AI is the cat’s meow. Is it earning its keep in your digital workplace? (Ep. 59)
Weston Morris [00:07]
Welcome to the Digital Workplace Deep Dive Podcast. I'm your host, Weston Morris.
Weston Morris [00:09]
One of the things I do for entertainment — I don't know if everyone considers this entertaining — is I try to figure out what is going on with AI. How are people using it? And I love this thing I found in the news just recently. I'm going to share it with you.
Weston Morris [00:21]
If you've always wondered how to communicate with your pets, there are actually two apps out there that use AI. One is called YesChat.ai. The other is called There's an AI for That. According to this article, you can type in a word or phrase that you want to communicate to your cat, your dog or a variety of pets, and it will tell you the sound that cat or dog makes that means that.
Weston Morris [00:45]
For example, you can now tell the difference between the meow that means "I'm hungry" versus the meow that means "I need attention" — or "get out of my face." Pretty bizarre stuff.
Weston Morris [00:57]
The reason I'm even focusing on that is because AI is showing up everywhere, obviously. But are we getting full value out of it and the other technology investments in the enterprise?
Weston Morris [01:11]
One of the things I've been looking at recently is Gartner's Digital Workplace Maturity Assessment. Dan Wilson shared about the latest data coming out of that — they've run it for a few years — and people are still kind of in the middle. Enterprises are still in the middle on this scale of 1 to 5. And yet there's a little bit of a difference in the regions.
Weston Morris [01:31]
The latest reports show that Europe has a slight edge over enterprises in North America, and I found that interesting. So I thought it would be great to chat with Patrycja Sobera, senior vice president and general manager of Digital Workplace Solutions at Unisys. Welcome to the show, Patrycja.
Patrycja Sobera [01:49]
Thank you, Weston. It's a pleasure to be a guest on the podcast and have the opportunity to have another conversation with you.
Weston Morris [01:55]
Speaking about Gartner, I just want to congratulate you on the Leader ranking that your organization just recently received: the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Outsourced Digital Workplace Services.
Weston Morris [02:09]
With that background and your experience, maybe we can dig into what you're seeing among various enterprises around the world that are achieving business value with technology deployments, including AI. And while we're at it, maybe we can dig into why you think European enterprises are doing slightly better than those in North America. What are you seeing?
Patrycja Sobera [02:34]
Thank you, first and foremost. What we're seeing clearly is that European enterprises are approaching the whole digital workplace more as a business transformation with very defined outcomes — and not just a technology refresh.
Patrycja Sobera [02:48]
We're seeing that they're investing in AI. In fact, our own Unisys research shows that adoption of gen AI at the service desk front end is actually more prominent here in Europe. It's driving a real difference in how we're doing this.
Patrycja Sobera [03:07]
We see our European clients starting with the outcome — whether it's productivity, experience, sustainability or resilience — and then working backwards to the technology. And I think that's why more European organizations tell us they're actually getting value from their AI investment, not just deploying it.
Weston Morris [03:28]
I love starting with the business goal and then working backwards. That same report that Unisys has produced — I'm looking at one stat here. It says that 78% of European enterprises say they're actually getting value out of their AI investments, such as the gen AI you just mentioned, but only 62% of North American enterprises are seeing that same level of value.
Weston Morris [03:50]
The stats are interesting. I think it might be even more interesting, Patrycja, if you could share some examples of how enterprises you're working with are making that connection between the tech investment and getting actual business value.
Patrycja Sobera [04:06]
The value shows up in very practical ways — fewer interruptions, faster resolution and employees getting time back to do the work they were actually hired to do.
Patrycja Sobera [04:17]
When AI is anchored in experience management — understanding friction, predicting issues, removing noise — it stops being a shiny object and starts becoming an enabler of real business outcomes.
Patrycja Sobera [04:34]
One example that really sticks in my memory is a global consumer products organization. Their challenge wasn't technology per se — it was loss of productive time. Through proactive experience management and automation enabled by AI, we returned nearly 50,000 productive hours back to employees in a single year.
