Collective IQ®: DEX Made Simple, Fast, Without Dedicated Specialists
There is plenty of talk about the value of Digital Employee Experience (DEX). But how can you use it a typical day? Do organizations need a DEX specialist? And what about AI — must you master the art of prompting?
During a casual conversation on the road to HDI Support World in Las Vegas, Dave Wagner (Almaden executive) and Bob Kruger (Chief Product Officer) answered these questions directly. Below are their key insights, preserved exactly as they shared them.
What makes Collective IQ® special?
Dave: “ I thought I’d weigh in really quickly before turning over to Bob, one of the inventors of Collective IQ (CIQ®). To me, being relatively new here, it’s the ability to have a really fast time to value, incredibly easy to use solution. It meets the needs of IT professionals in their day‑to‑day lives. Nothing’s flashy, nothing expensive — just their trusted work companion to help make everything to do with using their infrastructure more productive and, let’s face it, more fun. Bob, any thoughts on CIQ’s specialness?”
Bob: “Yeah, actually. I like tools that are valuable, that are just simple, easy to use, fast to learn, and also don’t require people to throw away what they already have and appreciate. That way we complement their existing workflows. We just help people to be much more effective in their jobs, and I think CIQ fulfills that really well.”
Dave: “Yeah, it meets them where they are instead of forcing them to have to go on a really difficult journey.”
How can CIQ be used on a typical day?
Dave: “Speaking of CIQ, you have to think about DEX. And the topic of DEX today is frankly hotter than ever before. But what’s the real value?”
Bob: “Think about how people perform their work. In that regard, we’re talking about the IT service desk or help desk. One of the big challenges is they get flooded with tickets. So how do they prioritize their work? We help them with that, as you know, with the ‘Issues to Focus on Today’ functionality. But we also enabled those same people to be much more proactive in looking ahead at potential issues and dealing with those before they turn into red flags and tickets. That is a really big deal. They can use CIQ alongside their other tools to not just help figure out, but resolve problems quickly, effectively and cost efficiently.”
Dave: “I like how you talk about ‘before the problems actually are noticed and before a ticket’ — because that’s huge. What it does is it enables them to be heroes to their organization, quite frankly. And that’s a very powerful use case.”
Do organizations need a dedicated DEX specialist?
Dave: “Bob, question about Collective IQ. Do companies really need a dedicated person trained in it and dedicated to using it in their organization?”
Bob: “That’s the beauty of a product like CIQ. They certainly don’t. In fact, if anything, it’s really about a different way of thinking. It’s about thinking about prevention, about how to anticipate issues, how to get on top of them and resolve them faster, before they become red flags.”
Dave: “Interesting. The other thought I would have on that as well is that not only does it help them prevent issues, it’s almost like they can take advantage of the fact that the employees themselves become experts because it’s a tool that meets them where they’re at. So they don’t need a dedicated role necessarily. Everybody can use it. It’s the ‘share the wealth and share the expertise’ kind of perspective as opposed to ‘my job is this one thing and I use this one tool’ — like the guy in the movie with his stapler. You don’t have to have a guy whose Collective IQ is his stapler. Everybody can take advantage of it. It meets them where they’re at.”
Bob: “Just remember that CIQ is really for IT. We have AlmaIQ™ that can provide self-help to employees. This filters out problems so hopefully IT doesn’t need to get involved at all. But, with the help of CIQ and its AI-based capabilities, the IT team can be much more effective as it detects trends and can take preventative measures before red flags are raised. Again, no dedicated person or special training needed.”
Dave: “Exactly. And I think that’s the key difference. If I look at some of the other DEX solutions out there, they literally have dedicated DEX teams and specialists who have to get trained on it. They have to be consulted. It’s a very big, expensive effort. With Almaden Collective IQ, it’s install and use it. So you don’t need to be an expert or be dedicated to use Collective IQ.”
How does AI make a difference in CIQ? Do I need to become a prompt master?
Dave: “What about the whole concept of AI? Everyone is talking about AI. They say that the only way I get value is if I become an expert in writing prompts. What’s our story on having to be a prompt expert?”
Bob: “For a lot of other solutions that’s definitely the case, but not so for CIQ. Everything we’ve done is to leverage point‑and‑click types of capabilities to make it super simple. We thought about the metrics that are needed, we thought about the prompts and put in the hard work up front. The user only needs to select devices or software to examine, then select metrics and timeframes, press Next and see the results! It’s hassle-free. And then the user themselves, through AlmaIQ™, if they want, have the opportunity to ask super simple, very straightforward questions about their devices and software. Again, there’s no need to learn sophisticated prompting. Furthermore, we essentially built in the capabilities available to IT and employees (based on their roles), so no one has to worry about special guardrails. CIQ is just focused on being able to deal with the metrics related to their devices and their software as collected by CIQ. And, via AlmaIQ, if the company has specific info about their enterprise (e.g. how to submit an expense report), they can get that too. Again, no special training required for IT or the AI models.”
Dave: “So in short, we’ve done the hard work to get them the metrics that matter and not force them to write complicated prompts that could result in being mired in irrelevant data . We’ve done that heavy lifting for them.”
Bob: “Exactly! They don’t need to go through any special training to learn how to construct a prompt. It’s nothing like that. And of course, CIQ is not for the creation of memos and research papers and images. It’s not that. It’s focused on DEX and, for all employees, on company‑provided information that helps them go about their jobs.”
Dave: “Focused on the target that matters, which is improving productivity and experience of everybody using IT.”
Conclusion: DEX without complexity, with AI that does the heavy lifting
The conversation between Dave Wagner and Bob Kruger makes one thing clear: Collective IQ was built to solve real IT problems — not bury people in data.
Above all, Collective IQ enables IT to be more effective and more strategic, turning the support team into a driver of corporate productivity.
Want to know how this approach can work for your organization?
Contact Almaden to learn how Collective IQ to schedule a personalized demo.
