April 30, 2026
Delivering a Secure, Seamless Digital Employee Experience
Fragmentation, sprawl and competing priorities can stall workplace modernization. A unified, strategic approach to endpoint management, security and digital employee experience drives better outcomes for users and IT departments.
Organizations increasingly recognize that high-quality digital employee experiences drive productivity, security and retention, yet modernization remains difficult to prioritize amid competing demands and growing complexity. Many environments still suffer from sprawl, fragmentation and siloed strategies that limit visibility and require extensive IT management.
The consequences can be significant, impacting costs and operational efficiency and making it difficult for organizations to build agility and scalability. Roughly half of employees experience device or access issues regularly, which lowers morale and raises security risks through shadow IT and workarounds.
The path forward is a unified workspace strategy that simplifies IT management, strengthens security and enables secure, seamless access from any device or location. Expert partners can play a critical role in helping organizations assess their environments, align technology with business objectives and develop clear roadmaps to modernization. The result is a consistent, high-performance experience that makes employees and organizations more effective.
CDW can help you modernize your workspace solutions to deliver a secure, seamless experience in every environment.
Organizations increasingly recognize that high-quality digital employee experiences drive productivity, security and retention, yet modernization remains difficult to prioritize amid competing demands and growing complexity. Many environments still suffer from sprawl, fragmentation and siloed strategies that limit visibility and require extensive IT management.
The consequences can be significant, impacting costs and operational efficiency and making it difficult for organizations to build agility and scalability. Roughly half of employees experience device or access issues regularly, which lowers morale and raises security risks through shadow IT and workarounds.
The path forward is a unified workspace strategy that simplifies IT management, strengthens security and enables secure, seamless access from any device or location. Expert partners can play a critical role in helping organizations assess their environments, align technology with business objectives and develop clear roadmaps to modernization. The result is a consistent, high-performance experience that makes employees and organizations more effective.
CDW can help you modernize your workspace solutions to deliver a secure, seamless experience in every environment.
Organizations recognize that high-quality digital employee experiences (DEX) drive productivity, security and retention, yet many leaders struggle to modernize effectively. That’s partly because modern workspaces are complex, defined less by a single tool or platform and more by the intersection of users, devices, applications and access. Organizations must modernize not only their technology, but also how work is delivered and experienced across environments.
Workspace needs and solutions have changed significantly over the past decade. Hybrid work, endpoint and application advances, and growing Software as a Service adoption have reshaped the landscape. Organizations need fewer platforms than before, yet many environments still suffer from sprawl and fragmentation.
Employees feel the consequences: 54% report experiencing device issues frequently or occasionally, and 48% say they have issues accessing tools and applications. These frictions hamper productivity, morale and retention. When employees struggle with their workspaces, they often resort to workarounds and shadow IT that invite security risks. IT departments also face growing complexity. Fragmented solutions limit visibility, while siloed endpoint and application strategies are insufficient for distributed workforces and rising security threats.
With pressure mounting to deliver uniform, digital employee experiences across office, home and mobile environments, IT teams are moving beyond “work from anywhere” toward workspaces that are flexible yet consistent. The goal is secure, seamless access to applications and devices from any location. Unified endpoint management, end-user compute solutions and client virtualization simplify IT management, strengthen security and optimize costs while building the agility organizations need to scale and adapt.
Most organizations understand the value of this shift. In practice, however, modernization is difficult to prioritize amid competing demands and technological complexity. Expert partners can help by assessing environments, identifying friction points and developing roadmaps that align technology with business objectives. Approached strategically, workplace modernization delivers consistent high-performing experiences that make employees and organizations more effective.
85%
The percentage of employees who cited good technology as one of the most important factors in their working lives
Source: Owl Labs, “State of Hybrid Work, United States,” September 2025
CDW can help your organization align its workspace technology with its business objectives.
Organizations recognize that high-quality digital employee experiences (DEX) drive productivity, security and retention, yet many leaders struggle to modernize effectively. That’s partly because modern workspaces are complex, defined less by a single tool or platform and more by the intersection of users, devices, applications and access. Organizations must modernize not only their technology, but also how work is delivered and experienced across environments.