Patrycja Sobera [05:00]
The business outcome was tangible. Their product teams were able to dramatically — in fact, quadruple — accelerate their release cycles. That's the connection I care about. Digital workplace isn't just about tickets, tools or technology. It's really about enabling the business to move faster and achieve real business outcomes.
Weston Morris [05:25]
That's interesting. I love that they got to some real business value — basically producing more products than ever before. But I'd like to dig into that experience side of things a bit, because a lot of the stuff we hear about DEX and experience management seems to focus on having a dashboard. How do you get to that next level? What is the next step to get to actual business value?
Patrycja Sobera [05:55]
For me, experience management has to be a lot more than a dashboard. Dashboards tell you what went wrong — it's a very reactive way of looking at the state of IT.
Patrycja Sobera [06:07]
What really creates value is identifying people who are struggling in silence before they log a ticket, before their productivity drops, before their frustration builds and becomes real. When we combine telemetry, sentiment and behavioral signals, we have true data-driven insights and we can intervene early.
Patrycja Sobera [06:34]
That's when experience management stops being an IT capability or a dashboard capability and becomes a true business differentiator.
Weston Morris [06:46]
I think that is a key component that enterprises need to take into account. Patrycja, one other thing — when we talk about DEX, it primarily focuses on PCs, and that is where a lot of our experience lives. But as we look at the broader workforce and frontline workers, is that too limiting to just focus on the PC experience?
Patrycja Sobera [07:09]
I think so. It's a great starting point, don't get me wrong, but it's not enough. Digital work is happening everywhere — across shared devices, across multiple layers of frontline technology, whether it's smart meeting rooms, collaboration spaces, digital signage or even booking systems.
Patrycja Sobera [07:30]
For many employees, especially frontline workers, there actually isn't such a thing anymore as a personal PC. So if we only measure the laptop, we miss the holistic experience. We actually miss the outcome.
Weston Morris [07:54]
I 100% agree. We can't just focus on PCs. You mentioned smart conference rooms — Patrycja, you and I were just at headquarters using smart conference rooms there, the scheduling technology and wayfinding, the digital signage. So what are some advancements you're seeing in this space that aren't just technology advancements, but actually have an impact on business outcomes?
Patrycja Sobera [08:20]
One area that's really resonating with our clients is exactly the smart workplace. We've learned that if organizations are willing to monitor and manage their devices, they should apply the same discipline to the technology embedded in their offices.
Patrycja Sobera [08:37]
One specific client comes to mind. Experience data revealed that their premium collaboration spaces were being used as single-person offices without any collaboration technology being engaged at all. So essentially they had a very expensive meeting room that was regularly being used by just one person, without using any of the meeting technology itself — effectively a very expensive private office.
Patrycja Sobera [09:07]
With this business insight, we helped the client rethink the space design, conference room utilization and ultimately drive costs down. That's an example of digital workplace creating value far beyond IT.
Weston Morris [09:24]
Back to what you said at the very beginning — start with a business initiative, a goal, and then work backwards with the technology.
Weston Morris [09:32]
Thinking of another example: There have been many times I've walked into a conference room and found everything unplugged, with a meeting starting in five minutes that just has to go well and stuff's not working.
Weston Morris [09:47]
One of the things I know at least a couple of your clients are doing is — if someone walks into a conference room, there's a QR code that says "scan me if you need help." They just pull out their phone, scan it and have instant access to help. Maybe even merged reality with somebody showing you how to plug in the cables that are missing. Little things like that make such a difference.
Patrycja Sobera [10:13]
Simple, in-the-moment support — like QR-based help — can really remove friction and stress when you're standing outside a meeting room where nothing works. It can be a very stressful situation.
Patrycja Sobera [10:25]
Totally agree, Weston, that these small experience fixes can have such a huge business impact. And I think what's even better is that they improve confidence in the workplace overall.
Weston Morris [10:38]
I love how you think about reducing the stress of employees as they use technology, because it can be stressful. So we've talked about AI, we've talked about experience management. Maybe we can look at some other aspects of digital workplace maturity and technology — automation, sustainability, security. Where would you like to go next, Patrycja?
