Grammarly recently sponsored research by global marketing intelligence firm IDC to understand the state of workplace experience technology and what enterprises were prioritizing as 2023 neared. The study reveals a compelling insight: Digital-first organizations are beginning to shift their attention toward technology that integrates into employees’ day-to-day workflows to improve communication. IDC calls these organizations “conversational enterprises.”
Conversational enterprises make communication a top priority
IDC defines a conversational enterprise as an organization that prioritizes communication as essential to breaking down silos and keeping employees aligned. The term conversational enterprise describes a “perspective in adopting and integrating collaborative and conversational technologies into applications that employees need to do their jobs.”
A consensus is building that leaders must prioritize effective communication in today’s hybrid world. In a recent article, the Harvard Business Review emphasized the essential nature of quality communication in the workplace, noting that it’s no longer considered a soft skill but rather an essential one.
When organizations emphasize the quality of communication (often interpreted in terms of clarity and tone), employees feel more confident and better understand broader company objectives. When all ships point in the same direction, businesses achieve ongoing and sustainable success.
Communication breakdowns undermine collaboration, trust, and productivity
IDC asked leaders to identify and rank the top challenges that inhibit employee effectiveness; they identified collaboration as the number one challenge. When teams don’t collaborate well, work quality declines, overall productivity drops, and trust erodes.
That’s where workplace experience (WPX) technology holds potential. Over the past few years, WPX technology has exploded in growth. Despite this growth in tools designed to enhance team collaboration and improve efficiency, data from the US Department of Labor indicates that productivity has been steadily declining for the past few quarters.
Part of the difficulty may be the sheer number of WPX tools employees are expected to navigate. For example, the IDC study found that 56% of organizations are “concerned” about the number of workplace tools in their tech stack. As the number of options increases, leaders must work to maintain a simplified tech stack while also identifying tools that integrate across systems to drive better alignment.
Transitioning toward the conversational enterprise offers a model for pursuing this level of alignment. Conversational enterprises adopt communication assistance tools that integrate across employees’ day-to-day workflows and applications to improve the quality of communication across the organization.
The conversational enterprise will embrace real-time communication assistance technology
Real-time AI communication assistance is a prime tactic for conversational enterprises. AI works to augment employee capabilities so they can work more efficiently and communicate their expertise with greater clarity and consistency.
For example, Grammarly Business enhances communication team-wide by offering real-time communication assistance that improves clarity, offers suggestions to enhance tone, and helps the writer stay on-brand through customized style guides.
With AI assistance, teams can communicate with confidence, ultimately reducing misalignment and rework to drive productivity and stronger collaboration for long-term success.
For more data on how the conversational enterprise is transforming the workplace and to learn how leading organizations can respond, download the research.
