Business Architects as Human Experience Designers: A New Frontier in Employee and Customer Engagement. This article is part of a series of exploratory concepts and ideas about how and where business architecture could make an impact. Some of the concepts and ideas may be a bit off the wall.
The metamorphosis of the business landscape under the influence of digital transformation has significantly altered various professional roles. Among those, business architects have witnessed a marked evolution of their responsibilities, now extending beyond the conventional boundaries of orchestrating enterprise alignment and managing digital transformations. Increasingly, they are stepping into the domain of designing human experiences, playing a pivotal role in shaping the interactions of both employees and customers. This shift towards experience design marks a new frontier in employee and customer engagement, broadening the scope of business architecture and adding a new dimension to its value proposition.
Business Architects as Human Experience Designers:
Business Architects and the Human Experience
Human experience, at its core, represents the summation of an individual’s interactions and perceptions, shaping their overall satisfaction and engagement. In a business context, this can refer to internal interactions—those of employees with their organization—and external interactions—customers’ experiences with a business’s products or services. Enhancing these experiences has become a strategic priority for businesses worldwide in the digital age.
The role of the business architect in this arena is akin to that of a conductor orchestrating a symphony. They create a harmonious alignment of various business elements—processes, systems, and people—to deliver a seamless, positive experience. By designing these elements with a human-centric focus, architects can influence how the organization operates and how it feels to interact with it, whether you are an employee or a customer.
Shaping Employee Experiences
The responsibility of a business architect extends into shaping an employee’s journey, from their initial onboarding to their growth and eventual progression within the organization. Architects are instrumental in defining the structural design and processes that form the backbone of an employee’s work life.
For instance, they can devise flexible working models that align with the employees’ need for work-life balance. Or they can shape performance management systems that provide continuous feedback and promote a growth mindset. They can also help create learning and development opportunities that are customized to the individual’s needs and career aspirations. These elements contribute to a positive employee experience, fostering engagement and productivity and reducing attrition.
Elevating the Customer Experience
Business architects play a crucial role in customer experience design on the external front. They work closely with customer-facing teams to understand customers’ needs and expectations. Through technological proficiency and business acumen, architects design solutions that meet these expectations and align with the organization’s strategic objectives.
This process involves designing seamless, user-friendly interfaces for customers, ensuring the availability of relevant information at the right time, and creating systems that solicit customer feedback and act on it. Architects must also consider the emotional aspect of the customer experience, building systems that evoke positive feelings and associations with the brand.
Required Skills and Competencies
Business architects need to cultivate a specific set of skills and competencies to operate in this new frontier. Empathy, for one, is paramount. Architects need to understand their stakeholders’ needs, frustrations, and aspirations to design experiences that resonate with them.
Problem-solving is another essential skill. Architects should be able to identify potential issues in the human experience, find their root causes, and devise effective solutions. They must also be proficient in data analysis, using both quantitative and qualitative data to inform their designs and assess their effectiveness.
Business Architects as Human Experience Designers: A New Frontier in Engagement
The move toward human-centric design represents a new frontier in business architecture. By placing the human experience at the center of their designs, business architects can enhance engagement and satisfaction among both employees and customers. They can shape not just an organization’s structural and operational aspects but also its cultural and emotional dimensions.
However, as they navigate this frontier, architects must remember that the human experience is dynamic, continually evolving with changes in societal trends and individual preferences. They must, therefore, commit to ongoing learning and adaptation, keeping their designs flexible and responsive to the changing needs of their stakeholders.
In this new role as human experience designers, business architects are thus not just shaping businesses—they are shaping lives, making organizations not just places to work or do business with. Still, communities that understand, value, and enrich the human experience. This role as a human experience designers, therefore, represents an exciting and rewarding new chapter in the journey of business architects, setting the stage for an even more significant impact on the world of business.
