Technology-based friction has existed in the workplace for decades, despite massive advances in technology. In fact, while technology has delivered powerful new capabilities, it won’t improve workflow unless organizational leaders make that a specific goal, says Conor Waddell, senior vice president for integrated technology solutions and product and partner management with CDW.

“The natural law of order bends toward complexity and friction. In any process, we tend to do things that slow us down, even with the best of intentions,” Waddell says. “There is simply no way to remove that friction without being intentional about it. It’s not going to remove itself. It has to be a leader-led effort to design and build friction out of the system.”  

Improving workflows is a high priority for organizations across industries, as friction leads to a number of negative outcomes. When we asked respondents about the greatest impact of friction on their organizations, 34% said increased security risks, while 33% said it slows innovation or prevents quick decision-making.

Further, when we asked about the impact of friction created by efforts to improve cyber resilience, 56% said it reduced productivity, while 53% said it increased operational costs and 52% said it led to inefficient workflows.

“The real risk is that friction slows innovation and drives up costs, making it harder to compete,” Waddell says.

The CDW research indicates that IT decision-makers view artificial intelligence and automation as powerful tools to improve workflow. Half of respondents (50%) said their organization has made investments in AI integration and automation for low-level tasks to reduce friction in the workplace.

However, as organizations make these investments, they need to do so strategically. “There is a fundamental shift underway with AI. For the past few years, we’ve been using AI as an add-on to human-centered processes. But in many places, this relationship is slowly inverting, with AI handling the process while humans are freed up for human-to-human connection,” Waddell says. “In practice, this means doctors spending more time with patients while AI takes the notes, lawyers advising clients while AI reviews contracts and HR partners spending more time with employees while AI answers common questions.

When AI is used like this, it directly reduces friction on the end user,” Waddell adds. “But if AI is implemented poorly or not aligned with business needs, it can actually create new confusion and risks that you have to chase.”

While its impacts are real, the term “friction” is a fairly abstract concept. However, it’s important for organizations to have a way to measure the friction their employees experience. More than a third of respondents (37%) said they measure friction by help desk tickets and support volume. “The number of help desk tickets is a primary factor since client problems and complaints need priority responses,” one ITDM said.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it,” Waddell says. “At CDW, we guide customers to use practical metrics — like help desk ticket volume, resolution times and user feedback — to track friction. We also encourage regular reviews of workflows and technology, so organizations can proactively address issues before they become bigger problems.”

When we asked respondents about the most important benefits of using AI to reduce friction within their organization, 53% cited automation and efficiency. This is reflected in real-world implementations of AI, but IT leaders should keep their strategic goals — including the reduction of friction — in mind as they consider these initiatives.

“A significant portion of the ROI from AI today is in the friction reduction category. Chatbots that answer employee questions, AI built into your contact center to route and respond to calls, predictive AI that creates real-time intelligence — that’s all cutting out friction,” Waddell says. “But you have to be thoughtful and intentional about this. Approach friction reduction as the goal and build for that end.”

As organizations look to deploy AI, they need IT infrastructure that can support the technology. When asked about the infrastructure options their organization is considering for AI implementations, 59% said public cloud, while 50% said hybrid cloud.

Implementing AI can also create challenges for organizations, our research revealed, including skill gaps among employees (45%), regulatory concerns (34%) and challenges adhering to IT governance (33%).

When asked where their efforts at building resilience caused friction, 62% said they resulted in performance impacts such as slower systems or apps. Another 55% said their resilience efforts created friction in the time and effort required for cybersecurity training, and 49% cited financial or resource constraints.

To reduce friction while maintaining cyber resilience, 56% said they are implementing automated solutions such as security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) tools, while 53% said they regularly review and rationalize security tools and 49% said they provide tailored training for users and IT staff.

Organizations plan to use AI to reduce friction related to cyber resilience in a variety of ways, including real-time response and mitigation, such as blocking malicious traffic and deploying patches (57%) and automating repetitive tasks such as log analysis (54%).

As they pursue efforts to improve workflow, IT leaders should pay attention to simplicity, McIntyre advises. “If we’re going to make frictionless processes efficient, they need to have as few steps as possible and as many options as possible,” he says.

Automation is a top priority as organizations look to reduce workplace friction, as 50% of respondents cited it as one their investments, followed closely by employee training or upskilling (49%) and improved collaboration technologies (44%).

When we asked about respondents’ workplace modernization strategies, the most frequently cited answers involved AI and automation (44%). Other respondents cited legacy upgrades (13%) and cloud or digital transformation (11%). “Process automation is being adopted to eliminate repetitive tasks and allow staff to focus on innovation,” one respondent stated.

When we asked where respondents experience bottlenecks in their software and app development, the most common area was in testing and quality assurance, which was cited by 22%. Another 18% cited integration, deployment and implementation.

“Bottlenecks occur when development tools are not properly integrated or quality assurance processes are extended,” one respondent stated.

 “Manual testing processes increase release times and reduce productivity,” said another.

As with other areas of friction, automation offers significant potential to deliver improvements. To assist with their development initiatives, organizations are leveraging automation most widely in security (47%), testing (45%) and monitoring (43%).

However, deployment of these tools must be done strategically, with IT leaders keeping a variety of objectives in mind as they implement new tools and capabilities, including AI coding assistants. “When we meet with CDW customers, we talk about business goals, security, observability and organizational change management,” Chenevey says. “We’ll fail in our platform engineering initiatives if we don’t cohesively address all of these areas.”

Ultimately, friction represents a major challenge for IT teams and organizational leaders across industries. Those who are able to reduce friction in their environments will give themselves advantages over their competitors in numerous areas. To achieve this requires a holistic effort that involves people, technology and processes.

“My advice is for IT leaders to view friction reduction as an outcome you’re building toward, the same way you would cost savings or risk mitigation,” Waddell says. “When we deploy this new tool or process, the explicit goal is to remove friction for our end user. As you build, ask yourself over and over: Does this remove friction? Does this allow us to go faster? Is this a better experience? This idea has to be part of your culture to the point where it becomes second nature.”