Questions with "Mark Banfield of 1E"

The name "1E" is inspired by a blue-screen computer error code "STOP 0x0000001E," indicating a significant system crash or failure. The founder of 1E aimed for the company to prevent such critical errors from impacting employees at large companies, positioning 1E as a pioneering firm in enhancing Digital Employee Experience (DEX) and preventing workplace technology disruptions​.Mark Banfield joined 1E as CEO on September 27, 2021, bringing over two decades of software industry experience, with a focus on enhancing customer experiences and fostering high-performance teams. His prior roles include Chief Revenue Officer at LogicMonitor and leadership positions at Autotask. With a master's degree from University College London, Banfield's leadership at 1E is geared towards advancing digital employee experiences post-pandemic​.

Since joining 1E as CEO, Mark Banfield has focused on refining the company's vision around Digital Employee Experience (DEX), emphasizing the transformation and reimagination of how technology serves employees. Under his leadership, the company has doubled down on DEX, aligning with the evolving needs of the modern workforce. Banfield has introduced a framework named "1E Clarity" to foster a unified company direction, emphasizing a customer-obsessed value, and ensuring strategic decisions align with the company's core purpose.

He's also been instrumental in driving a value creation plan aimed at operational transformation and rapid growth, focusing on market, product roadmap, and customer success operations. Banfield champions a leadership style that values authenticity, community, and a strong focus on employee well-being and work-life balance, reflected in 1E's adoption of a hybrid work model and emphasis on employee flexibility and mental health​.

"Your documentation states that 1E can transform IT operations from a cost center into a strategic asset. Can you elaborate on how your solutions specifically achieve this transformation? What are the key components or features that contribute to elevating IT's strategic role within an organization? "Our mission at 1E is clear: Powering IT and powering business. 

We reimagine how technology serves people and create new ways for IT to shape the future of work. The rise of hybrid and remote work was a major catalyst to progressing how we think about IT and investing in research and development to evolve it into something more than a ticketing desk. Taking it back to basics, by improving the infrastructure required for all parts of an organization to work and communicate, the benefits will be experienced holistically across the business.

From a more technical standpoint, this transformation from a cost center to a strategic productivity enabler harnesses emerging technology to advance remediation, security, and compliance with endpoint support, service desk automation, and full system visibility to empower IT teams. The 1E Platform improves employee experiences with lower costs, heightened security, and less friction. However, these benefits extend beyond the IT department, leading to cross-organizational improvements and cost savings. IT teams can leverage technology to streamline processes, enhance communication, and analyze data to identify key insights and make data-driven decisions. Ultimately, this leads to improved operational efficiency for other departments including finance, operations, and HR - specifically measuring and growing employee satisfaction and retention. 

 Endpoint visibility capabilities such as 1E for Device Refresh and 1E Software Reclaim can provide insights for businesses to make informed investments, reduce expenses, and improve business efficiency e.g., proactive hardware asset management helps to decrease disruptions associated with device lifecycles with real-time data and recommendations. When IT teams can make knowledgeable decisions about whether to retain, replace, repair, or retire devices, organizations will see decreased user downtime, costs, and environmental impact. 

"Improving the end-user experience is a core promise of 1E. Could you share some concrete examples or case studies where 1E has significantly improved the user experience? How do you measure or quantify these improvements?

"Across multiple industries, 1E has been a trusted provider for enhanced asset distribution management, IT visibility and control, automated service desk operations, and the use of AI-powered tools for greater efficiency and insights. Many of these client relationships have evolved to regard us as a strategic partner to identify and drive core business goals. Sustainable IT, a South African technology solutions and consulting company and 14-year 1E customer, overcame the challenging IT skills shortage and drastically reduced business costs. Using 1E capabilities to pool real-time data, SustainableIT currently writes and deploys automated rules that run more than 1.5M autonomous remediations per month and reduce workplace incident volume by as much as 23% per month. 

A major British retailer with over 1,450 stores worldwide initially used 1E solutions to manage and monitor its complex point-of-sale systems; 1E soon grew from becoming a deployment platform to a trusted insights provider, informing strategic decisions at every level. Implementing the 1E platform provided the retailer with the ability to see and predict various problems throughout the entire environment. "Before 1E, we were just playing whack-a-mole. Our service desk was getting hammered, stores were frustrated by being locked out of tills or computers, and we, as IT teams, weren't able to articulate the problem." - Product Manager 

A global integrated energy and chemical company implemented 1E capabilities to respond to the remote and hybrid working challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, monitoring and managing ~15,000 endpoints. Since implementing 1E solutions, the company saw an 80% reduction in the time it takes to resolve a ticket and has now tracked over 1.5M automated remediation across 30,000 endpoints. "What has 1E and the toolset done for us? We are being more proactive, showing that we can resolve issues without any immediate impact on the end-user. That means better user experience." - Member of Global Workplace Team 

Security enhancement and cost reduction are critical challenges for IT departments. How does 1E address these challenges simultaneously without compromising one for the sake of the other? Are there specific technologies or methodologies you employ?

