2 Surprising Personas that Benefit from VDI

We recently highlighted three people within organizations that benefit the most from desktop virtualization – the CIO, IT Teams and the CISO/Security Pros. The use cases and benefits are clear for those personas and generally universal regardless of organization or industry. They’re not always the only ones advocating for virtual desktops though.

There are two personas not covered in that post that can also benefit from virtual desktops in the right situations – HR Heads and Chief Revenue Officers. While these roles may be indifferent to desktop virtualization in some cases, under the right circumstances and with specific organizational priorities, HR Heads and CROs can benefit from desktop virtualization just as much as their CIO, IT and security counterparts.

HR Heads

Managing hiring, minimizing turnover and creating a smooth onboarding process are key focuses for HR heads. In some companies, this is relatively straight forward. But for some industries and organizations, it can create a massive headache for HR.

The Right Scenario for VDI

Organizations that have a lot of remote staff or scale on a regular basis (customer support providers, BPOs, retail, tax preparation, etc.) need an easy and quick way to on-board and provision these employees. That’s not exactly an easy task with traditional desktop management, which can take hours to get a desktop ready for a new employee – and even longer is a corporate laptop needs to be mailed to a remote worker.

The longer it takes to onboard a new employee, the longer their time to productivity and revenue is. If that employee leaves shortly after (or even before they’re fully productive) the process starts over again, hurting the company. In situations like these, HR has a vested interest in technology that will help the company scale and quickly get new and remote employees fully productive.

Virtual desktops – particularly when purchased from a fully managed desktop as a service (DaaS) provider – make it easy to scale and fast to deploy. Within a few minutes, new employees can have a desktop preloaded with their required applications. Plus, it’s accessible from any internet-enabled device, which is especially helpful for organizations that use a BYOD (bring your own device) model.

Key Benefits

• Faster employee provisioning and time to productivity
• Quick IT troubleshooting for remote employees
• Consistent user experience regardless of employee location
• Compatible with any internet-enabled endpoint device

Chief Revenue Officers

Faster time to productivity means faster time to revenue, which every CRO is concerned with. This makes them a natural partner with HR when advocating for virtual desktops. In some cases though, desktop virtualization can help organizations drive even more business and revenue.

The Right Scenario for VDI

We already discussed one reason organizations that regularly scale can benefit from virtual desktops. In scaling scenarios, mindful CROs can find a few more benefits:

• Infrastructure savings of a DaaS provider
• Allowing BYOD for seasonal workers or relying on affordable thin clients instead of full laptops

Minimizing the cost of seasonal scaling will make any revenue generated go further. With virtual desktops, CROs can work with IT to reduce the cost of provision temporary employees, such as allowing them to use personal devices without security or compatibility concerns. When the seasonal spike subsides, the virtual desktops are spun back down. No expensive hardware or infrastructure sitting idle waiting until next season and cutting into profit margins.

Another scenario where a CRO should be keenly interested in desktop virtualization is at business process outsourcers and customer care service provider organizations. In these industries, anything you can do to give your organization a competitive edge can drive new business and revenue. With virtual desktops, organizations can more easily and confidently offer remote staffing (better for talent acquisition and 24×7 coverage). Companies that partner with a proven DaaS provider can also demonstrate a highly secure desktop environment and even meet PCI and HIPAA compliance requirements, allowing them to say “yes” to more customers.

If you choose a solution that includes analytics and insights you’ll also get access to an unprecedented amount to information that helps CROs and their organizations identify trends like:

• When exactly to scale up and back based on historical demand
• How many employees are active and if there is a large number of workers sitting idle
• If areas like software licensing and computing resources can be rightsized for better budget alignment

This type of information helps organizations make smarter business decisions. The better the budget is handled, the farther revenue goes.

Key Benefits

• Increased time to revenue
• Minimize in-house expenses
• Scale up and down exactly with need
• Ability to say “yes” to more client requests to earn new business
• Access analytics for proper planning and budget alignment