Workspace needs and solutions have changed significantly over the past decade. Hybrid work, endpoint and application advances, and growing Software as a Service adoption have reshaped the landscape. Organizations need fewer platforms than before, yet many environments still suffer from sprawl and fragmentation.
Employees feel the consequences: 54% report experiencing device issues frequently or occasionally, and 48% say they have issues accessing tools and applications. These frictions hamper productivity, morale and retention. When employees struggle with their workspaces, they often resort to workarounds and shadow IT that invite security risks. IT departments also face growing complexity. Fragmented solutions limit visibility, while siloed endpoint and application strategies are insufficient for distributed workforces and rising security threats.
With pressure mounting to deliver uniform, digital employee experiences across office, home and mobile environments, IT teams are moving beyond “work from anywhere” toward workspaces that are flexible yet consistent. The goal is secure, seamless access to applications and devices from any location. Unified endpoint management, end-user compute solutions and client virtualization simplify IT management, strengthen security and optimize costs while building the agility organizations need to scale and adapt.
Most organizations understand the value of this shift. In practice, however, modernization is difficult to prioritize amid competing demands and technological complexity. Expert partners can help by assessing environments, identifying friction points and developing roadmaps that align technology with business objectives. Approached strategically, workplace modernization delivers consistent high-performing experiences that make employees and organizations more effective.
CDW can help your organization align its workspace technology with its business objectives.
Workspaces by the Numbers
70%
The percentage of IT decision-makers who said their biggest pain point in securing remote or hybrid work is managing diverse device and network environments
Source: CDW, “New CDW Research: How Organizations Optimize the Digital Experience,” October 2025
47%
The percentage of IT decision-makers who cited a lack of integration among tools as a challenge for their workspace environment
Source: CDW, “New CDW Research: How Organizations Optimize the Digital Experience,” October 2025
65%
The percentage of IT professionals who said day-to-day IT operations were so overwhelming that digital experience takes a back seat
Source: Ivanti, “2025 Digital Employee Experience Report,” September 2025
Workspaces by the Numbers
70%
The percentage of IT decision-makers who said their biggest pain point in securing remote or hybrid work is managing diverse device and network environments
Source: CDW, “New CDW Research: How Organizations Optimize the Digital Experience,” October 2025
47%
The percentage of IT decision-makers who cited a lack of integration among tools as a challenge for their workspace environment
Source: CDW, “New CDW Research: How Organizations Optimize the Digital Experience,” October 2025
65%
The percentage of IT professionals who said day-to-day IT operations were so overwhelming that digital experience takes a back seat
Source: Ivanti, “2025 Digital Employee Experience Report,” September 2025
- DIGITAL EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCES BARRIERS
- A MODERN WORKSPACE
- MODERN WORKPLACE SOLUTIONS
Workspace complexity, fragmentation and manual processes undermine productivity by increasing friction and costs across an organization. To deliver seamless user experiences, organizations must overcome technical sprawl. Recent technology advances make it possible to consolidate solutions while improving IT teams’ ability to optimize and manage devices, applications and systems.
ENDPOINT COMPLEXITY: Organizations face growing complexity from endpoint sprawl across diverse devices, ownership structures and ownership models, including bring your own device (BYOD) and corporate-owned, personally enabled (COPE) policies. Mergers and rapid growth often result in disparate platforms that create gaps in IT visibility and impede IT teams’ ability to manage and optimize workspaces and devices.
RISING COSTS AND RISKS: Unchecked tool proliferation increases costs and reduces operational efficiency. Outdated security solutions impede the adoption of mobile- and cloud-first work and are unable to keep pace with the continuously evolving threat landscape. These challenges compound each other — for instance, poor endpoint visibility slows issue resolution, frustrates employees and increases IT workloads.
LACK OF CLEAR VISION: IT environments are built incrementally and become entrenched over time. Leaders often find it difficult to step back and analyze existing environments objectively. Clarity is essential to adequately answer questions such as, “What do users actually need to do their jobs?” and “What will the business require in five years?”
CHANGE MANAGEMENT: Employees are more accepting of workplace changes that demonstrably improve their day-to-day experience. Even so, change management is a crucial element of modernization. For instance, consolidating tools can be disruptive if employees lack clear guidance on how to use a new workflow. Change requires proactive communication, accessible resources and training.
