Platform Software Engineer

Why your AI strategy needs A DEXM solution: lessons from Nexthink's Masters of Experience. Jun 26 2026 Last week at Nexthink's Masters of Experience event in London, one theme came through clearly in every conversation I had with digital workplace leaders, IT practitioners, and experience innovators: The ways that organizations use digital employee experience management (DEXM) solutions are expanding. AI dominated the agenda - as expected. But the real story wasn't about the latest models or features. It was about how organizations are struggling to operationalize AI, modernize support, and manage experience at scale - and how DEXM solutions are evolving to fill those gaps. The most mature organizations are no longer using DEXM just to monitor endpoints or troubleshoot issues; they're using it to improve how work actually gets done. Here are a few key themes that emerged from the event that every IT and digital workplace leader should understand. DEXM is emerging As A solution for managing the AI experience. AI conversations have shifted. The question is no longer what AI can do but how to make it work in your organization. Across sessions and hallway conversations, leaders consistently raised the same challenges: How do Forrester Research, Inc. drive adoption? Govern usage? Measure ROI? Identify high-value use cases? Guide employees toward the right tools? These questions are becoming more urgent as AI pricing models evolve toward consumption-based economics. Leaders can no longer afford to buy licenses and hope for adoption. They must understand usage, behavior, and value creation in real time. * DEXM solutions give leaders visibility into how AI is actually used. Organizations are beginning to use DEXM solutions to understand adoption patterns, identify successful use cases, and track where value is being created - and where it isn't. This is becoming essential as AI shifts from experimentation to measurable business impact. * Experience-led governance is replacing restrictive controls. At Aon, leaders described using DEXM insights to guide employees toward approved AI tools rather than relying solely on blocking or restricting access. As Simon Sankey noted, governance should help employees find the right tools - not just prevent the wrong ones. That shift from control to enablement is critical. * The signal is moving from tickets to conversations. As Nexthink Cofounder and CEO Pedro Bados put it, "the data is in the conversation, not the ticket." With conversational AI agents becoming part of daily work, organizations need new ways to capture experience signals. The importance of this is underscored by Forrester's Digital Workplace And Employee Technology Survey, 2026, which shows an increased use of generative AI tools at work, with 53% of employees using the tools weekly. DEXM must evolve accordingly, shifting from monitoring technology experience to understanding and optimizing AI-driven work. The most innovative organizations are reimagining the Service Desk. For years, IT leaders have talked about proactive support, automation, and self-healing. The organizations at Masters of Experience showed that many are already moving beyond those goals and redefining what support is. * Automation is accelerating resolution and redefining expectations. GSK shared that a Spark proof of concept achieved a 62% resolution rate while reducing resolution time from 23 minutes to 5 minutes. GSK's long-term vision isn't faster tickets. It's removing friction before employees experience it. * Proactive operations are reducing demand, not just handling it. The UK Ministry of Justice described using DEXM-driven automation to reduce level-one demand while improving efficiency across a highly complex environment. The goal is continuous reduction of routine interactions, not incremental improvement of response times. * Support teams are shifting from ticket handlers to experience builders. LexisNexis UK delivered one of the most compelling examples, reducing reactive incidents per user by more than 50% over five years while supporting 30% business growth with fewer IT resources. The key isn't just automation; it's the operating model. Support teams are now analyzing patterns, building automations, designing self-healing workflows, and creating continuous improvement backlogs using AI-driven insights. This is a fundamentally different vision of support. The service desk of the future isn't measured by how quickly it closes tickets. It's measured by how effectively it prevents disruption and enables uninterrupted work. Forrester's report, Service Desk As A Product Team, provides a practical playbook on how to shift to an experience-led service desk. The report highlights that training in empathy and problem-solving, along with access to the right tools, ensures highly effective teams that deliver meaningful DEX outcomes. Mature DEX programs extend beyond IT. The most important shift I observed isn't technical - it's organizational. The organizations seeing the greatest value from DEXM solutions are treating it as a shared capability, not an IT tool. * DEX insights are being democratized across teams. At the UK Ministry of Justice, DEX leaders intentionally opened access to experience data across application, device, security, and business teams, building role-based access models and communities of practice to enable action wherever expertise exists. * Ownership of experience is becoming cross-functional. As employee experience becomes intertwined with AI, security, operations, and business outcomes, no single team can own it. Organizations are expanding accountability - and enabling collaboration to drive outcomes. As Rachael Smith, service owner for the UK Ministry of Justice, put it, "don't gatekeep." That philosophy reflects a broader trend: DEXM is becoming a foundational capability for managing work, not just technology. This aligns closely with Forrester's DEXOps model, which emphasizes cross-functional alignment as a prerequisite for continuous improvement at scale. A reminder from the community: DEX is built by diverse perspectives. One of the highlights of the event for me wasn't on stage - it was the Women in DEX breakfast. DEX is a discipline that few people plan to enter. Practitioners come from UX, IT, HR, service management, engineering, and more. That diversity isn't accidental; it's essential. Improving digital employee experience requires understanding people, technology, processes, and culture. The diversity of backgrounds in the DEX community is one of its greatest strengths - and one of the reasons the discipline continues to evolve. Women in DEX was founded by Laura Reeves, Nexthink's global senior client director, who recognized the need and has grown the community as a passion project. Learn more about the community and upcoming events by joining the Women in DEX LinkedIn group. The bottom line: DEXM solutions are expanding beyond their original purpose. Across customer stories, executive conversations, and real-world examples, the direction is clear: DEXM is expanding. It is expanding into AI adoption, governance, and ROI. It is expanding into autonomous operations and support transformation. And it is expanding beyond IT into an enterprisewide capability. The organizations leading this next phase aren't asking how DEXM solutions can help them monitor technology. They're asking how DEXM can help them improve work. That shift will define the next phase of the market. What to do next: If you're a Forrester client, schedule a guidance session with me to assess your DEX maturity and define a tailored DEXOps approach. If you're earlier in your journey, start by identifying one cross-functional use case where DEX insights can drive measurable outcomes - and build from there.

Blue Owl Capital led a $750 million debt financing to support Vista Equity Partners' majority stake acquisition of AI software company Nexthink, which values the company at approximately $3 billion. The loan is priced at 5.5 percentage points above US benchmark rates. Despite the high-profile deal, Blue Owl's shares fell roughly 5%, reflecting investor concerns over the firm's exposure to technology-focused private credit transactions. The asset manager has faced scrutiny after permanently closing redemptions on a $1.6 billion fund, raising questions about private credit market liquidity. Nexthink, a Swiss-American enterprise software company specialising in workplace monitoring tools, has grown rapidly. Its annual revenue climbed from $100 million in 2020 to approximately $294 million in 2024, driven by demand for digital employee experience solutions.