Patrycja Sobera [11:02]
All of those are absolutely huge, but automation is a hot topic for me — a big one for us and for our clients. Value only shows up when automation is done with intent.
Patrycja Sobera [11:16]
We've seen clients more than double autonomous resolution rates by combining an AIbased virtual agent with strong knowledge curation and a strong knowledge foundation to start with. The outcome wasn't just fewer tickets — it was overall faster service, lower cost to serve, and better employee trust and experience as well.
Weston Morris [11:43]
I think that's a great example of an enterprise trying to improve in the maturity matrix. If they're filling out the Gartner response, they might think, "Well, I've got that gen AI bot, I'm good." But one of the things I think we're both seeing is that just sticking a bot in front of your service desk is not solving the real problem — without thinking about the quality of the knowledge you're feeding it and the updates you're feeding the bot. What are you seeing with enterprises that are actually getting value out of that?
Patrycja Sobera [12:15]
That is spot on. AI is only as good as the knowledge behind it, as we see and read everywhere. The most mature organizations treat knowledge as exactly that — a strategic asset.
Patrycja Sobera [12:28]
When they do that, the service can evolve into a one-stop experience hub rather than just supporting IT — really expanding that support to the enterprise. We're talking about being a holistic hub for IT, HR, travel, learning and expenses. That's truly when automation starts delivering enterprise-wide value, not just in the IT efficiency space where we already operate so well.
Weston Morris [12:58]
I hear you talking about the support side of the digital workplace — it's such a big area and where people have so many complaints. Maybe we can stay on the topic of support. We've talked about service desk and proactive front-end support. What about when we need inperson support? Are you seeing any advances in technology, maybe AI, that's helping with field services?
Patrycja Sobera [13:21]
This is certainly a passion of mine. I have a large field services organization here at Unisys, and I think that's a great example of where agentic AI can deliver real outcomes.
Patrycja Sobera [13:34]
For us at Unisys, advanced scheduling is a major use case where we can autonomously manage the majority of service appointments. In fact, my services team just hit 2 million tickets being managed through Agent Force, where 70% of those appointments were successfully auto-scheduled — without any human intervention. The result is less manual labor, better resource utilization and improved customer and employee experience, because we're able to get to clients faster.
Patrycja Sobera [14:10]
If you think about the painful experience of having to reschedule an appointment, now think if this is done completely autonomously with AI — that's one headache that no one on the front line will miss. And what's important here is that it's automation working with people, augmenting the human, not replacing them.
Weston Morris [14:36]
Yes, that seems to be the key. Patrycja, we started off talking about the difference between Europe and North America in terms of where people are making advancements. One area where we see a pretty different approach is around sustainability. I think people listening can tell you're from the UK — what are you seeing in Europe around how people are making use of technology to track sustainability and even improve it?
Patrycja Sobera [15:10]
Sustainability is increasingly becoming a core business value and business outcome, especially here in Europe. It's certainly no longer a side initiative, which is really great to see.
Patrycja Sobera [15:23]
What's exciting is that experience data can be used to drive sustainability gains. By identifying, even at the device level, devices that are left on after hours, we've been able to help our clients reduce energy consumption — which subsequently leads to lower emissions and significant cost savings.
Patrycja Sobera [15:50]
For one specific client, our XMO — experience management office — telemetry and analysis helped not only reduce their CO2 emissions, but actually helped them save $1.1 million in energy costs. For me, this is exciting when experience management becomes a lever for ESG outcomes. I don't think we ever thought that would be the case when we first created XMO four years ago. It's great to see those tangible examples of both cost efficiency and, more importantly, the sustainability agenda.
Weston Morris [16:29]
What gets me about that example is it sounds so simple, and yet the impact is so big — over $1 million in energy savings. That's just amazing.
Weston Morris [16:43]
When you're talking about sustainability, I was thinking about something — there's a flip side to it as well. I know there's one of your customers where their sustainability policies were actually running into conflict with their AI initiatives.
