies of mobile-first experiences into a smart campus app for employees, partners, customers and other stakeholders.

Palo Alto Networks started out trying other white-label office or workplace apps. Their primary use cases as finding a solution that could integrate their location services network and build upon experiential on-site use cases for employees. However, after working with The CXApp team to rollout a workplace experience program, Palo Alto Networks began to see greater possibilities for their entire campus beyond what location services alone could provide.

 

 

Experience Use Cases

Palo Alto Networks shifted their focus to creating a great mobile app experience that fits the need of every type of employee working on-site, transitioning between buildings and meetings, and even working remotely. Building to building wayfinding, transparent campus information, streamlined workflows, and location-aware notifications were preliminary use cases that helped build the foundation for their new Palo Alto Networks Connected app!

The over 630,000 square foot campus became user-friendly, with interactive maps and searchable directories. In the world of BYOD, everything was considered an access point for the overall experience Palo Alto Networks was carefully crafting.

Seamless Employee Onboarding

New hire groups proved the perfect initial audience for the mobile app. Every two weeks, Palo Alto Networks would hold a new hire meeting and training, where the IT team would teach (15-50) new employees to configure their workspaces and introduce them to key systems and workflows. The Palo Alto Networks Connected app is introduced in this meeting, serving as the key resource for them to navigate between buildings, find conference rooms, and access a tremendous amount of information about the company, perks, and employee directory.

Mobile Food Ordering

LPalo Alto Networks also wanted to implement a digital ordering system for their corporate cafes. The top two options included a digital kiosk or an in-app exchange. In larger organizations with on-site restaurants, people often order food at 9 a.m. but wait until 12 noon to pick it up. This is often due to fluctuating schedules and a general avoidance of long lines. The capability to order ‘on-the-go’ was a big win for their employees, so they could easily manage their workday without major disruptions or being tied to their workspace.

Making a Big Splash

From the start, Palo Alto Networks’ workplace team focused on building awareness around the new app to help make it successful. As part of their roll-out, they executed an awareness campaign and launch party that included communications to all employees, physical banners in each of their lobbies, signs in every elevator, and even tent signs for desktops. A QR code was listed on all signs to allow employees to easily download the app. All of these efforts coincided to make sure the Palo Alto Networks app was a one stop shop for all employee experiences.