SILOED PERSPECTIVES: Effective modernization requires input from executives, IT leaders and line-of-business (LOB) stakeholders. LOB voices represent end users, while leadership keeps strategy and cost in focus. Because IT and business teams often hold vastly different perspectives, aligning both sides is essential to building a workspace that works for everyone.
Click Below To Continue Reading
CDW’s User Workspace Assessment is designed to help organizations define success on their own terms and build a clear, achievable path to get there. CDW’s experts combine quantitative data with qualitative insights gathered through onsite interviews and workshops with IT leaders, business stakeholders and end users. This approach captures what’s happening today and what the organization needs tomorrow.
From that foundation, CDW analyzes requirements across key variables — network, compute, devices and applications — to distill environmental complexity into clear requirements. These inform the development of a tailored strategy and an actionable roadmap: a prioritized plan built around each organization’s unique goals. By clearly understanding the objectives and steps at the outset, organizations can avoid common pitfalls such as investing in solutions that fail to resolve underlying issues or stalling progress due to a lack of consensus and overarching strategy.
Because CDW partners with an extensive ecosystem of vendors, it can right-size recommendations for each customer. Its experts can also help organizations optimize the technologies they have, simplifying IT management and reducing costs and technical debt.
The modern workspace is a system rather than a collection of point solutions. Organizations that modernize successfully build on interconnected principles that deliver consistency for users and control for IT while creating a foundation for artificial intelligence, automation and future work models. These principles span five pillars:
• Unified endpoint and device management — This enables lifecycle-based provisioning, management and recovery across desktops, mobile devices and virtual environments.
• Consistent access and application delivery — Virtualization and modern management help organizations reduce location and network variability. Application virtualization delivers a consistent local experience with less reliance on the network than desktop virtualization.
• Integrated security and identity — Consolidation and integration enable real-time endpoint protection, identity-first access and the adoption of zero-trust principles.
• Digital experience intelligence — These platforms use analytics and AI-driven optimization to help organizations be proactive in removing frictions and eliminating downtime.
• Automation and scalability — Modern platforms use automation to reduce manual IT processes, improve reliability and responsiveness, and increase agility.
Together, these pillars enable workspaces that are secure, consistent and intelligent.
REDUCING IT BARRIERS: Modernization efforts frequently stall due to cost, staffing turnover and the amount of change involved. IT professionals say they often face barriers to prioritizing DEX, including the complexity of technology stacks (41%) and the need to address more urgent priorities (27%).
However, the right approach can reduce IT burden over time. When security, endpoint management and experience tools share data and complementary capabilities, organizations can apply automation and AI across platforms, acting on real-time data to resolve issues and manage threats. For example, a unified approach gives IT a consolidated view of users and devices, enabling faster resolution and more consistent security. The result is a measurable impact on productivity for users and IT teams alike.
CLOSING THE DEX GAP: Many organizations have invested in multiple workspace solutions without leveraging their full potential and value. As a result, ROI remains low and problems persist, in part because IT teams continue to manage disparate platforms. This often creates gaps between organizations’ desire to enhance digital employee experiences and their ability to do so. For example, 85% of IT professionals say improving DEX is a priority, yet 42% struggle to monitor endpoints and automate processes — despite having invested in DEX solutions.
Engaging a partner can be more cost-effective than maintaining tools that are underutilized and poorly integrated. Experts can help to reduce costly unknowns before investments are made and ensure organizations extract full value from what they already own.
USING AI WITH INTENT: As AI becomes embedded into workplace solutions at every level, it has significant potential to simplify IT operations and improve user experiences. However, AI must be deployed purposefully. Organizations face a real tension between maintaining control over IT operations and ceding it to AI strategically. For instance, implementing agentic AI without the expertise to configure it correctly rarely delivers the desired results. CDW can help organizations cut through this complexity by defining use cases clearly, building the right workflows and deploying AI where it can create measurable value. Agentic AI for frontline help desk teams, for example, can resolve common issues automatically and reduce IT workloads.