The magic of the capabilities at 1E is that they aim to tackle the most current IT challenges through a holistic approach of combining automation, real-time remediation, and AI-powered operational insights to boost the return on investment. This approach considers all critical aspects of a thorough and well-functioning IT strategy. Which encompasses plugging revenue leaks that could arise from productivity loss caused by digital disruptions, security threats, and unoptimized IT process and infrastructure management. 

When problems do arise, 1E products are designed to employ automated, real-time remediations to mitigate the issues. Essentially, we wouldn't want to put a product in front of a customer that wasn't developed with these key features that truly address IT concerns companies are grappling with - such as cybersecurity. A few specific security features that we offer in tandem with many of our modules within the 1E ecosystem are: 

BitLocker management: enables organizations to protect computers and drives against data theft and makes sure that BitLocker encryption is always enabled on Windows devices. Ensuring security services are online 

File management: Identifies and fixes corrupt files 

Finding security vulnerabilities Software reclaim: Reclaim unused or underutilized software that doesn't meet the organization's compliance requirements to further fortify defenses. Ensuring these critical services are enabled on devices and addressing vulnerabilities across all managed endpoints is important for enhancing security. These measures also reduce costs by minimizing device downtime and mitigating expenses related to security breaches, such as data loss, legal fees, and regulatory fines.

"The statement from your documentation sets 1E apart from other solutions. In your view, what are the unique features or approaches of 1E that competitors lack? How do these distinctions impact the value you deliver to your customers? "

Most notably, 1E has an impressive history of client focus. For over 25 years, 1E has successfully navigated complex IT challenges and infrastructures for large enterprises in 50+ countries with 31 million licenses deployed to 1,750+ organizations. 

This experience has allowed us to invest in research and development and grow based on customer preferences as well as rapidly changing economic and industry landscapes.

Key differentiating factors of the 1E products and solutions:

Real-time, remediation:

Experience lightning-fast query execution and remediation at scale with 1E. The architecture ensures that actions aren't slowed down by throttling, completing tasks in seconds instead of minutes.

Simple and extensible:

1E allows instructions and automation to be written by the customer.

Patching:

1E integrates with the customer's Patch solutions to keep the enterprise secure.

Offline remediations:

1E automation live on the device and continues to run even when offline. Customers can rely on the platform to provide uninterrupted service and maintain critical operations, regardless of internet connectivity.

Low-code customization:

With 1E, modifying Out-of-the-Box (OOTB) remediations is a breeze and doesn't demand dedicated development resources to adjust. The platform's design allows for customization, empowering necessary changes easily.

Scalability:

1E's SaaS platform isn't restricted by the number of devices it can accommodate. The platform can scale to support any number of Windows, MacOS, and Linux devices, allowing for seamless management of all endpoints within a customer's organization.

"Looking forward, how do you see 1E evolving to meet the changing needs of IT departments and end-users? Are there new capabilities or innovations in the pipeline that you're particularly excited about? "

The key shift we are seeing in the IT space is the trend toward a proactive and self-governing DEX. Our new capabilities will continue to prioritize automation, remediation, holistic observability of the customers' digital landscape, and validation of service desk performance measured against AI-driven analytics. Focusing on these pillars will ensure that compliance, security, and a seamless digital experience are maintained. I also believe that extracting clear, actionable insights from massive datasets will be the golden ticket to a fully optimized DEX. Customers can use these insights to identify pain points, validate their IT spending and priorities, and measure user sentiment for a more personalized digital experience. Personalization will be a key component of a self-governing DEX strategy – and one we will continue to develop. Technology that quickly and accurately adapts to employees' distinct preferences and workstyles will boost productivity. 

 A few of the 1E innovations on the horizon are: 

Multilingual surveys and analytics: Providing insights in multiple languages will bridge communication gaps among global teams. 

Point-in-time diagnostics: to help look at events at points in time in the past and corollate them to other system and network events to determine a root cause 

Customizable UI adoption Unified Communication Analytics for Teams: It is an advanced capability of Application Experience that provides comprehensive insights into digital experience metrics for Microsoft Teams, delivered through a dynamic, real-time dashboard interface.