4 ways IT teams leverage Pendo to reduce risk

In the TV show Severance, Lumon Tech employees have a completely distinct personality that only activates at work. These “innies” have no knowledge of the outside world and are limited to the technology that the company provides.

Horrifying as this setup may be for the folks in cubicles, it might sound ideal for an overworked CIO. Imagine employees who never indulge in shadow IT, always follow every compliance guideline, and hang on every word in security training sessions! 

But of course, the people who work at your enterprise aren’t innies. They’re complete human beings, with all the creativity and potential carelessness that implies. When they get frustrated with their software tools, they find other solutions. These workarounds and their fallout cost the average enterprise $100 million a year.

Our latest guide is aimed at helping reduce the inevitable risks of combining fallible human beings with an unwieldy tech stack. It’s called The CIO’s guide to reducing software-related risk: Enforcing security and compliance without risking your sanity.

Here’s a quick look at the real-life success stories in the guide.

Four companies that reduced the risks at the intersection of people and software

It’s easy to control the level of risk that software entails: You can evaluate each piece of software’s security features, get guarantees and warranties, and make it their support team’s problem as a last resort. 

The human risk factor is tougher, but these stories show that you can succeed. 

1. Addressing security vulnerabilities

Your employees aren’t likely to have the best security practices at the forefront of their minds at all times. When a new risk emerges, like a new scam email or virus, it can be hard to get the word out.

Cisco Cloudlock faced that challenge when the Google Docs OAuth exploit sprang up. They needed to contact their customers with urgent information that could help control the damage. But they knew email notifications had a low response rate. 

Adding another wrinkle: The email address on file for an account was not always associated with the end users Cisco Cloudlock needed to reach. 

So they created an in-app notice with Pendo Guides informing customers about the breach. It also presented options and next steps. They saw a 68% response rate for the notice, far more than they ever had achieved in email.

Cisco Cloudlock’s story shows that the best communication channel for security risks is directly in the relevant application. 

2. Ensuring greater compliance and efficiency

Sectors like healthcare and finance are accustomed to dealing with regulations on how they handle data. As governments pass and pursue more privacy legislation, every industry is becoming a more highly regulated one. Keeping compliant can be challenging, but the other option is incurring fines and losing public trust.

Open-source software company Red Hat was dealing with compliance issues, as well as inefficiencies and duplicated work. They used Pendo Analytics to get a holistic view of how their employees were using software. Then they deployed Pendo Guides to deliver content specifically to new users and others who were at increased risk of noncompliance.

Their efforts saved an estimated 2,300 hours of rework in a single month.

Red Hat’s experience shows the importance of fully understanding the problem before implementing a solution. User analytics were key to creating a permanent fix.

3. Reducing shadow IT

If your employees are frustrated with the software they’ve been given, they’re likely to find their own fixes. This means bringing unapproved, unvetted software into their workflows. Locking down work devices is one way to fight the problem, but it usually leads to an arms race with employees finding new ways around every ban.

IHS Markit found a better solution: Make sure your software offerings meet your users’ needs. They used Pendo Analytics to gauge the volume of usage for each software feature. With data in hand, they could identify:

• Underused valuable features to promote
• Unused features to prune
• Gaps in functionality to close

IHS Markit was able to more closely match their software with user demand, avoiding the frustration that leads to shadow IT among customers.

4. Resolving software dissatisfaction

The results of poor security habits or lack of compliance are easy to spot. Software dissatisfaction is, by nature, harder to suss out. Its employees quietly struggle with the software they use every day. This type of dissatisfaction leads to lost productivity, shadow IT, wasted software spend, burnout, and even employee churn.

A global tax, audit, and advisory form with 300,000 employees faced this problem on a massive scale. They struggled to understand how employees were interacting with over 150 internal applications. The lack of clarity made it more difficult to create a manageable tech stack that would promote, not hinder, productivity. 

The firm used Pendo to help understand exactly how employees were using applications. Insights included where employees were struggling, which apps were most useful, and which were just adding clutter.

Through AI-assisted analysis and insight, the company made changes that resulted in a 25% increase in productivity. The problem wasn’t the employees or the software—it was a lack of understanding in how the two worked together.

Reduce risks through analysis, insight and guidance

Unless you work on the severed floor at Lumon Tech, your employees are fallible humans prone to behaving in unexpected ways. When you can better understand where the system is failing, you can reduce risks to security, compliance and productivity. And you can guide smarter software spend and reduce waste at the same time.

Ready to learn more about how Pendo helps IT teams reduce risk? Get the full guide and schedule a demo.