Considering step changes to efficiency

Can you explain the ‘step changes to efficiency’ concept and what it offers a company?

Efficiency is not unlocked in a ‘big bang’ approach. It is incremental, requires planning, and at times, means making investments into the organisation. The crux of the ‘step changes to efficiency’ approach comes down to an organisation investing to remove any human glue that impacts delivery.

How do we help employees work smarter or harder, focusing on higher value activities, or target their effort to be more focused on the customer experience elements of delivering exceptional service to the people they serve?

Driving a strategy to support efficiency involves elements associated with the People, Process and Technology Framework. Quite often, not all elements are in place simultaneously, so until these elements are progressively integrated into the operating model and align with strategic goals, efficiency cannot be achieved.

What role does technology, including platforms like ServiceNow, play in enabling these step changes towards efficiency?

ServiceNow is a market-leading platform that supports organisations in driving transformation objectives, whether that be through defined workflows, integration or establishing defined engagement points that enable tickets to be logged, to get work funnelled to the right teams in the first instance before having to be manually triaged time and time again.

ServiceNow is misunderstood, often given the misnomer of an IT service desk tool. But it’s far more than that. To me, ServiceNow is a system of action. It’s an enterprise platform that has the ability to transform every line of business function in an organisation, from human resources to enterprise asset management.

In addition, ServiceNow is doubling down in its investment to make the platform more relevant to specific industries, incorporating data models that align with healthcare, manufacturing or financial services.

Integrating platforms into ServiceNow minimises customisation and promotes a sustainable out- of-the-box approach, serving as a catalyst for cross-departmental collaboration and enabling structured workflows that engage people effectively throughout a process lifecycle.

How do you suggest companies manage risks associated with making changes in pursuit of efficiency?

Define governance structures that enable the surfacing of risks and issues early in the process and review them frequently. Ensuring everyone involved in a transformation to unlock efficiency understands their role in, and the processes relating to, reporting risks and issues is crucial.

What strategies help companies and their employees adapt to unexpected challenges during these transformations?

Digital disruption is here and unexpected challenges are now the norm, from greater reliance on third and fourth parties, changing compliance landscapes, increasing risks associated with cyber security and digital risk posed from needing to deliver change at pace.

Ensure a living and breathing roadmap is defined, one that considers people, process and technology, and guarantees that the strategy is clear, and understood to act as a guiding ‘North Star’ for unlocking efficiency. Place correct governance structures in place to review progress, manage unforeseen challenges that arise and also act in a flexible and agile way to respond to new challenges.

What should companies measure to determine success?

No matter the type of improvement that you are delivering, understanding where you’re coming from is the most crucial element. For a transformation, there will definitely be a business case with key objectives and outcomes and expected return on investment for driving that transformation.

Understanding the baseline and starting point is crucial to support measurement. Each improvement should have defined critical indicators and data-driven KPIs that support measurement so a comparison to the baseline can reflect current improvements.

Each improvement could have critical success factors that relate to people, process or technology, but some of the key measurements we see align with employee experience, cost optimisation, risk mitigation, efficiency or operational maturity. We can get pretty detailed under these categories, depending on the improvements being executed.

How do AC3 and ServiceNow support change management to ensure that companies effectively adopt new systems or strategies aimed at efficiency improvements?

AC3 is a technology provider at our core and our thought leadership from extensive experience helps our customers in bringing transformation to life. Historically, organisations have operated in silos, overly concentrating on either processes or tooling, while neglecting the balance between people and processes, essential for achieving continual improvement and efficiency.

Our experience in helping large public sector organisations and commercial enterprises to transform and unlock efficiency each and every time includes all three elements of the people, process and tech. If they’re done in a silo, you only achieve part of the potential value.

When executing large projects, we use ServiceNow’s Strategic Portfolio Management module to track all aspects of project delivery. This includes monitoring project health, risks, issues, tasks and schedules, and ensuring organisational change activities are integrated into our planning, facilitating a holistic approach to project management and transformation support.

We recommend organisational change management be owned by our customers with AC3 playing a supporting role with regular demonstrations of emerging solutions, contributing to and executing training plans, providing content to customers, assisting organisational change managers with business communications and gathering feedback on solutions as they develop.

What tips do you have for businesses looking to make significant changes towards efficiency in their operations and processes?

The big one for me here is having a continual improvement mindset embedded throughout the entire organisation, but you can’t do that without executive support and you can’t do that without investment. You can’t do that without the right people, process and technology in place to tell a story and to track and manage these improvements.

Many organisations aim for continual improvement but fail due to lean operations. Employees tasked with improvement find themselves overwhelmed by daily operations, struggling within a 38-hour workweek. This challenge, rooted in insufficient technology and unclear processes, underscores the gap between the goal of sustainable improvement and the reality of organisational capabilities.

How can companies ensure that efficiency improvements are not just one-time changes but are sustainable and open to continual improvement over time?

Sustainable change requires the right people for incremental improvement, clear processes, and frameworks. Key strategies include establishing continual improvement processes, managing enhancements, using tools like ServiceNow for tracking metrics, updating and communicating platform roadmaps, gathering stakeholder feedback, and acting on it to ensure a continuous improvement cycle. Also critical are creating recovery plans for underperformance, celebrating successes, and learning from failures to drive targeted improvements.

What future trends or technologies do you think will have the most significant impact on the way companies pursue efficiency improvements in the coming years?

Enterprise Service Management is still emerging in many organisations, often servicing only a part of the enterprise. There will be a greater emphasis on data standards to facilitate automation and reduce manual intervention as AI is expected to become more suitable for enterprise use. Platforms such as ServiceNow are enhancing their AI capabilities, and it’s anticipated that costs will eventually decrease, encouraging broader adoption and adding more value to justify investment.