Forward-thinking organisations were already enjoying the advantages of digital workflows, but the new normal has only underscored the convenience and efficiency of moving work systems to the digital space. Now that organisations aren’t in their primary workspaces as much, there is a greater dependence on digitising ways of working, says Daniel Marsh, Head of ServiceNow at AC3.
“Utilising a system or application to truly leverage a workflow engine removes the human glue in the process to ensure that resources do what they need to, when they need to, as opposed to users waiting for a tap on the shoulder from a colleague, as you would traditionally need in an office environment,” he explains.
“Businesses have become more agile out of necessity and are really harnessing digital workflows to support their automation objectives and to ensure their teams can do what they need to from anywhere.”
For organisations that have yet to digitise, a major driver may be to ensure they are keeping up with their competitors and creating a user experience through a service portal to centralise all engagement for their staff or customers. Marsh says he has seen situations where paper forms still reign supreme, needing lots of emails and signatures, just to get things done. “I’ve assessed teams in many businesses that operate out of a shared mailbox, who don’t truly have an understanding of their demand or performance,” he notes. “When you peel back the onion, you realise there’s a lot of manual intervention and unstructured work patterns. With a shared mailbox, they’re receiving all their work, but waiting on replies to progress. If they’re not using a dedicated workflow management tool, it’s really hard to have a clear understanding of what needs to be done.”
Such situations provide an opportunity to consolidate multi-team engagement through automation to traverse and funnel the work through the business, instead of it getting caught up in people’s mailboxes, notes Marsh. Also the smooth running of the workflow is interrupted because of the need for human input. “They require an individual to trigger an email or follow up with someone when an email is captured in the central platform,” says Marsh.
But with a digitised workflow, the process is streamlined. “Everyone’s looking at the same workload at the one time and they know exactly where a piece of work is at in its life cycle,” he explains.
Added benefits
With organisations not expecting their employees to be physically in the office as often, creating a digital ecosystem that supports their workflow will foster and support the resilience of those workers. But alongside that preference for greater remote working, closed borders are likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future in Australia. Digital workflows enable the timely and efficient utilisation of resources from anywhere and everywhere. Resources that were previously inaccessible for businesses are now accessible and there is no geographical limit for organisations using them.
Key requirements
Despite its technological basis, one of the biggest considerations for any organisation implementing an automation process is the human element. “When everyone’s working remotely and we’re using technology to facilitate the workflow, it’s very easy for individuals to go into their shells and not have as much human interaction,” says Marsh. “So a strong culture, underpinning the digital transformation with the remote workforce, is really imperative. Individuals need support, they need engagement and they need to feel part of something. We talk about digital resilience but culture and engagement are some of the most critical factors. It really can’t be underestimated.”
The other piece of the human element is the importance of having a digital evangelist on board. A person at the helm of the organisation who understands the benefits of the transformation, can identify the use cases and is willing to drive the strategic roadmap is critical to spearhead the evolution.
They need to be someone embedded or their teams embedded in the day-to-day processes, who understands how the business operates, how processes flow through the business and how their team works. Essentially, these will be the people who have the greatest understanding of the pain points and any inefficiencies that may be impacting business performance.
Those at the head of the organisation may not always be the first candidate for digital evangelism, simply because of their focus on the daily demands of being in charge. “People are so busy running operations that removing themselves to improve the systems can be one of the biggest challenges,” says Marsh.
But it’s one that must be navigated, as the dangers of not doing so can have a serious impact on a business. “If you don’t digitise, you’re getting left behind,” warns Marsh. “The market is leading more and more down the path of leveraging technology to make the work lives of staff easier and more efficient, and provide them with a greater experience. The business imperative is to digitise or your staff are going to go somewhere that does.”