Maximizing DEX value with an experience-centric operating model

So, you’re ready for DEX?

Great.

But before you dive into dashboards, automations, or shiny scorecards, it’s essential to step back and realize something fundamental: DEX is not just a tool. It’s a mindset shift. And like any mindset shift, it requires a clear operating model to support it.

Without an experience-centric operating model, even the best DEX platform will fall short. Not because the technology is flawed, but because the organization lacks a structured approach to utilizing it. Over the years, I’ve seen this play out repeatedly across various industries, including insurance, biotech, financial services, consumer goods, healthcare, and manufacturing. The patterns are almost always the same.

Let me share a few examples.

When DEX fails to take hold

1. Limited adoption

One global insurance provider deployed a best-in-class DEX platform through a managed service provider (MSP). Technically, everything was set up perfectly. The tool collected telemetry. Automations were built. The reporting looked beautiful.

But there was one major problem: no one internally actually knew how to use it. Teams weren’t trained. Dashboards weren’t reviewed. The MSP produced reports, but the organization had no internal champions to interpret or act on them. As a result, the insights never reached the C-suite. The tool drifted into obscurity, another icon on the IT desktop, until it was eventually removed because it was deemed to have “no value.”

This is a classic early-stage pitfall: the assumption that DEX is “plug and play.” In reality, it's more in line with a continuous delivery model.

2. Difficulty justifying ROI

Another common trap: when DEX is viewed as “just another IT tool,” it becomes an easy target during budget cycles. Leaders face pressure to consolidate tools, cut overlap, or switch to “good enough” capabilities baked into larger suites.

This happens when the value of DEX isn’t clearly tied to business outcomes. If the narrative is “DEX helps IT run better,” that’s not strong enough. IT is always expected to run better. However, when DEX reflects a broader shift in operating model, toward employee productivity, trust, and experience outcomes, the stickiness grows exponentially.

Organizations that operationalize DEX see it become a strategic capability, not a line item.

3. Missing the experience boat

Some teams deploy DEX to reduce tickets and nothing more. If fewer tickets are the only success metric, you’ll miss the bigger, human-centric issues that impact experience.

For example, at one organization, DEX data indicated that device performance was satisfactory. Latency was low, CPU utilization was normal, and stability ratings were high. Yet employee feedback told a very different story. Workers felt overwhelmed by communication channels, were confused about where to find documents, and struggled with outdated workflows.

These issues would never surface in a ticketing system. When experience becomes reduced to “break/fix,” you lose sight of the broader digital journey.

4. Infighting between IT teams

The most surprising and frequent failure pattern is internal friction. If different IT teams don’t trust the DEX data, don’t understand its meaning, or don’t see themselves represented in the insights, resistance grows quickly.

A large biotech company I worked with faced this exact issue. Their engineering teams didn’t trust the DEX telemetry. When service desk teams presented data to the engineers, the engineers didn’t trust it at all, and as a result, they refused to approve or build automations based on that data.

When DEX threatens domain expertise, people push back. However, when DEX becomes a unifying layer that aligns teams with shared truths, the possibilities are endless.

The key insight: Adoption drives value

Here’s the bottom line:

DEX value scales with adoption.

The more people and teams that rely on the DEX platform, the greater its organizational value. This includes end users, service desk, applications, security, HR, procurement, and entire business units.

And that requires a strong operating model. In fact, the organizations that get the most value from DEX don’t just use the tool. They structure around it. They create roles, rituals, and rhythms that embed experience into the fabric of the digital workplace.

That structure is what I call the experience-centric operating model, and it has four components:

1. Leadership
2. Insights
3. Impact
4. Governance

Let’s unpack each one.

1. Leadership: The people side of DEX

When I first started seeing “DEX” in IT job titles, it felt like a turning point. One of the earliest examples was a VP of DEX reporting directly to the Chief People Officer at a major bank. At another company, a senior leadership role dedicated entirely to advancing experience outcomes emerged. These were early signals that DEX requires executive sponsorship, not just a technical team.