Weston Morris [17:01]
If we're looking at all the devices out there and turning things off — or even turning off components of the device — what's the most power-hungry part of any AI-enabled laptop? The NPU. With this particular customer, they were automatically turning off the NPU, which prevented them from actually using local AI capabilities on those devices.
Weston Morris [17:28]
It was the XMO that found this. Through experience management, it surfaced that these two policies are in conflict. Which one's going to win — sustainability, or taking advantage of AI processing? Just a very interesting side effect.
Patrycja Sobera [17:46]
I agree — totally undermining the original intent.
Weston Morris [17:49]
Absolutely. Well, I'd like to ask you — what do you see as coming next in terms of digital workplace services, and what's next for Unisys?
Patrycja Sobera [18:02]
Talking about unprecedented times — I think it's really exciting, actually. We're moving to a world of more adaptive, personalized support. At Unisys, we called it "boundaryless" — anytime, anywhere, for anyone.
Patrycja Sobera [18:26]
If we look at AI, it isn't just improving collaboration — it's reshaping how we operate. Experience is becoming more of a lens for decisions now, not just XMO providing datadriven insights. We're actually driving business decisions based on experience.
Patrycja Sobera [18:55]
Sustainability is no longer an add-on — it's built into the workplace by design. The future of digital workplace is not more tools, but better outcomes — outcomes better tied to business goals, where humans are enabled by AI and, most importantly, not overwhelmed by it.
Patrycja Sobera [19:25]
There's still a little apprehensiveness around how AI will be embedded by enterprises and whether it is a threat to us as humans. But when we talk about these outcomes, this is ultimately where business gains efficiency — we reduce the impact of IT interruptions, we free up investment for growth. Digital workplace is not just about IT; it's bringing that wider enterprise value we already mentioned.
Patrycja Sobera [19:36]
Let me flip this back to you, Weston. We said that most enterprises are at 2.5 or 2.6 on the 1 to 5 digital workplace maturity scale. What do you recommend can help enterprises advance their maturity?
Weston Morris [19:53]
Reflecting on some of the things we've talked about here — right at the very beginning, you mentioned: Before starting to look at tech, look at your business initiatives and goals, and have IT and the business talking together. Start with those business goals and then work backwards to what technology is needed.
Weston Morris [20:13]
Looking at the scale from 1 to 5 — getting from 1 to 2 is really just fundamental standardization. There are a lot of enterprises with multiple toolsets doing the same thing. Can you reduce those? Can you standardize — and not just the tool, but the process? Fundamentals like ITIL still make a lot of sense today.
Weston Morris [20:34]
Going from level 2 to level 3, there's a lot of focus on support — that's where a lot of the pain is in the digital workplace. Stop thinking about your support organization in silos, where you've got service desk here and field services there. It's an end-to-end model.
Weston Morris [20:53]
Start with proactive support. What can I collect from an XMO — an experience management office? What can I prevent from ever getting to the service desk? When I have my service desk, today it needs to start with a bot as much as possible. That changes your service desk so it's really mostly level 2 — they're solving the hard problems. That's all that's left.
Weston Morris [21:19]
Once you've proactively resolved problems and you've got a bot, don't forget about your field services. There needs to be continuity and a connection to your in-person support. And in all of these, how are you going to use AI? You gave some great examples of using agentic AI to augment the engineer.
Weston Morris [21:39]
Looking at your digital workplace in terms of personas is a really important step. Not everybody gets the exact same technology or the same type of support — it really needs to be tied to your personas.
Weston Morris [21:58]
One persona in particular we've often ignored is your frontline workers. We've been thinking about the people with PCs and laptops, but you mentioned people with ruggedized devices, people on the road, people in hard-to-reach places — maybe on an oil rig in the middle of the Atlantic. How do these people get their support? How do they get the devices and technology they need?
Weston Morris [22:21]
Lastly, OCM — organizational change management. We haven't mentioned that acronym on this podcast, but we do talk about it pretty frequently. When we're rolling this out, you mentioned the stress of getting new technology.