MANAGING CHANGE: Workplace modernization is an ongoing effort rather than a one-time initiative. Devices, threats and technologies evolve continuously, and even well-consolidated environments will need specialized tools that cannot yet be integrated. Meanwhile, emerging security risks and shifting business requirements will affect workspaces and user experiences. The goal is not to eliminate change but to minimize its impact on users and IT teams.
This requires both technical and cultural shifts. Organizations need to continually assess not only their tools but also how they deliver workspaces and manage access. Change management is equally critical. Employees who understand and experience the benefits of modernization are more likely to embrace change as an enabler of easier, more efficient workflows.
With expert guidance and the right solutions, organizations can establish secure, flexible workspaces that enhance users’ experience and reduce operational risks.
EXPERIENCE AND EFFICIENCY: Client virtualization gives users secure access to their desktops and applications from any device, anywhere, while improving performance and consistency. DEX solutions take a proactive approach to monitoring and optimizing device and application performance, with metrics ranging from user analytics to IT ticket resolution times. Together, these solutions enable faster, more seamless access to the tools users depend on, along with lower operational costs because of consolidation and automation.
For IT teams, managing diverse devices across operating systems and user roles is a significant challenge, reducing the time they can spend on strategic problem-solving or innovations that advance business outcomes. End-user compute solutions help by streamlining provisioning, lifecycle management and support, which translates to reduced costs and greater operational efficiency.
AGILITY AND CYBERSECURITY: Unified endpoint management enables centralized control over mobile devices so IT teams can efficiently enforce policies, maintain compliance and protect sensitive data across a mobile-first workforce. Automation and AI-powered tools enhance these capabilities by streamlining systems maintenance, reducing downtime and increasing agility so organizations can adapt to growth, change and evolving work models.
Cybersecurity is an essential component of workspace design. Integrated security solutions, including identity and access management and automated threat detection, protect users and data without introducing friction into workflows. That’s essential given that 27% of office workers say they routinely use shadow IT because their employer-provided tools are too frustrating.
Finally, modern workspace solutions support sustainability goals through responsible device lifecycle practices.
CLARITY AMID COMPLEXITY: Despite growing awareness, many organizations lag in adopting modern workspace solutions. Only 32% report having deployed unified endpoint management tools, and more than one-third say they rely on manual processes to track IT assets. Meanwhile, 65% of IT professionals acknowledge tool overlap and redundancy but can’t prioritize consolidation because day-to-day work is too demanding.
The complexity of existing environments is a common hurdle to modernization, as are competing priorities and the extensive array of available solutions. Expert partners bring an outside perspective, technical depth and cross-industry experience to simplify these issues. They can help organizations define clear goals, avoid costly missteps and build toward outcomes that are achievable and sustainable.
CDW’S APPROACH: CDW helps organizations simplify device and application management, enhance DEX, secure endpoints and scale IT with greater agility. Engagements range from high-level assessments and tailored roadmaps to hands-on implementation that helps teams fully leverage their investments. Digital experience tools give leaders visibility into employees’ real-world challenges, while optimization services help increase ROI on existing tools.
CDW also identifies opportunities to apply AI and automation where they’ll have the most impact. Finally, refresh and recover services manage device end-of-life scenarios through secure data wiping, refurbishment and responsible recycling. With extensive partner relationships and a broad customer base, CDW’s experts stay ahead of technology trends to guide organizations toward solutions that best fit their environment and goals.
- DIGITAL EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCES BARRIERS
- A MODERN WORKSPACE
- MODERN WORKPLACE SOLUTIONS
Workspace complexity, fragmentation and manual processes undermine productivity by increasing friction and costs across an organization. To deliver seamless user experiences, organizations must overcome technical sprawl. Recent technology advances make it possible to consolidate solutions while improving IT teams’ ability to optimize and manage devices, applications and systems.
ENDPOINT COMPLEXITY: Organizations face growing complexity from endpoint sprawl across diverse devices, ownership structures and ownership models, including bring your own device (BYOD) and corporate-owned, personally enabled (COPE) policies. Mergers and rapid growth often result in disparate platforms that create gaps in IT visibility and impede IT teams’ ability to manage and optimize workspaces and devices.