Why? Because DEX touches everything: devices, applications, workflows, culture, communication, productivity, and increasingly trust and security. Only a senior leader can orchestrate that level of cross-functional alignment.

What outstanding DEX leadership looks like

A strong DEX evangelist is responsible for setting the vision, direction, and clarity around what constitutes a “good experience.” This includes:

• Experience as a product: Designing journeys, roadmaps, and feedback loops
• Data-driven decision making: Grounding priorities in DEX signals
• Employee listening: Using research and sentiment as inputs to strategy
• Business accountability: Measuring DEX impact in outcomes, not outputs

This person becomes the connective tissue between IT, HR, and the business.

Building a DEX team

As the operating model evolves, a DEX team is formed. Titles may differ, such as DEX Team, Experience Management Office (XMO), or Digital Employee Experience Management Office (DEXMO), but the roles generally remain the same.

• DEX Engineer: Automation subject matter expert, platform expert
• DEX Analyst: Interprets signals, connects dots
• DEX Researcher: Conducts deep listening and employee-centered discovery
• Business Liaison: Translates value to stakeholders, gathers feedback

Most organizations start with an engineer and an analyst, then scale up as DEX proves value.

The three maturity levels

Over time, team structure evolves:

1. DEX expertise inside a single team, usually end-user computing (EUC)
2. Center of excellence model: Cross-functional but centralized
3. Fully embedded experience culture: The ideal end state

In highly mature environments, every IT decision considers impact on employee experience.

2. Insights: The engine of experience  

 Insights are the heartbeat of DEX. Without them, you’re flying blind. But with them, you can transform how your organization diagnoses problems, identifies opportunities, and plans its roadmap.

Ask three questions:

1. What insights do we have today?
2. What insights are we missing?
3. How will we collect those insights in the future?

To get this right, you need an insights engine, a repeatable framework that blends multiple data sources into a unified viewpoint.

The five insight inputs

A compelling insights engine includes:

1. Telemetry

The foundational signals from your DEX platform: responsiveness, boot times, crashes, network quality, CPU, memory, and more. This is your objective baseline.

2. Sentiment

This can come from DEX, HR survey tools, or standalone survey platforms. Sentiment fills the human gap between what the telemetry shows and what employees feel.

3. Listening

This approach extends beyond surveys, encompassing contextual interviews, shadowing, workflow research, focus groups, and conversations with key stakeholders within the business. Listening uncovers things telemetry never will. Things like frustration, confusion, friction patterns, and cultural blockers.

4. Usage data

Insights from software licensing, application utilization, productivity tooling, collaboration platforms, intranets, and knowledge repositories. Usage patterns often reveal the actual workflow reality, not the assumed one.

5. Communications quality

Are employees getting the correct information at the right time? Are messages read? Do people understand where to go for updates? Poor communication is often the invisible friction behind a bad experience.

When these streams converge, you get a 360-degree view of the digital experience.

3. Measurement: Defining and proving impact  

You’ve deployed the DEX platform. Great. But how will you know whether it’s working?

Start with a baseline

Before collecting DEX data, document your “before” state:

• Ticket volumes
• Employee satisfaction
• Sentiment
• Dominant break/fix themes
• Known pain points
• System stability

Most organizations don’t have this baseline, so you may need to collect it manually.

Define the “after”

This is where experience level agreements (XLAs) come into play. XLAs start with an employee-centered outcome, a clear statement of what the employee wants to achieve. Our partner, XLA Institute, offers courses to help define and build XLA frameworks. As a member of their program, TeamViewer can also assist you.

For example:

“My device should always work.”

That is your vision. From that, you map indicators:

• Technical indicators (T): Does the device perform well?
• Experience indicators (E): Do employees perceive it as working well?
• Operational indicators (O): Are support processes efficient and responsive?

Together, these create a measurement framework for proving DEX value.

Make measurement a rhythm

Experience measurement should be part of a regular operating rhythm.

• Weekly DEX standups
• Monthly business reviews
• Quarterly experience retrospectives

Snapshots, trends, and scorecards help your organization move from reactive IT to proactive experience management.

4. Governance: Operationalizing DEX across the stack