Weston Morris [22:35]
One way to alleviate that is to have great OCM techniques where you're educating people: Here's what's changing, here's why it's changing, here's how it will help you, here's what you need to do — and we've got your back. If you have any problems, here's how you get support and help. Just doing that makes such a difference. The organizations that do that when rolling out any of these technologies — it just makes such a difference.
Weston Morris [23:01]
And there's such an opportunity to make use of XLAs — not narrow XLAs looking at the PC experience, but the experience of a business. Like you mentioned earlier, one client's XLA measures how many products the company is able to produce in a quarter. What a great XLA that's tied to the business.
Weston Morris [23:29]
So maybe I can bat it back to you now. What kind of call to action would you recommend, Patrycja?
Patrycja Sobera [23:45]
My call to action is quite simple. Start by running Gartner's Digital Workplace Maturity Assessment. Gartner provides a great framework — see where you land. It's a great way to understand your current state honestly, your capabilities, your gaps, and ultimately think about the outcomes you want to achieve.
Patrycja Sobera [24:09]
I'd encourage people not to treat this as a report card. Use it as an opportunity to have a conversation with wider business leaders — HR, facilities, perhaps even security, and your own teams who live the experience every day.
Patrycja Sobera [24:27]
Gartner does an excellent job in helping organizations understand what their digital workplace maturity looks like and what outcomes they're delivering. Many organizations still struggle with turning that insight into actual day-to-day operational reality.
Patrycja Sobera [24:45]
For us at Unisys, that's where the work of XLA Institute comes in as well. We're proud to be founding members of the XLA Institute because it focuses on the "how" — how we can implement experience data in day-to-day governance, how experience data is integrated across domains, and how we can use that data to drive changes at scale. We're moving away from measuring uptime and ticket closure to managing real human impact on productivity, engagement and sustainability.
Patrycja Sobera [25:27]
One thing the XLA maturity model makes very clear is that it's not a dashboard. It's a leadership and operating model journey — it's not going to happen overnight.
Patrycja Sobera [25:40]
Really think about who your stakeholders are. Experience and any maturity assessments require executive sponsorship. Ownership has to be within IT and extended beyond IT. And accountability needs to evolve from traditional KPIs and SLAs that measure activity to XLAs that measure outcomes people actually experience.
Patrycja Sobera [26:08]
When you look at those models, many organizations think that they are more mature than where they are when it comes to digital workplace experience. What we actually see in both the Gartner and XLA Institute maturity assessments is that most organizations are in the early parts of the journey — where they may have some data structure and good reporting, but it's not yet embedded, it's not yet operationalized.
Patrycja Sobera [26:43]
The real shift happens when experience becomes part of governance, part of day-to-day service, part of service design and part of decision-making across the enterprise. That's truly when digital workplace stops being seen as a cost center and starts acting as a strategic enabler.
Patrycja Sobera [27:10]
As always, I love industry conversations. I love comparing notes, and I love when people reach out to have a conversation. I think the fastest way to mature is learning from each other.
Weston Morris [27:24]
So let's see if I'm hearing this right — are you suggesting that if our listeners run Gartner's Digital Workplace Maturity Assessment, you'd be willing to sit down, see what they've come up with, have a conversation about that and share your experiences? Is that what you're offering?
Patrycja Sobera [27:40]
There is nothing better than comparing notes and having a truly meaningful conversation. Unprecedented times, unprecedented challenges — we all face a ton of them. So why don't we come together?
Weston Morris [27:55]
Love it. Anyone who engages with you will find that to be a very refreshing conversation. I'd just like to thank you, Patrycja, for taking some time and sharing your thoughts on digital workplace maturity. I think we've shared some very nice opportunities for our listeners here today. Thank you again, Patrycja.
Patrycja Sobera [28:14]
Thank you, Weston. Always a pleasure.
Weston Morris [28:26]
That ends another episode of the Digital Workplace Deep Dive Podcast. I'm your host,
Weston Morris. Thanks for listening.