RISING COSTS AND RISKS: Unchecked tool proliferation increases costs and reduces operational efficiency. Outdated security solutions impede the adoption of mobile- and cloud-first work and are unable to keep pace with the continuously evolving threat landscape. These challenges compound each other — for instance, poor endpoint visibility slows issue resolution, frustrates employees and increases IT workloads.
LACK OF CLEAR VISION: IT environments are built incrementally and become entrenched over time. Leaders often find it difficult to step back and analyze existing environments objectively. Clarity is essential to adequately answer questions such as, “What do users actually need to do their jobs?” and “What will the business require in five years?”
CHANGE MANAGEMENT: Employees are more accepting of workplace changes that demonstrably improve their day-to-day experience. Even so, change management is a crucial element of modernization. For instance, consolidating tools can be disruptive if employees lack clear guidance on how to use a new workflow. Change requires proactive communication, accessible resources and training.
SILOED PERSPECTIVES: Effective modernization requires input from executives, IT leaders and line-of-business (LOB) stakeholders. LOB voices represent end users, while leadership keeps strategy and cost in focus. Because IT and business teams often hold vastly different perspectives, aligning both sides is essential to building a workspace that works for everyone.
Click Below To Continue Reading
CDW’s User Workspace Assessment is designed to help organizations define success on their own terms and build a clear, achievable path to get there. CDW’s experts combine quantitative data with qualitative insights gathered through onsite interviews and workshops with IT leaders, business stakeholders and end users. This approach captures what’s happening today and what the organization needs tomorrow.
From that foundation, CDW analyzes requirements across key variables — network, compute, devices and applications — to distill environmental complexity into clear requirements. These inform the development of a tailored strategy and an actionable roadmap: a prioritized plan built around each organization’s unique goals. By clearly understanding the objectives and steps at the outset, organizations can avoid common pitfalls such as investing in solutions that fail to resolve underlying issues or stalling progress due to a lack of consensus and overarching strategy.
Because CDW partners with an extensive ecosystem of vendors, it can right-size recommendations for each customer. Its experts can also help organizations optimize the technologies they have, simplifying IT management and reducing costs and technical debt.
The modern workspace is a system rather than a collection of point solutions. Organizations that modernize successfully build on interconnected principles that deliver consistency for users and control for IT while creating a foundation for artificial intelligence, automation and future work models. These principles span five pillars:
• Unified endpoint and device management — This enables lifecycle-based provisioning, management and recovery across desktops, mobile devices and virtual environments.
• Consistent access and application delivery — Virtualization and modern management help organizations reduce location and network variability. Application virtualization delivers a consistent local experience with less reliance on the network than desktop virtualization.
• Integrated security and identity — Consolidation and integration enable real-time endpoint protection, identity-first access and the adoption of zero-trust principles.
• Digital experience intelligence — These platforms use analytics and AI-driven optimization to help organizations be proactive in removing frictions and eliminating downtime.
• Automation and scalability — Modern platforms use automation to reduce manual IT processes, improve reliability and responsiveness, and increase agility.
Together, these pillars enable workspaces that are secure, consistent and intelligent.
REDUCING IT BARRIERS: Modernization efforts frequently stall due to cost, staffing turnover and the amount of change involved. IT professionals say they often face barriers to prioritizing DEX, including the complexity of technology stacks (41%) and the need to address more urgent priorities (27%).
However, the right approach can reduce IT burden over time. When security, endpoint management and experience tools share data and complementary capabilities, organizations can apply automation and AI across platforms, acting on real-time data to resolve issues and manage threats. For example, a unified approach gives IT a consolidated view of users and devices, enabling faster resolution and more consistent security. The result is a measurable impact on productivity for users and IT teams alike.
CLOSING THE DEX GAP: Many organizations have invested in multiple workspace solutions without leveraging their full potential and value. As a result, ROI remains low and problems persist, in part because IT teams continue to manage disparate platforms. This often creates gaps between organizations’ desire to enhance digital employee experiences and their ability to do so. For example, 85% of IT professionals say improving DEX is a priority, yet 42% struggle to monitor endpoints and automate processes — despite having invested in DEX solutions.
Engaging a partner can be more cost-effective than maintaining tools that are underutilized and poorly integrated. Experts can help to reduce costly unknowns before investments are made and ensure organizations extract full value from what they already own.
USING AI WITH INTENT: As AI becomes embedded into workplace solutions at every level, it has significant potential to simplify IT operations and improve user experiences. However, AI must be deployed purposefully. Organizations face a real tension between maintaining control over IT operations and ceding it to AI strategically. For instance, implementing agentic AI without the expertise to configure it correctly rarely delivers the desired results. CDW can help organizations cut through this complexity by defining use cases clearly, building the right workflows and deploying AI where it can create measurable value. Agentic AI for frontline help desk teams, for example, can resolve common issues automatically and reduce IT workloads.
MANAGING CHANGE: Workplace modernization is an ongoing effort rather than a one-time initiative. Devices, threats and technologies evolve continuously, and even well-consolidated environments will need specialized tools that cannot yet be integrated. Meanwhile, emerging security risks and shifting business requirements will affect workspaces and user experiences. The goal is not to eliminate change but to minimize its impact on users and IT teams.
This requires both technical and cultural shifts. Organizations need to continually assess not only their tools but also how they deliver workspaces and manage access. Change management is equally critical. Employees who understand and experience the benefits of modernization are more likely to embrace change as an enabler of easier, more efficient workflows.
With expert guidance and the right solutions, organizations can establish secure, flexible workspaces that enhance users’ experience and reduce operational risks.
EXPERIENCE AND EFFICIENCY: Client virtualization gives users secure access to their desktops and applications from any device, anywhere, while improving performance and consistency. DEX solutions take a proactive approach to monitoring and optimizing device and application performance, with metrics ranging from user analytics to IT ticket resolution times. Together, these solutions enable faster, more seamless access to the tools users depend on, along with lower operational costs because of consolidation and automation.
For IT teams, managing diverse devices across operating systems and user roles is a significant challenge, reducing the time they can spend on strategic problem-solving or innovations that advance business outcomes. End-user compute solutions help by streamlining provisioning, lifecycle management and support, which translates to reduced costs and greater operational efficiency.
AGILITY AND CYBERSECURITY: Unified endpoint management enables centralized control over mobile devices so IT teams can efficiently enforce policies, maintain compliance and protect sensitive data across a mobile-first workforce. Automation and AI-powered tools enhance these capabilities by streamlining systems maintenance, reducing downtime and increasing agility so organizations can adapt to growth, change and evolving work models.
Cybersecurity is an essential component of workspace design. Integrated security solutions, including identity and access management and automated threat detection, protect users and data without introducing friction into workflows. That’s essential given that 27% of office workers say they routinely use shadow IT because their employer-provided tools are too frustrating.
Finally, modern workspace solutions support sustainability goals through responsible device lifecycle practices.
CLARITY AMID COMPLEXITY: Despite growing awareness, many organizations lag in adopting modern workspace solutions. Only 32% report having deployed unified endpoint management tools, and more than one-third say they rely on manual processes to track IT assets. Meanwhile, 65% of IT professionals acknowledge tool overlap and redundancy but can’t prioritize consolidation because day-to-day work is too demanding.
The complexity of existing environments is a common hurdle to modernization, as are competing priorities and the extensive array of available solutions. Expert partners bring an outside perspective, technical depth and cross-industry experience to simplify these issues. They can help organizations define clear goals, avoid costly missteps and build toward outcomes that are achievable and sustainable.
CDW’S APPROACH: CDW helps organizations simplify device and application management, enhance DEX, secure endpoints and scale IT with greater agility. Engagements range from high-level assessments and tailored roadmaps to hands-on implementation that helps teams fully leverage their investments. Digital experience tools give leaders visibility into employees’ real-world challenges, while optimization services help increase ROI on existing tools.
CDW also identifies opportunities to apply AI and automation where they’ll have the most impact. Finally, refresh and recover services manage device end-of-life scenarios through secure data wiping, refurbishment and responsible recycling. With extensive partner relationships and a broad customer base, CDW’s experts stay ahead of technology trends to guide organizations toward solutions that best fit their environment and goals.
CDW can help your organization implement a modernized workspace that meets your needs and helps you achieve your goals.
Jonathan Freeman
Solution Architect
